Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand (1869-1948), Indian nationalist leader,
who established his country's freedom through a nonviolent revolution.
Gandhi, also known as Mahatma Gandhi, was born in Porbandar in the present state of
Gujarat on October 2, 1869, and educated in law at University College, London. In 1891,
after having been admitted to the British bar, Gandhi returned to India and attempted to
establish a law practice in Bombay, with little success. Two years later an Indian firm
with interests in South Africa retained him as legal adviser in its office in Durban.
Arriving in Durban, Gandhi found himself treated as a member of an inferior race. He was
appalled at the widespread denial of civil liberties and political rights to Indian
immigrants to South Africa. He threw himself into the struggle for elementary rights for
Indians.
Gandhi became a leader in a complex struggle, the Indian campaign for home rule. Following
World War I, in which he played an active part in recruiting campaigns, Gandhi, again
advocating Satyagraha, launched his movement of passive resistance to Great Britain. When,
in 1919, Parliament passed the Rowlatt Acts, giving the Indian colonial authorities
emergency powers to deal with so-called revolutionary activities, Satyagraha spread
through India, gaining millions of followers. A demonstration against the Rowlatt Acts
resulted in a massacre of Indians at Amritsar by British soldiers; in 1920, when the
British government failed to make amends, Gandhi proclaimed an organized campaign of
noncooperation. Indians in public office resigned, government agencies such as courts of
law were boycotted, and Indian children were withdrawn from government schools. Through
India, streets were blocked by squatting Indians who refused to rise even when beaten by
police. Gandhi was arrested, but the British were soon forced to release him.
Gandhi became the international symbol of a free India. He lived a spiritual and ascetic
life of prayer, fasting, and meditation. His union with his wife became, as he himself
stated, that of brother and sister. Refusing earthly possessions, he wore the loincloth
and shawl of the lowliest Indian and subsisted on vegetables, fruit juices, and goat's
milk. Indians revered him as a saint and began to call him Mahatma (Sanskrit, “great
soul”), a title reserved for the greatest sages. Gandhi's advocacy of nonviolence,
known as ahimsa (Sanskrit, “noninjury”), was the expression of a way of life
implicit in the Hindu religion. By the Indian practice of nonviolence, Gandhi held, Great
Britain too would eventually consider violence useless and would leave India.
By 1944 the Indian struggle for independence was in its final stages, the British
government having agreed to independence on condition that the two contending nationalist
groups, the Muslim League and the Congress party, should resolve their differences. Gandhi
stood steadfastly against the partition of India but ultimately had to agree, in the hope
that internal peace would be achieved after the Muslim demand for separation had been
satisfied. India and Pakistan became separate states when the British granted India its
independence in 1947. During the riots that followed the partition of India, Gandhi
pleaded with Hindus and Muslims to live together peacefully. Riots engulfed Calcutta, one
of the largest cities in India, and the Mahatma fasted until disturbances ceased. On
January 13, 1948, he undertook another successful fast in New Delhi to bring about peace.
But on January 30, 12 days after the termination of that fast, as he was on his way to his
evening prayer meeting, he was assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu fanatic.
"Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand," Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1994
Microsoft Corporation. Copyright
(c) 1994 Funk & Wagnall's Corporation.
Other Links of interest
Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi: The Complete Information
