Mahatma Gandhi Facts & Worksheets

Let’s find out more about Mahatma Gandhi!

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, commonly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was the main frontman of the Indian independence campaign and the creator of a technique of nonviolent civil disobedience that had an impact on the rest of the planet. Despite not holding any official positions, he was the driving force behind the independence movement of the second-largest country in the world. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela were among the campaigners who were motivated by Gandhi's life and beliefs up to his murder in 1948.

EARLY AND PERSONAL LIFE

• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a leader of the Indian people, was born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, Kathiawar, India, which was a part of the British Empire at the time. Karamchand Gandhi, Gandhi's father, was the chief minister of Porbandar and other western Indian states. Putlibai, his mother, was a devotedly religious person who frequently fasted. 
• Gandhi was a quiet, mediocre student who, even as a teenager, slept with the lights on due to his extreme timidity. The teen rebelled in the years that followed by smoking, eating meat, and robbing housemaids of their change. Gandhi's father encouraged him to pursue a career in law despite the fact that he thought Gandhi would eventually become a government minister as well as a doctor. Gandhi, at 18 years old, set ship for London, England, to pursue a legal education. The young Indian had a hard time adapting to Western society. 
• Gandhi discovered that his mother had passed away just a few weeks earlier after arriving back in India in 1891. He had trouble getting established as a lawyer. When it came time to cross-examine a witness in his first court case, a tense Gandhi went blank. After paying his client's legal bills, he swiftly left the courtroom. 
• Gandhi was raised as a follower of Jainism, an ancient Indian religion that promoted non-violence, fasting, meditation, and vegetarianism. He also worshiped the Hindu god Vishnu. 
• From 1888 to 1891, Gandhi lived in London for the first time. During this time, he strengthened his commitment to a vegetarian diet, joined the executive committee of the London Vegetarian Society, and began reading a range of religious books to better understand many global faiths. 
• Gandhi, who was a resident of South Africa, kept up his study of many faiths. He stated of his stay there, "The religious spirit within me became a live force." He immersed himself in the holy Hindu spiritual books and took up a life of austerity, simplicity, fasting, and celibacy without possessions.
• Gandhi married Kasturba Makanji, the daughter of a businessman, in an arranged union when he was just 13 years old. At the age of 74, she passed away in Gandhi's arms in February 1944. 
• Gandhi experienced the loss of his father in 1885, followed soon after by the death of his newborn child. 
• The first of Gandhi's four surviving sons was born in 1888 to his wife. India saw the birth of a second son in 1893. While residing in South Africa, Kasturba gave birth to two further boys, one in 1897 and one in 1900.

LIFE IN SOUTH AFRICA

• Gandhi was unable to get employment as a lawyer in India, so he was granted a one-year contract to practice law in South Africa. He set off for Durban in the South African Natal province in April 1893. 
• When Gandhi first arrived in South Africa, he was horrified by the racial segregation and prejudice that Indian immigrants were subjected to at the hands of ‘white’ British and Boer officials. Gandhi was ordered to take off his turban before making his first appearance in a Durban courtroom. Instead of complying, he fled the court. He was insulted in print by The Natal Advertiser as "an undesirable guest." 
• On 7 June 1893, while traveling by train to Pretoria, South Africa, a Caucasian man raised an issue about Gandhi's presence in the first-class rail car despite the fact that he had a ticket. Gandhi was forcibly removed and thrown off the train at a halt in Pietermaritzburg when he refused to move to the back of the carriage. 
• Gandhi promised that night to "attempt, if possible, to root out the sickness and undergo sufferings in the process". His act of civil disobedience inspired him to dedicate his life to combating the "deep cancer of colour prejudice." From that evening on, the little, quiet guy would develop into a titanic force for civil rights. In order to combat prejudice, Gandhi founded the Natal Indian Congress in 1894. 
• At the end of his one-year contract, Gandhi was ready to return to India, but at his goodbye party, he was informed that a measure being considered by the Natal Legislative Assembly would deny Indians the right to vote.

  

• Gandhi was persuaded to stay and spearhead the opposition to the law by other immigrants. Gandhi brought the injustice to the notice of the world even though he was unable to stop the law's passing.
• Gandhi and his family returned to South Africa in late 1896 or early 1897 after a brief journey to India. 
• Gandhi maintained a profitable law business and, at the start of the Boer War, organised a 1,100-member all-Indian ambulance corps to aid the British. 
• He did this on the grounds that if Indians wanted full citizenship rights inside the British Empire, they also had to take on their obligations.
• In response to the South African Transvaal government's increased limits on Indians' rights, particularly its refusal to recognise Hindu weddings, Gandhi launched his first large-scale civil disobedience movement, which he termed "Satyagraha" ("truth and firmness"), in 1906. Gandhi was among the hundreds of Indians who were imprisoned by the government in 1913 as a result of years of demonstrations. Under pressure, the South African government agreed to a deal reached by Gandhi and General Jan Christian Smuts, which removed the poll tax for Indians and recognised Hindu marriages. 

OPPOSITION IN INDIA

• At the onset of World War I, Gandhi spent several months in London. Gandhi established an inclusive ashram in Ahmedabad, India, in 1915. Gandhi led a humble life of prayer, fasting, and meditation while donning a plain loincloth and shawl. He earned the title "Mahatma," which translates to "great soul." Gandhi had a political reawakening in 1919, while India was still firmly under the rule of the British, when the recently passed Rowlatt Act gave British authorities the power to arrest persons accused of sedition without a trial. Gandhi responded by urging a Satyagraha campaign of nonviolent demonstrations and strikes. 
• Instead of peaceful protest, a violent uprising occurred resulting in the Amritsar Massacre in 1919, where nearly 400 unarmed protesters were killed by British troops. 
• Gandhi renounced his medals for military service in South Africa and opposed the recruitment of Indians to fight in WWI. 
• He rose to prominence in the fight for Indian self-government through advocating for boycotts of British goods, non-payment of taxes, and encouraging students to leave government schools and troops to resign. 
• He also began spinning his own fabric using a portable spinning wheel as a symbol of Indian freedom and independence.
• Gandhi took over as the head of the Indian National Congress and promoted a non-violent, non-cooperative approach to achieving home rule. He was arrested and charged with sedition in 1922, and despite undergoing surgery in 1924 and being given a six-year jail term, he was ultimately freed. Upon his release, he learned that ties between Hindus and Muslims had deteriorated during his incarceration. In response, he started a three-week fast in 1924 to promote peace and stayed out of politics for much of the 1920s.
• In order to oppose Britain's Salt Acts, which forbade Indians from gathering or selling salt—a essential food—and levied a high tariff that disproportionately affected the nation's poorest citizens, Gandhi entered politics actively once more in 1930. The Salt March, a new Satyagraha initiative that Gandhi planned, involved a march of 390 kilometers (240 miles) to the Arabian Sea, where he would gather salt as a symbolic act of defiance against the government monopoly. 
• On 12 March 1930, Gandhi and a small group of his devotees left their Sabarmati religious retreat wearing a homemade white scarf, sandals, and a walking stick. The number of marchers had grown by the time Gandhi arrived 24 days later at the seaside town of Dandi, and he had broken the law by turning evaporated seawater into salt.
• Similar protests were spurred by the Salt March, and widespread civil disobedience spread throughout India. Gandhi, who was detained in May 1930, was among the 60,000 Indians who were imprisoned for violating the Salt Acts. Gandhi was made a transcendent figure by the rallies against the Salt Acts, nevertheless. He was selected the 1930 "Man of the Year" by Time magazine.

  

• After Gandhi was freed from prison in January 1931, he reached a deal with Lord Irwin two months later to put a stop to the Salt Satyagraha in exchange for perks including the release of thousands of political prisoners. The accord primarily preserved the Salt Acts, however, it did grant coastal residents the authority to gather sea salt. Gandhi attended the London Round Table Conference on Indian constitutional change in August 1931 as the lone delegate of the Indian National Congress, hoping that the accord would serve as a first step toward home rule. However, the conference was a failure. 
• When Gandhi eventually made it back to India, he was arrested again in January 1932 as part of a purge ordered by Lord Willingdon, the country's new viceroy. He started a six-day fast in opposition to the British government's intention to divide India's "untouchables," or those at the bottom of the caste system, by giving them separate electorates. The British were obliged to modify the idea by the popular outrage.
• Gandhi left the Indian National Congress in 1934 after being freed, and his protege Jawaharlal Nehru took over as head. He once more retreated from politics to concentrate on issues like as rural India's challenges, education, and poverty. Gandhi was imprisoned for 19 months in 1944 before being freed due to his deteriorating health. 
• After the Labour Party defeated Churchill's Conservatives in the 1945 British general election, it started talks with the Indian National Congress and Mohammad Ali Jinnah's Muslim League about India's independence. Gandhi participated actively in the discussions, but his dream of a united India was not realised. The finalised plan, however, provided for the division of the subcontinent into two sovereign republics, India and Pakistan, both with a mostly Hindu population.
• Even before independence took effect on 15 August 1947, tensions between Hindus and Muslims erupted. After that, the murders increased in number. Gandhi fasted and traveled to riot-scarred neighborhoods to call for peace and try to stop the violence. However, some Hindus began to see Gandhi as a traitor as a result of his expression of concern for Muslims. 

DEATH AND LEGACY

• Mahatma Gandhi, a prominent leader in the Indian independence movement, was assassinated on 30 January 1948 by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist angered by Gandhi's support of India's Muslim minority. The assassination caused widespread mourning and condemnation. Godse believed that Gandhi's actions were weakening the Hindu community and ultimately leading to the partition of India.
• Gandhi was escorted by his two grandnieces from his living quarters in New Delhi's Birla House to a late-afternoon prayer meeting as he was weak following numerous hunger strikes. Godse approached the Mahatma as he was kneeling and fired three times at point-blank range while using a semiautomatic handgun. A pacifist who spent his life advocating nonviolence was killed in the violent incident. 
• Godse and another accomplice were hanged in November 1949. Additional conspirators received life sentences.
• Gandhi's passing was met with widespread grief and a million people attended his funeral procession. His body was transported on a weapons carrier, pulled by four drag-ropes supported by 50 people, from Birla House where he was killed, to Raj Ghat. Many religious and Indian communities in London also gathered at India House in mourning, and all Indian-owned businesses in the city closed in sorrow.

  

• Gandhi's dedication to nonviolence and his conviction in basic living—making his own clothing, adhering to a vegetarian diet, and utilising fasts for both self-purification and protest—have been a ray of hope for oppressed and disadvantaged people all over the world even after his killing. 
• One of the most influential ideologies in today's global movements for liberation is satyagraha. Gandhi's activities served as a model for subsequent human rights campaigns across the world, notably those led by Nelson Mandela in South Africa and American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.