Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Resistance and Indian Independence

• Mahatma Gandhi was born on October 2nd, 1869, in a Hindu family in Gujarat, India.
• After training in law in London, he moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant.
• He began to employ nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights, and this led to the successful campaign for Indias independence from British rule in 1947.
• After independence, he led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding womens rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, and achieving self-rule.
• He 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 the religious violence.
• The last of these, begun in Delhi on January 12th, 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 most famous for his campaigns against untouchability and for his call for the British to leave India. He is also known for his simple living and his long fasts. After independence, he led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding womens rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, and achieving self-rule. He is also known for his opposition to Muslim nationalism.