Mohandas Gandhi Biography

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (M K Gandhi)October 2, 1869 – January 30, 1948) was a spiritual and political leader of India who led the movement for Indian independence from the British Empire. Throughout his life, he rejected any form of terrorism or violence as a means of achieving ones goals. His philosophy of nonviolence, for which he coined the term satyagraha (Sanskrit: Quest (or, Struggle) for the Truth), has influenced nonviolent resistance movements to this day, both in India and abroad.

From the time he took charge of the freedom struggle and the Indian National Congress in 1918, he became a national icon and was lovingly revered as The Mahatma, or Great Soul by millions of Indians. Although he was much averse to honorary forms of address, Gandhi is still today commonly referred to as Mahatma Gandhi.
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Apart from being considered one of the greatest leaders of all time, he is revered by many in India as the "Father of the Nation" or Bapu (Hindi: Father). His birthday on October 2, Gandhi Jayanti, is a national holiday in India.

By means of nonviolent civil disobedience, Gandhi helped bring about India's independence from British rule, ultimately dismantling the British Empire. This form of pacifist resistance has inspired other colonial nations to work towards their own independence. Gandhi's principle of satyagraha, has inspired other freedom activists such as Dr. Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, Lech Wałęsa, Stephen Biko, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Nelson Mandela. However, not all these leaders kept to Gandhi's strict principle of nonviolence and nonresistance.

Gandhi often stated that his principles were simple and drawn from traditional Hindu beliefs: truth (satya) and nonviolence (ahimsa). He said, "I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and nonviolence are as old as the hills".

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (called mahatma meaning "spiritual one; soulful one; man of soul") was born into a Hindu Modh family in Porbandar, Gujarat, India in 1869. He was the son of Karamchand Gandhi, the diwan (Chief Minister) of Porbandar, and Putlibai, Karamchand's fourth wife, a Hindu of the Vaishnava sect. Growing up with a devout Vaishnava mother and surrounded by the Jain influences of Gujarat, Gandhi learned from an early age the tenets of non-injury to living beings, vegetarianism, fasting for self-purification, and mutual tolerance between members of various creeds and sects. He was born into the vaishya, or business, caste. In May 1882, at the age of 13, Gandhi was married through his parents' arrangement to Kasturba Makharji ((also spelled "Kasturbai" or known as "bai"), who was the same age as he. They had four sons: Harilal Gandhi, born in 1888; Manilal Gandhi, born in 1892; Ramdas Gandhi, born in 1897; and Devdas Gandhi, born in 1900. Gandhi was a mediocre student in his youth at Porbandar and later Rajkot. He barely passed the matriculation exam for the University of Bombay in 1887, where he joined Samaldas College in Bhavnagar. He did not stay there long, however, as his family wished for him to become a barrister. Unhappy at Samaldas College, he leapt at the opportunity to study in England, which he viewed as "a land of philosophers and poets, the very centre of civilization."

At the age of 19, Gandhi went to University College London to train as a barrister. His time in London, the Imperial capital, was influenced by a vow he had made to his mother in the presence of a Jain monk Becharji, upon leaving India to observe the Hindu precepts of abstinence from meat and alcohol. Although Gandhi experimented with becoming "English", taking dancing lessons for example, he could not stomach his landlady's mutton and cabbage. She pointed him towards one of London's few vegetarian restaurants. Rather than simply go along with his mother's wishes, he read about, and intellectually converted to vegetarianism. He joined the Vegetarian Society, was elected to its Executive Committee, and founded a local chapter. He later credited this with giving him valuable experience in organising and running institutions. Some of the vegetarians he met were members of the Theosophical Society, which had been founded in 1875 by H.P. Blavatsky to further universal brotherhood. The Theosophists were devoted to the study of Buddhist and Hindu Brahmanistic literature. They encouraged Gandhi to read the Bhagavad Gita. Although he had not shown a particular interest in religion before, he began to read works of and about Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism and other religions. He returned to India after being admitted to the British bar. Trying to establish a law practice in Bombay, he had limited success. By this time, the legal profession was overcrowded in India, and Gandhi was not a dynamic figure in the courtroom. He applied for a part-time job as a teacher at a Bombay high school but was turned down. He ended up returning to Rajkot to make a modest living drafting petitions for litigants but was forced to close down that business as well when he ran afoul of a British officer. In his autobiography, he describes this incident as a kind of unsuccessful lobbying attempt on behalf of his older brother. It was in this climate that (in 1893) he accepted a yearlong contract from an Indian firm to a post in Natal, South Africa.

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MOHANDAS GANDHI BIOGRAPHY