Mahatma Gandhi: Life and Legacy

Study Notes

Mahatma Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869 in Gujarat, India.
He trained as a lawyer and moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant.
In 1915, he returned to India and soon started organizing peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against discrimination.
Gandhi 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 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 independence, he undertook several hunger strikes to stop religious violence.
Gandhi was imprisoned many times and for many years in both South Africa and India.
His vision of an independent India based on religious pluralism was challenged in the early 1940s by a Muslim nationalism which demanded a separate homeland for Muslims within British India.
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.