How Well Do You Know Mahatma Gandhi?

The Life and Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi

• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist and political ethicist.
• He employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule.
• Gandhi was born and raised in a Hindu family in coastal Gujarat and trained in law in London.
• He lived in South Africa for 21 years, where he first employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights.
• Gandhi returned to India in 1915 and assumed leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921.
• He led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, and achieving self-rule.
• Gandhi adopted a simple lifestyle, wearing a dhoti and living in a self-sufficient residential community.
• He challenged the British-imposed salt tax with the Dandi Salt March in 1930 and called for British to quit India in 1942.
• Gandhi's vision of an independent India based on religious pluralism was challenged by Muslim nationalism in the 1940s.
• In August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions.
• Gandhi attempted to alleviate religious violence that broke out during the partition and undertook several hunger strikes.
• His last hunger strike, in 1948, also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out cash assets owed to Pakistan.