Mahatma Gandhi's Life and Work

• Mahatma Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, in the coastal town of Porbandar, Gujarat, India.
• He trained as a lawyer and started his own law practice in India but was unsuccessful.
• In 1893, Gandhi moved to South Africa to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit.
• In South Africa, Gandhi began to employ nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights.
• In 1915, aged 45, Gandhi 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.
• 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.
• Gandhi adopted the short dhoti woven with hand-spun yarn as a mark of identification with Indias rural poor.
• Gandhi 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.
• Mahatma Gandhi died on January 30, 1948, in India.

Test your knowledge of the life and accomplishments of Mahatma Gandhi, a prominent leader of the Indian independence movement. This quiz covers his early life, experiences in South Africa, leadership of the Indian National Congress, and nonviolent resistance campaigns.