Mahatma Gandhi Quiz

• Mahatma Gandhi was born in October 1869 in a Hindu family in coastal Gujarat and trained in the law at the Inner Temple in London.
• After two uncertain years in India, he moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit and found it difficult to start a successful law practice.
• 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.
• In 1921, he assumed leadership of the Indian National Congress 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.
• Following the partition of British Indian Empire in 1947, religious violence broke out in various parts of the country, most notably in the Punjab and Bengal. Gandhi attempted to alleviate distress by visiting the affected areas.
• 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.

Mahatma Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, in a Hindu family in coastal Gujarat. He trained in the law at the Inner Temple in London and after two uncertain years in India, moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit. In 1915, at the age of 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. 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. Following the partition of British Indian Empire in 1947, religious violence broke out in various parts of the country, most notably in the Punjab and Bengal. Gandhi attempted to alleviate distress by visiting the affected areas. 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.

• Mohandas Gandhi was a prominent political figure in India who campaigned for social reform and self-rule.
• He adopted the traditional Indian dress of a dhoti woven with hand-spun yarn as a sign of identification with the country's rural poor.
• Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding womens rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, and, above all, achieving swaraj or self-rule.
• He was imprisoned many times and for many years in both South Africa and India.
• Gandhi's 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.