Mahatma Gandhi's Life and Contributions

Study Notes

Mahatma Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, in a Hindu family in Gujarat, India.
He trained as a lawyer and moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit.
In 1915, aged 45, he returned to India and soon set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination.
He assumed leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921 and led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding womens rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, and, above all, achieving swaraj or self-rule.
Gandhi adopted the short dhoti woven with hand-spun yarn as a mark of identification with Indias rural poor. He began to live in a self-sufficient residential community, to eat simple food, and undertake long fasts as a means of both introspection and political protest.
In the months following, he undertook several hunger strikes to stop the religious violence.
The last of these, begun in Delhi on January 12, 1948, had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan.
On August 15, 1947, India became independent, and the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan.