Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Place: Porbandar

Born: 1869

Death: 1948

Biography:

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, also known as Mahatma 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. He was born in Porbandar, India in 1869 and died in Delhi in 1948. Gandhi trained in the law at the Inner Temple in London and went on to live in South Africa for 21 years, where he first employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights. In 1915, he returned to India and soon set about organizing peasants, farmers, and urban laborers to protest against discrimination and excessive land-tax. Gandhi led the Indian National Congress in 1921 and led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, and achieving swaraj or self-rule. 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, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan. Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist on 30 January 1948. Gandhi's birthday, 2 October, is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Nonviolence.