Mahatma Gandhi's Life and Legacy

• Mahatma Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, in a Hindu family in coastal Gujarat, and he trained in the law at the Inner Temple, London.
• He moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit, and it was here that he 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.
• 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, above all, achieving swaraj or self-rule.
• 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, also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan.
• Mahatma Gandhi died on January 30, 1948, at the age of 78.

Test your knowledge of Mahatma Gandhi's life and influence with this quiz. Learn about his early years, activism, leadership, and final days.