Mahatma Gandhi

Summary

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was an Indian attorney, anti-colonial patriot, and political ethicist who used nonviolent resistance to lead the triumphant struggle for India's independence from British rule, motivating civil liberties and liberty movements around the globe. The epithet Mahtm (which means "great-souled" or "age-old" in Sanskrit) was at first appointed to him in South Africa in the year 1914 and is now used all across the world.

Gandhi was born into a Hindu family in seaside Gujarat and studied law at the Inner Temple in London.

In the year 1893, he came to South Africa to represent an Indian business owner in a case after 2 years in India, where he was not able to establish a rewarding law practice.

He spent the next 21 years of his life in South Africa. Gandhi raised his family here and was the first to use nonviolent resistance in a civil liberties struggle.

He went back to India in the year 1915, at the age of 45. He started setting in motion peasants, farmers, and city workers to fight oppression and high land taxes. Gandhi led statewide projects to reduce poverty, promote women's rights, build spiritual and ethnic amity, get rid of untouchability, and, above all, accomplish swaraj, or self-rule, after presuming management of the Indian National Congress in the year 1921.

Gandhi has meant much for the peace, the independence, and the culture of India, as well as his acts of non-violent resistance that have influenced the world. Let’s take a look at what else he did.