Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial activist, and political thinker. He is famous for using nonviolent resistance to lead India’s successful struggle for independence from British rule, and his methods later inspired civil rights and freedom movements around the world. The title Mahātmā, a Sanskrit word meaning “great-souled” or “venerable,” was first given to him in 1914 in South Africa and is now used globally.

Gandhi was born and raised in a Hindu family in coastal Gujarat. He studied law at the Inner Temple in London and became a barrister at age 22. After two uncertain years in India, where he could not build a successful legal practice, he moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit. He lived there for the next 21 years, raising a family and first using nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights. In 1915, at age 45, he returned to India and soon began organizing peasants, farmers, and urban workers to protest discrimination and high land taxes.

Taking leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns to reduce poverty, expand women’s rights, build religious and ethnic harmony, end untouchability, and above all achieve swaraj, or self-rule. He wore a short dhoti made from hand-spun yarn to identify with India’s rural poor. He lived in a self-sufficient community, ate simple food, and undertook long fasts for both introspection and political protest. He brought anti-colonial nationalism to ordinary Indians, leading them in the 1930 Dandi Salt March against the British salt tax and calling for the British to quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned many times for years in both South Africa and India.

Gandhi’s vision of an independent India based on religious pluralism faced challenges in the early 1940s from Muslim nationalists who wanted a separate homeland for Muslims within British India. In August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was split into two dominions: Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs moved to their new lands, religious violence erupted, especially in Punjab and Bengal. Gandhi did not join the official independence celebrations; instead, he visited affected areas to ease suffering. In the following months, he held several hunger strikes to stop the violence. His last fast began in Delhi on 12 January 1948, when he was 78. Some Hindus in India believed Gandhi had been too firm in defending both Pakistan and Indian Muslims. Among them was Nathuram Godse, a militant Hindu nationalist from Pune, who assassinated Gandhi by shooting him three times in the chest at an interfaith prayer meeting in Delhi on 30 January 1948.

Gandhi’s birthday, 2 October, is celebrated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Nonviolence. He is considered the Father of the Nation in post-colonial India. During the nationalist movement and for decades afterward, he was also commonly called Bapu, a term of endearment meaning “father.”

**Early life and background**

**Parents** Gandhi’s father, Karamchand Uttamchand Gandhi (1822–1885), served as the dewan (chief minister) of Porbandar state. His family originally came from the village of Kutiana in what was then Junagadh State. Although Karamchand had only been a clerk with an elementary education, he proved a capable chief minister. He married four times. His first two wives died young after each had a daughter, and his third marriage was childless. In 1857, Karamchand asked his third wife’s permission to remarry and that year married Putlibai (1844–1891), who also came from Junagadh and belonged to a Pranami Vaishnava family. They had four children: a son, Laxmidas (–1914); a daughter, Raliatbehn (1862–1960); a second son, Karsandas (–1913); and a third son, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, born on 2 October 1869 in Porbandar (also called Sudamapuri), a coastal town on the Kathiawar Peninsula, then part of the small princely state of Porbandar in the Kathiawar Agency of the British Raj.

In 1874, Karamchand left Porbandar for the smaller state of Rajkot, where he became a counsellor to its ruler, the Thakur Sahib. Though Rajkot was less prestigious than Porbandar, the British regional political agency was located there, giving the diwan some security. In 1876, Karamchand became diwan of Rajkot, and his brother Tulsidas succeeded him as diwan of Porbandar. Karamchand’s family rejoined him in Rajkot, moving into their family home, Kaba Gandhi No Delo, in 1881.

**Childhood** As a child, Gandhi was described by his sister Raliat as “restless as mercury, either playing or roaming about. One of his favourite pastimes was twisting dogs’ ears.” The Indian classics, especially the stories of Shravana and King Harishchandra, deeply influenced him. In his autobiography, Gandhi wrote that they left an indelible impression on his mind: “It haunted me and I must have acted Harishchandra to myself times without number.” His early identification with truth and love as supreme values can be traced to these epic characters.

The family’s religious background was mixed. Mohandas was born into a Gujarati Hindu Modh Bania family. His father was Hindu, and his mother came from a Pranami Vaishnava Hindu family. Gandhi’s father belonged to the Modh Baniya caste.