MAHATMA GANDHI

Mahatma Gandhi (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi) 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 (his previous three wives had died in childbirth), a Hindu of the Pranami Vaishnava order.

In May 1883, at the age of 13, Gandhi was married through his parents' arrangement to Kasturba Makhanji (also spelled "Kasturbai" or known as "Ba"), 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 to stay in South Africa for over twenty years. The Indians who had been living in South Africa were without political rights, and were generally known by the derogatory name of 'coolies'. Gandhi himself came to an awareness of the frightening force. In his book 'Satyagraha in South Africa' he was to detail the struggles of the Indians to claim their rights, and their resistance to oppressive legislation and executive measures, such as the imposition of a poll tax on them, or the declaration by the government that all non-Christian marriages were to be construed as invalid.

After the First World War, Gandhi decided to concentrate on improving life in his native India. His ideology was well received and he soon had a healthy following that regularly practised passive resistance. The British government didn’t like the campaigning and deemed it to be revolutionary. Consequently, British troops massacred many innocent Indians at a demonstration in 1920. This caused Gandhi to instigate a policy of non-cooperation towards the Brits. Indians began removing their children from government run schools and masses of people began squatting in the streets to protest. Even when faced with physical punishments, such as being beaten with a truncheon, they would refuse to move.

In retaliation Britain imprisoned Gandhi, but he was soon released. In 1924, he was forced to call an end to the campaign of non-cooperation due to rising levels of violence from India towards Britain. Ironically, the opposite of what he preached was starting to take place. Six years later he began another campaign against the payment of tax, and many of his followers joined him on a demonstration march to the sea. In 1934, he formally resigned from politics, having been imprisoned several more times. When imprisoned, Gandhi would begin fasting in protest. The British hated this, because they knew that if he died whilst being wrongly imprisoned the repercussions from the Indian people would be catastrophic.

In 1947 India gained independence, something that Gandhi had worked towards for a long time. He was against partition though, wishing that those of Moslem and Hindu faith could live peacefully side-by-side. He was also very critical of the caste system, whereby some Indians of high social standing were deemed ‘untouchable’. Tragically, a crazed Hindu assassinated Gandhi in 1949.