MAHATMA GANDHI
MAHATMA GANDHI
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi also
known as Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist and political
ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for
India's independence from British rule, and to later inspire movements for
civil rights and freedom across the world.
Born and raised in a Hindu
family in coastal Gujaraton 2 October 1869, Gandhi trained in the law at the
Inner Temple and London. After two uncertain years in India, where he was
unable to start a successful law practice, he moved to South Africa in 1893 to
represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit. He went on to live in South Africa
for 21 years. It was here Gandhi first employed nonviolent resistance in a
campaign for civil rights. In 1915, aged 45, he returned to India and soon set
about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against
excessive land-tax and discrimination.
Assuming leadership of the
Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing
poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending
untouchability, and, above all, achieving swaraj or self-rule. Bringing
anti-colonial nationalism to the common Indians, Gandhi led them in challenging
the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km (250 mi) Dandi Salt March in 1930
and in calling for the British to quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned many
times and for many years in both South Africa and India.
Gandhi's vision of an
independent India based on religious pluralism was challenged in the early
1940s by a Muslim nationalism which demanded a separate homeland for Muslims
within British India. In August 1947, Britain granted independence, Nathuram
Godse, a militant Hindu nationalist from western India, who assassinated Gandhi
by firing three bullets into the chest at an inter-faith prayer meeting in
Delhi on 30 January 1948.
