Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi)

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, popularly known as Mahatma (meaning "venerable") Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist and political activist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead India to independence from the clutches of British rule. Born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, India, he is famously known as the "Father of the Nation" and is celebrated for his philosophy of Satyagraha, which emphasizes truth and nonviolent resistance as tools for political and social transformation.

Gandhi was the youngest child of his father Karamchand Gandhi and mother Putlibhai. His father was the dewan (chief minister) of Porbandar under British rule. Even though Karamchand Gandhi did not have much formal education, he was an able administrator. Gandhiji’s mother Putlibhai was a religious person who did not show much interest in jewelry and allotted her time between her home and the temple. Mohandas grew up in a home where Vaishnavism (worship of God Vishnu) was practiced with a strong touch of Jainism, a morally meticulous Indian religion whose major policies are nonviolence and the belief that everything in the universe is eternal. Thus, Gandhiji took for granted ideologies like non-violence, vegetarianism, fasting for self-purification, and mutual tolerance between adherents of various creeds and sectors.

At the age of 18, in AD 1887 Mohandas scraped through the matriculation examination of the Bombay Universityand joined Samaldas College in Bhavnagar (Bhaunagar). In the next year in Spetember, he sailed to England to join one of the four London law colleges, The Temple. Gandhi took his studies seriously and tried to brush up on his English and Latin by taking the London University matriculation examination. But, during the three years he spent in England, his main preoccupation was with personal and moral issues rather than with academic prospects. Gandhi found it difficult to transform his life from the half-rural atmosphere of Rajkot to the cosmopolitan life of London. After three years of stay in London during his graduation, Gandhi returned to India in July 1891. In the year 1893, Gandhi received a job offer for a contract period of one year from an Indian Law firm in Natal, South Africa. Gandhiji spent more than two decades in South Africa before returning to India in the year 1914.

By the autumn of 1920, Gandhi became a dominant figure on the political stage, commanding an influence never before attained by any political leader in India or in any other country. He re-organized the Indian National Congress (Congress Party) into an effective political instrument of Indian nationalism. Mohandas Gandhi served as President of the Congress party for one year in the year 1924. In March 1930, Gandhiji launched the Salt March, a satyagraha against the British-imposed tax on salt, which affected the poorest section of the community. This campaign become one of the most spectacular and successful one in Gandhi’s nonviolent war against the British rule which resulted in the imprisonment of more than 60,000 people.

With the outburst of World War II, the Indian freedom movement entered its last crucial phase. In mid-1942 the war against the Axis powers, was in a critical phase, and the British reacted sharply to the campaign. They imprisoned the entire Congress leadership and set out to crush the party once and for all. There were violent outbreaks that were firmly suppressed, and the gap between the ruling Britain and Indians became wider than ever before. Gandhi along with his wife, and several other top Congress party leaders were arrested in the Aga Khan Palace (now the Gandhi National Memorial) in Poona (now Pune). Kasturba Gandhi died there in early 1944, days before Gandhi and the others were released from the Aga Khan Palace. In 1945, Labour Party came to power in Britain which led to the independence of India. India was divided into two countries – India and Pakistan which was against the wish of Mahatma Gandhi. The ruling British declared India as an Independent country in the year 1947, on August 15th. On January 30th 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was on his way to an evening prayer meeting in Delhi, he was shot down by Nathuram Godse. On Feb 2, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was cremated at Raj Ghat in Delhi. The memorial is a simple black marble platform on the banks of the Yamuna River, where Gandhi's ashes were also buried.