Mahatma Gandhi Biography

Study Notes

Mahatma Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869 in Gujarat, India.
He was educated in England and became a lawyer in 1891.
Gandhi moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit.
He began to use nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights in 1915.
Gandhi became the leader of the Indian National Congress in 1921.
He led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding womens rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, and 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.
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.
Gandhi visited the affected areas after independence to try to stop religious violence.
Gandhi undertook several hunger strikes in the months following independence to pressure India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan.
Gandhi died on January 30, 1948.