System Mechanic - Clean, repair, protect, and speed up your PC!Mahatma Gandhi, Spiritual and political leader
October 02, 1869 - January 30, 1948
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869 to Hindu parents in the state of Gujarat in Western India. He entered an arranged marriage with Kasturbai Makanji when both were 13 years old. Gandhi’s family later sent him to London to study law, and in 1891 he was admitted to the Inner Temple, and called to the bar.
In 1893 he accepted a one-year contract to do legal work in South Africa. At the time South Africa was controlled by the British. When he attempted to claim his rights as a British subject he was abused, and soon saw that all Indians suffered similar treatment.
Gandhi stayed in South Africa for 21 years working to secure rights for Indian people. He developed a method of direct social action based upon the principles courage, non-violence and truth called Satyagraha. He believed that the way people behave is more important than what they achieve. Satyagraha promoted non-violence and civil disobedience as the most appropriate methods for obtaining political and social goals. Before he returned to India with his wife and four sons (Harilal and Manilal, born in India, and Ramdas and Devdas born in South Africa), in 1915, he had radically changed the lives of Indians living in Southern Africa.
Back in India, it was not long before he was taking the lead in the long struggle for independence from Britain. The Indian people called Gandhi Mahatma, meaning Great Soul. He never wavered in his unshakable belief in non-violent protest and religious tolerance. When Muslim and Hindu compatriots committed acts of violence, whether against the British who ruled India, or against each other, he fasted until the fighting ceased.
Independence, when it came in 1947, was not a military victory, but a triumph of human will. To Gandhi's despair, however, the country was partitioned into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. The last two months of his life were spent trying to end the appalling violence which ensued, leading him to fast to the brink of death, an act which finally quelled the riots.
On January 30, 1948, at the age of 79, he was killed by an assassin as he walked through a crowded garden in New Delhi to take evening prayers.
