Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi |
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Born | Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi 2 October 1869 Porbandar, Kathiawar Agency,British India[1] (now in Gujarat, India) |
Died | 30 January 1948 (aged 78) New Delhi, Delhi, India |
Cause of death | Assassination by shooting |
Resting place | Ashes scattered in various Indian rivers |
Other names | Mahatma Gandhi, Bapu, Gandhiji |
Ethnicity | Gujarati |
Education | barrister-at-law |
Alma mater | Alfred High School, Rajkot, Samaldas College, Bhavnagar, University College, London |
Known for | Leadership of Indian independence movement, philosophy of Satyagraha,Ahimsa or nonviolence, pacifism |
Movement | Indian National Congress |
Religion | Hinduism, with Jain influences |
Spouse(s) | Kasturba Gandhi |
Children | Harilal Manilal Ramdas Devdas |
Parents |
- Karamchand Gandhi (father)
- Putlibai Gandhi (mother)
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Born and raised in a Hindu
merchant caste family in coastal
Gujarat,
western India, and trained in law at the
Inner Temple, London, Gandhi first employed nonviolent civil disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian community's struggle for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he 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, but above all for achieving
Swaraj or self-rule.
Gandhi famously led Indians in challenging the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km (250 mi)
Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in calling for the British to
Quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned for many years, upon many occasions, in both South Africa and India. Gandhi attempted to practise nonviolence and truth in all situations, and advocated that others do the same. He lived modestly in a
self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian
dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn hand-spun on a
charkha. He ate simple vegetarian food, and also
undertook long fasts as a means of both self-purification and social protest.
Gandhi's vision of an independent India based on
religious pluralism, however, was challenged in the early 1940s by a new Muslim nationalism which was demanding a separate Muslim homeland carved out of India.
[9] Eventually, in August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire
[9]was
partitioned into two
dominions, a Hindu-majority
India and Muslim
Pakistan.
[10] As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and
Sikhs made their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in the
Punjab and
Bengal. Eschewing the
official celebration of independence in Delhi, Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to