3 Questions
When did Mahatma Gandhi return to India?
1915
What did Gandhi adopt as a mark of identification with India's rural poor?
A short dhoti
What was the indirect goal of Gandhi's last hunger strike?
To pressure India to pay out some cash assets
Study Notes
- Mahatma Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869 in the coastal town of Porbandar in Gujarat, India.
- He trained as a lawyer 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.
- During this time, he raised a family and first employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights.
- 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.
- 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.
Test your knowledge about the life and accomplishments of Mahatma Gandhi, a prominent leader in India's struggle for independence and an advocate for civil rights and nonviolent resistance.
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