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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on Oct. 2, 1869, in Porbandar.
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His father had been prime minister of several small native states. Gandhi was married when he was only 13 years old.
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Gandhi returned to India, unsuccessful in Bombay he went to South Africa.
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His interest was now about the problem of fellow Indians who had come to South Africa as laborers. He had seen how they were treated as inferiors in India, in England, and then in South Africa.
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In 1894 he founded the Natal Indian Congress to agitate for Indian rights. Yet he remained loyal to the British Empire.
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Later in 1906, however, Gandhi began his peaceful revolution. He declared he would go to jail or even die before obeying an anti-Asian law.
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1920 he launched a noncooperation campaign against Britain, urging Indians to spin their own cotton and to boycott British goods, courts, and government.
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Early in World War II he demanded immediate independence as India’s price for aiding Britain in the war. He was imprisoned for the third time, from 1942 to 1944.
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Non-violence with truth and love, Satyagraha; insistence on truth through love and compassion, Swaraj; home rule, and Sarvodaya; well being of all. Gandhi used his life to experiment with personal, social, economic, and political beliefs. “His life was his message.”
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On Jan. 30, 1948, while on his way to prayer in Delhi, Gandhi was killed by a Hindu who had been maddened by the Mahatma’s efforts to reconcile Hindus and Muslims. The ashes of Mahatma Gandhi were spread in the Ganges river during a ceremony honoring his memory in Allahabad, India.
