3 Questions
In which year did Mahatma Gandhi return to India?
1915
What did Mahatma Gandhi use as a mark of identification with India's rural poor?
A short dhoti
What goal did Gandhi's last hunger strike have?
To pressure India to pay out some cash assets
Study Notes
- Mahatma Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, in Gujarat, India.
- He trained in law at the Inner Temple in London and was called to the bar in 1891.
- Gandhi moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit.
- He lived in South Africa for 21 years.
- In 1915, aged 45, he returned to India and soon set about organizing peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination.
- Gandhi assumed leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921.
- He 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.
- Gandhi died on January 30, 1948, at the age of 80.
Test your knowledge of Mahatma Gandhi by taking this quiz on his life and achievements, from his early years in India to his leadership of the Indian National Congress and his nonviolent protests for social and political change.
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