Meanwhile, some of his party colleagues–particularly Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a leading voice for India’s Muslim minority–grew frustrated with Gandhi’s methods, and what they saw as a lack of concrete gains. In 1931, after British authorities made some concessions, Gandhi again called off the resistance movement and agreed to represent the Congress Party at the Round Table Conference in London. He refrained from active participation in politics for the next several years, but in 1930 launched a new civil disobedience campaign against the colonial government’s tax on salt, which greatly affected Indian’s poorest citizens. British authorities arrested Gandhi in March 1922 and tried him for sedition he was sentenced to six years in prison but was released in 1924 after undergoing an operation for appendicitis. Invested with all the authority of the Indian National Congress (INC or Congress Party), Gandhi turned the independence movement into a massive organization, leading boycotts of British manufacturers and institutions representing British influence in India, including legislatures and schools.Īfter sporadic violence broke out, Gandhi announced the end of the resistance movement, to the dismay of his followers. Gandhi’s eloquence and embrace of an ascetic lifestyle based on prayer, fasting and meditation earned him the reverence of his followers, who called him Mahatma (Sanskrit for “the great-souled one”). He particularly advocated the manufacture of khaddar, or homespun cloth, in order to replace imported textiles from Britain. Leader of a MovementĪs part of his nonviolent non-cooperation campaign for home rule, Gandhi stressed the importance of economic independence for India. He backed off after violence broke out–including the massacre by British-led soldiers of some 400 Indians attending a meeting at Amritsar–but only temporarily, and by 1920 he was the most visible figure in the movement for Indian independence. In 1919, Gandhi launched an organized campaign of passive resistance in response to Parliament’s passage of the Rowlatt Acts, which gave colonial authorities emergency powers to suppress subversive activities.
He supported the British war effort in World War I but remained critical of colonial authorities for measures he felt were unjust. In July 1914, Gandhi left South Africa to return to India. Along with his wife, Kasturbai, and their children, Gandhi remained in South Africa for nearly 20 years.ġ960 Mirabal sisters assassinated by Trujillo regime He soon accepted a position with an Indian firm that sent him to its office in South Africa.
Upon returning to India in mid-1891, he set up a law practice in Bombay, but met with little success. At the age of 19, Mohandas left home to study law in London at the Inner Temple, one of the city’s four law colleges. His father was the dewan (chief minister) of Porbandar his deeply religious mother was a devoted practitioner of Vaishnavism (worship of the Hindu god Vishnu), influenced by Jainism, an ascetic religion governed by tenets of self-discipline and nonviolence. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, at Porbandar, in the present-day Indian state of Gujarat. Gandhi was shot to death in Delhi in January 1948 by a Hindu fundamentalist. After Partition in 1947, he continued to work toward peace between Hindus and Muslims.
Known for his ascetic lifestyle–he often dressed only in a loincloth and shawl–and devout Hindu faith, Gandhi was imprisoned several times during his pursuit of non-cooperation, and undertook a number of hunger strikes to protest the oppression of India’s poorest classes, among other injustices.
Revered the world over for his nonviolent philosophy of passive resistance, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was known to his many followers as Mahatma, or “the great-souled one.” He began his activism as an Indian immigrant in South Africa in the early 1900s, and in the years following World War I became the leading figure in India’s struggle to gain independence from Great Britain.
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