Mahatma Gandhi's Life and Legacy

Study Notes

Mahatma Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869 in Gujarat, India.
He was educated at The Inner Temple in London and called to the bar in 1891.
After two uncertain years in India, Gandhi moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit.
In 1915, at the age of 45, Gandhi returned to India and soon set about organizing peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination in India.
In 1921, Gandhi led the Indian National Congress, a nationwide campaign 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.
As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs made their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in the Punjab and Bengal.
In the months following, Gandhi undertook several hunger strikes to stop the religious violence.
The last of these, begun in Delhi on January 12, 1948, also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan.
Mahatma Gandhi died on January 30, 1948.