Mahatma Gandhi and Indian Independence Movement Quiz

Study Notes

Mahatma Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869 in Porbandar, Gujarat, to a Hindu family.
He trained as a lawyer and moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant.
He first employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights.
In 1915, he returned to India and soon set about organizing 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 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 1947, Britain granted independence to India and the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan.
As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs made their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in the Punjab and Bengal.
Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to alleviate distress, and 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 successful lawyer and political ethicist who used 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 role in the Indian independence movement, during which he employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights. After the British Indian Empire was partitioned into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan, he continued to use nonviolent resistance to advocate for religious pluralism and the rights of India's displaced population. He is also well-known for his campaigns against untouchability and for the rights of women.