Mahatma Gandhi: Life and Legacy Quiz

• Mahatma Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, in a Hindu family in coastal Gujarat.
• He trained in law at the Inner Temple in London and was called to the bar at the age of 22.
• After two uncertain years in India, Gandhi moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit.
• He lived in South Africa for 21 years.
• It was here that Gandhi first employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights.
• In 1915, aged 45, Gandhi returned to India and soon set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against excessive land-tax and 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, 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.
• 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 a successful lawyer and leader who used nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for Indias independence from British rule and to later inspire movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. He is most famous for his role in the Indian independence movement, during which he employed nonviolent resistance to challenge the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km (250 mi) Dandi Salt March in 1930 and in calling for the British to quit India in 1942. 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. However, with the help of the Indian people and the support of the British government, Gandhi was able to lead India to independence in 1947. After independence, Gandhi continued to lead the Indian people in efforts to improve the quality of life for all citizens. He is still considered a moral leader and a symbol of peaceful resistance.

Test your knowledge about the life and legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, a prominent leader in the Indian independence movement and a symbol of peaceful resistance. Learn about his early life, legal career, civil rights activism, and leadership in the Indian National Congress.