Mahatma Gandhi's Life and Legacy

• Mahatma Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869 in Gujarat, India.
• He trained as a lawyer and moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant.
• In 1915, he returned to India and soon started organizing peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against discrimination.
• Gandhi 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 achieving 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.
• In the months following independence, he undertook several hunger strikes to stop religious violence.
• Gandhi was imprisoned many times and for many years in both South Africa and India.
• His 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.

Test your knowledge about the life and contributions of Mahatma Gandhi, a pivotal figure in India's struggle for independence and a proponent of nonviolent civil disobedience. Learn about his activism, leadership, and impact on Indian society and politics.