Mahatma Gandhi's Life and Leadership

• 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 a lawsuit.
• He began to employ nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights in South Africa.
• In 1915, 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 and 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 was imprisoned many times and for many years in both South Africa and India.

Test your knowledge of Mahatma Gandhi's life, activism, and leadership in the Indian independence movement. From his time in South Africa to his influential role in Indian politics, this quiz covers key milestones and contributions of the revered leader.