Biography
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), widely known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, political leader and social reformer who became one of the central figures in the movement for India's independence from British rule. He developed a method of political action based on nonviolence, civil disobedience and what he called satyagraha — the steadfast pursuit of truth — turning personal moral discipline into a powerful form of collective resistance.
Gandhi was born in Porbandar, in present-day Gujarat, into a Hindu family connected with the administration of the princely state. His father, Karamchand Gandhi, served as a chief minister in several local states, while his mother, Putlibai, was deeply religious and influenced him through her practices of fasting, self-discipline and devotion. At the age of thirteen Gandhi married Kasturba Makhanji, with whom he would share more than six decades of family life, hardship and political struggle.
In 1888 he travelled to London to study law. He was called to the bar in 1891 and returned to India, where his first attempts to establish a legal career brought limited success. A professional assignment in 1893 took him to South Africa, a journey that became decisive in his life. There he encountered laws and social practices that discriminated against Indians and other non-white communities. One of the best-known incidents occurred when he was removed from a first-class railway carriage despite holding a valid ticket.
What had begun as a short legal assignment became a stay of more than twenty years. Gandhi organized the Indian community, founded the newspaper Indian Opinion and campaigned against discriminatory legislation. During these struggles he gradually developed satyagraha, a form of resistance that rejected physical violence while deliberately accepting the legal consequences of disobedience to unjust laws. Campaigns against compulsory registration, restrictions on Indian migration, the tax imposed on former indentured workers and the refusal to recognize Indian marriages brought arrests, imprisonment, strikes and marches. By the time Gandhi left South Africa in 1914, he had transformed from a lawyer representing individual clients into an experienced political organizer.
Gandhi returned permanently to India in 1915. Rather than immediately seeking national leadership, he travelled extensively, observed rural life and became involved in local struggles involving farmers and workers. His political method combined mass participation with strict demands for nonviolence. He encouraged Indians to challenge colonial authority not only through demonstrations but also by withdrawing cooperation from institutions that depended upon their participation.
During the 1920s Gandhi emerged as the most recognizable leader of the Indian National Congress and helped turn the independence movement into a mass movement. He advocated the boycott of British goods, encouraged the production of homespun cloth and presented economic self-reliance as part of political freedom. His spinning wheel and simple clothing became symbols of identification with ordinary Indians and of resistance to dependence on imported British textiles.
One of his most influential campaigns began in March 1930, when Gandhi walked from his ashram near Ahmedabad to the coastal village of Dandi in protest against the British monopoly and tax on salt. The Salt March transformed an everyday commodity into a symbol of colonial control. Thousands joined the wider campaign of civil disobedience, and tens of thousands were arrested. Gandhi himself was repeatedly imprisoned, yet negotiations and new protests continued throughout the following decade.
His political struggle was accompanied by campaigns for social reform. Gandhi condemned the exclusion of communities regarded as "untouchable" within the Hindu caste system and sought greater dignity and participation for them, although some of his views and methods on caste were challenged by B. R. Ambedkar and other reformers. Gandhi also promoted religious coexistence, village industry, personal simplicity and the belief that political freedom would be incomplete without social responsibility.
During the Second World War, Gandhi and the Indian National Congress demanded an end to British rule through the Quit India movement of 1942. The colonial government arrested Gandhi and much of the Congress leadership. He was detained at the Aga Khan Palace, where his wife Kasturba died in 1944.
Britain finally transferred power in 1947, but independence came together with the partition of British India into India and Pakistan. Gandhi had opposed partition and was deeply distressed by the communal violence and mass displacement that accompanied it. While political leaders celebrated independence, he spent much of the period attempting to calm Hindu-Muslim violence, travelling to affected communities and using fasting as a means of moral pressure.
On 30 January 1948, while walking to an evening prayer meeting in New Delhi, Gandhi was assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist who opposed Gandhi's efforts at reconciliation with Muslims. Gandhi was seventy-eight years old. His death came only months after the independence for which he had struggled for decades, but the methods he developed had already begun to influence political and social movements far beyond India.
