The Essential Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869 and died on January 30, 1948. He was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist and political ethicist who used nonviolent resistance to drive success. He campaigned for India's independence from British rule and in turn inspired movements for civil rights and freedom around the world. The honorific Mahatma, first applied to it in 1914 in South Africa, is now used all over the world. Born and raised in a Hindu family in the coastal state of Gujarat, Gandhi was trained in law at London's Inner Temple and was called to the bar at the age of 22 in June 1891. After two years of uncertainty in India, where he was unable to start a successful legal practice He moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit. He lived in South Africa for 21 years. In South Africa, Gandhi raised a family and first used nonviolent resistance to campaign for civil rights. In 1915, he returned to India at the age of 45. He proceeded to organize peasants, farmers, and city workers to protest excessive land taxation and discrimination. By assuming the leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led national campaigns to alleviate poverty, expand women's rights, build religious and ethnic friendship, end untouchability, and above all to achieve swaraj or autonomy. Also in 1921, Gandhi adopted the use of an Indian apron and shawl woven with hand-spun thread on a traditional Indian spinning wheel as a sign of identification with the rural poor of India. He also began to live modestly in a self-sufficient apartment community, eat simple vegetarian food, and fast long as a means of self-purification and political protest. Gandhi brought anti-colonial nationalism to commoners of India, leading them in challenging Britain's 400 km salt tax on the Dandy Salt Marsh in 1930 and in calling on the British to leave India in 1942. Over and over for many years in both South Africa and India.