Mohandas Gandhi Biography

Mohandas Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869 in Porbandar, India. As a youth, Gandhi was timid, painfully shy, and an average student. He went on to study law in London, returned to India, and briefly established a law practice in Bombay. In 1893, an Indian merchant in South Africa hired Gandhi for legal counsel in Johannesburg. Immediately upon arriving in South Africa, Gandhi was shocked and dismayed at the discrimination he suffered due to his skin color and nationality. Gandhi then dedicated his efforts to relieving the racial persecution of Indians in South Africa through nonviolent means, serving four prison sentences for his civil disobedience. 

Gandhi read Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” and John Ruskin’s “Unto the Last,” both of which helped influence Gandhi’s thoughts on political dissent and the economics of universal uplift. Gandhi was also strongly influenced by Leo Tolstoy, especially his book The Kingdom of God is Within You and letters Tolstoy wrote encouraging Gandhi to use nonviolent resistance in the struggle for independence.

Gandhi read Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” and John Ruskin’s “Unto the Last,” both of which helped influence Gandhi’s thoughts on political dissent and the economics of universal uplift.

Gandhi returned to India in 1915 with a revered reputation as an agent of nonviolent social change. He established an ashram in Ahmedabad, India, that was open to all castes and consistent in many ways with Tolstoy’s asceticism. Wearing a dhoti and shawl, Gandhi lived an austere life of prayer, fasting and meditating while becoming a leader in the Indian movement for self-rule.

Gandhi joined the Indian National Congress and assumed its leadership in 1920. Increasingly he advocated for nonviolent civil disobedience in an effort to achieve swaraj, Indian self-rule. He rallied citizens to stop paying taxes, called for mass boycotts of British goods, and urged Indian officials working under the British to quit their jobs. 

On March 10, 1922, Gandhi was arrested for articles he had written, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years in prison. Jane Addams came to visit him during his prison stay but was not granted access. Meanwhile, in Gandhi’s absence and much to his chagrin, the Congress began to fracture along Muslim and Hindu lines. He was released after only two years due to an appendicitis operation and soon rejoined the swaraj effort.

In January 1930 with Gandhi again leading Congress, India declared independence. Unsurprisingly, the British Raj failed to recognize it. Two months later Gandhi and 78 volunteers began the famous Salt March from Gandhi’s ashram to Dandi on the Arabian Sea. Britain’s Salt Act of 1882 prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt while simultaneously charging a heavy salt tax. The march covered 240 miles in 25 days with the once painfully shy Gandhi addressing huge throngs of supporters. By the time the march arrived in Dandi, Gandhi was joined by tens of thousands. At the beach, Gandhi picked up a lump of natural salt in defiance of the absurd law. In other beach cities, Indians followed his lead and millions more across the country participated in other forms of civil disobedience. British authorities imprisoned more than 60,000 people, including Gandhi. News spread around the world, prompting an international outcry.

Mohandas K. Gandhi sculpted by Zlatko Pounov and Steven Lowe, San Francisco, California

Photographed by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net)

Gandhi was released from prison the following January. His satyagraha movement of civil disobedience had become so effective the British were forced to negotiate with him. Resistance by the British and disunity among the various pro-independence voices in India, however, conspired to stall progress for another decade.

After the Germans attacked Poland in September 1939, Great Britain declared war on Germany, and, by extension, the British Raj brought India into the war as well. They did so, however, without consulting the Congress, an action Gandhi strongly disapproved of. In 1942 as the war raged, Gandhi increased the pressure on the British. With the support of the Congress, Gandhi delivered his Quit India speech, demanding an orderly British withdrawal from India. In response, the British imprisoned Gandhi and most of the Indian National Congress leadership, thereby once again crushing the movement. Still, unrest erupted around the country as the British arrested tens of thousands.

It had become clear to the British government that maintaining their presence in India after the war would be nearly impossible. The cost of the war and the relentless pressure of the movement were simply too formidable. On August 15, 1947, Britain granted independence.

India’s troubles, however, were not over. A Muslim minority in India had demanded a separate Muslim state cleaved from India. Gandhi had envisioned a peaceful, religiously plural India that would remain united. Violence had erupted between Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi was devastated by the violence and appealed for peace. To Gandhi’s disappointment, the nation would be partitioned, creating the new Islamic states of West Pakistan (now Pakistan) and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). In the wake of the agreement, migrations heading in and out of India touched off massive religiously-fueled riots, killing more than a half-million. A crestfallen Gandhi spent Independence Day fasting in the name of peace. He was then 77 and in frail health. 

In September with the violence raging in Calcutta, Gandhi started a fast unto death, vowing not to eat until the violence abated. Four days later, Gandhi was handed a signed declaration from several parties promising to stop the riots. The peace was, however, illusory and soon the riots resumed. In January 1948, he declared yet another fast unto death. It was the fourteenth and last fast of his extraordinary life. Within six days it, too, produced the desired results as the opposing rioters promised to cease the violence.

Less than two weeks later, Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist who blamed Gandhi for causing the violence and capitulating to Muslim interests. Over a million people joined Gandhi’s funeral procession as another million lined the route to get a glimpse of the man referred to as the Father of the Nation and revered as Mahatma, the Great Soul.