He began to live in a self-sufficient residential community, to eat simple food, and undertake long fasts as a means of both introspection and political protest.

Gandhi adopted the short dhoti woven with hand-spun yarn as a mark of identification with India's rural poor. In 1915, aged 45, he returned to India and soon set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination.Īssuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, and, above all, achieving swaraj or self-rule. It was here that Gandhi raised a family and first employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights. He went on to live in South Africa for 21 years. After two uncertain years in India, where he was unable to start a successful law practice, he moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit. The honorific Mahātmā (from Sanskrit 'great-souled, venerable'), first applied to him in South Africa in 1914, is now used throughout the world.īorn and raised in a Hindu family in coastal Gujarat, Gandhi trained in the law at the Inner Temple, London, and was called to the bar at age 22 in June 1891. He inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist and political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule. Mahatma Gandhi's spiritual message to the world

Gandhi with hitler stache