Mahatma Gandhi: Life and Legacy

• Mahatma Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, in a Hindu family in coastal Gujarat, India
• He trained in law at the Inner Temple, London, and was called to the bar at age 22 in June 1891
• After two uncertain years in India, he 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
• Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi 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

Mahatma Gandhi was a lawyer and political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for Indias independence from British rule, and to later inspire movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. He is best known for his philosophy of nonviolent resistance, which holds that peaceful protest and civil disobedience are the most effective methods of achieving social change. Gandhi was also known for his lifelong commitment to vegetarianism and his practice of daily meditation.