mahatma gandhi whose real name was mohandas karamchand gandhi
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Mahatma Gandhi whose real name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, was born in 1869 at
Porbandar in the state of Gujarat in India. His fathers name was Karamchand Gandhi and his
mothers name was Putlibai. He was the youngest in the family of one sister and t hree brothers.
Both his parents were deeply religious and frequently visited temples and took their meals only
after daily prayers. In school Gandhi was a mediocre student who was quite an introvert. He
was even afraid to talk to any student in the class as he thought that they would poke fun athim. However, he always upheld his honesty and truthfulness. He believed in respecting his
elders and was always blind to the faults of the elders. Gandhi was married in 1882 at the age
of thirteen to a girl named Kasturbai. He passed his matriculation exams in 1887 and then soon
returned to Porbander as he found the studies of his college very tough. Then later on he went
on to the University of London in England to pursue the study of law after a lot of opposition
from his mother and some other people .He vowed not to touch woman, wine and meat. He
passed the London matriculation exam in the second attempt. At last he sailed back to India in
June, 1891.later on, he went to Bombay to study Indian Laws. In spite of getting a case, he
went to South Africa in April 1983. Gandhi sailed for South Africa in April 1893 and reached
Natal at the close of May. It was in South Africa that Gandhi had a lot of experience in laws,handling cases and many other fields. He observed the pitiful conditions of the Indians and
other colored people and also experienced it when on his way to Pretoria from Natal, he was
thrown out of a train because he was the only colored person in the first class compartment.
During this time Gandhi became deeply interested in religion. In spite of his Christian friends
tries of converting him to Christianity, he kept his faith. He helped the Indentured Indian
laborers and fought for their rights. After three years in South Africa, Gandhi returned to India
in 1896. Gandhi had a lot of shortcomings in his personal life. He was a very suspicious
husband and kept an eye on all the movements of his wife, Kasturbai. This resulted in bitter
quarrels becoming the order of the day. But in his autobiography, Gandhi says that he did all
this because he wanted to make his wife an ideal wife and make her live a pure life. Somemore of his shortcomings were that at a young age he had started smoking and eating meat in
company of a cousin and a friend. He stole money from his servants pocket and bought
cigarettes. At last he gave up all the malpractices and became a strict vegetarian and stuck to it
all his life. He educated his children and the child of his widow sister. He also became a very
religious person and was greatly influenced by the saintliness of his mother. He practiced
Ahimsa (non-violence), Brahmacharya (celibacy) and Aparigraha (non-possession). In his public
life, Gandhi was very successful. When he went to South Africa, he came in contact with many
people and went through many experiences. He protested against the color bar and helped all
those who were neglected During the Boer War he participated with the British. He and some
other people joined to form the Ambulance Corps who took care of the wounded fighters.Gandhi awakened a sense of duty to the Indians settled in South Africa, so that they sent
money for the famine relief during the famines in India in 1897 and 1899. In 1917, he got the
Indentured Emigration from India, abolished. After returning to India, he set about reforming it.
His campaign in India started from Champaran, a small place in the state of Bihar. There he
fought for the rights of Indigo farmers. He upheld the principles of Swaraj (self rule), Swadeshi
(self sufficiency) and Satyagraha (truth as a medium of protest). He instructed the people not
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to wear foreign clothes or use foreign goods. He told them to make their own clothes using
handlooms and the cloth that they wore was known as Khadi. Even Gandhi made his own
clothes by using a Charkha (spinning wheel), which became the symbol of prosperity and
integrity of India. Gandhi created a number of Ashrams or communities where men, women
and children from all backgrounds and nationalities came to learn from his daily example on
how to make non-violence and love the basis of their lives. One of the ashrams was theSabarmati Ashram in the state of Gujarat. He understood the problems of the untouchables
who were thrown out of society. He called these people Harijans or people of the lord.
Wherever he went, he collected money for the Harijans. He traveled in the third class of the
trains, which were dirty and meant for the low caste Indians. When someone asked him why,
he simply said, Because there is no fourth. Gandhi faced many challenges towards the end of
his life. In 1930, the British government levied tax on salt, which was the primary ingredient of
every households meal. Gandhi collected some followers and marched to a small, coastal town
of Dandi, situated near the Arabian Sea, 240 miles away, where he proposed to produce salt
from the sea water. Thousands of people joined the march on the way. This was known as the
DANDI MARCH. Gandhi was arrested after this incident. But this did not hinder his courage. Hestarted the NON- CO-OPERATION MOVEMENT. Nobody was to co-operate with the British,
which would lead to their leaving India. On the 8th of August 1942 the QUIT INDIA MOVEMENT
started. This non-violent protest disrupted and destroyed the British Government and their
system of governance and added nationalistic fire to every Indians heart. On the eve of
independence, Hindus and Muslims in India were in the throes of civil war. All the government
forces were powerless to stop the massacres. The bloodshed and destruction touched the very
depths of Gandhi. He went straight to the heart of the violence and walked barefoot through
the remote, ravaged villages as a one-man force for peace. He who trembles or takes to the
heels, the moment he sees two people fighting, is not non-violent, but a coward. A non-violent
person will lay down his life in preventing such quarrels said Gandhi and he truly justified it. Itwas on the evening of 30th of January 1948, that the final tragedy took place. Mahatma Gandhi
was in Delhi, requesting for Hindu-Muslim unity. When the time for prayer meeting came, he
walked briskly with his arms on the shoulder of two of the ashram girls. As he walked to the
platform through the huge crowd, he held his palms together in front of him. Suddenly, a young
man placed himself in Gandhis path and fired a gun point-blank into his heart. Such was the
greatness of Gandhi that as his body fell, he called out Rama, Rama, Rama which meant I
forgive you, I love you, I bless you. The killer was later identified as Nathuram Godse, a Hindu
fanatic. This 30th day of January, is known in India as the Martyrs Day.
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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, better known as Mahatma Gandhi and the Father of the Indian Nation, was born on
the 2nd October, 1869. The day is a national holiday marked by a series of cultural events organised each year to
commemorate the birth of one of Indias greatest political beacons. On this day, bhajans, or devotional songs are
sung at his samadhi, or memorial, in Delhi called Raj Ghat. The key figures of contemporary Indian politics take time
off from their usually packed schedules to visit his memorial and silently go over the Mahatmas life and its impact on
the destiny of India.
Gandhiji Also Knowan As Father of India
For the average Indian, it could be just another holiday. But the average
Indian lives in a country where every town and city has at least one road,
one market, one statue and one park named after Gandhi. The average
Indian has written essays on the Mahatma in school, and pored over his
contribution to Indias independence in History classes. While most
historical personalities in Indias checkered history, no matter how dynamic,
could inspire only a fraction of the population, Gandhi connected with
Indians at their own level, their caste, creed, sex or status notwithstanding,
and was aptly christened bapu or father. To strike a cord in the heart of an
average Indian, when the average Indian is classified as a Brahmin,Kshatriya or Shudra, (levels of castes in Hinduism established as early as
the pre-Vedic era), or is a Tamilian, Punjabi or Marathi, a speck in a nation
that spouts at least 17 different languages, is no mean feat. Perhaps no
other historical figure in India has enjoyed such a rare distinction. This was
Gandhis forte, alone.
This is not to say that hagiographers could be summoned, and Gandhi is above criticism. In fact, the man attracted
criticism, and continues to do so, like a bee is drawn to honey. But few would have beheld the man and his
philosophy, without yielding both a reaction.
Gandhi hardly needs an introduction. A voluminous literature has gone into studying the man who became the
Mahatma or great soul. His personal writings add up to ninety large volumes.
A Brief History
Born in 1869, in Porbandar in the state of Gujarat into a Vaishya (merchant class) family, Gandhi was married at the
age of 13 to Kasturba. He was an average student who studied law in England from 1888 to 1891. Before leaving
India, his mother made him promise that he would abstain from meat, alcohol and sex. The years passed soon and
Gandhi was back in Mumbai. It was time for his first and only case as a lawyer in India, and the man stood ineptly
tongue-tied in court. The writing was on the wall, and Gandhi lost the case. His uncles packed him off to South Africa
in 1893 to work for an Indian merchant involved in a civil suit.
The Beginning of Struggle In Africa
The turning point in Gandhi's life begin in South Africa. He found himself in the midst of an intimidated and oppressed
Indian community that was the butt of racial discrimination. Only too aware of his own shortcomings, Gandhi
struggled to overcome his personal inhibitions, and worked towards uniting the South African Indians to protest
against discrimination and racial bias. After a few brief spells in prison, he succeeded in getting the local governance
to relax its laws for the first time in 1908, then again in 1914.
He withdrew his children from a regular school and established a farm at Phoenix in 1904 where he endeavored to
build a community based on the combined philosophies of John Ruskin, Leo Tolstoy and Henry Thoreau whom he
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called a true American. Around the same time, he started a correspondence with Tolstoy. In 1906 he took a vow of
celibacy. He lived in South Africa for 20 years and it would not be out of line to believe that the nature of his work in
South Africa inspired him to achieve the near impossible back home, where Gandhi was already a name to reckon
with.
Gandhi's Fight For Indian Freedom
He finally returned to India in 1915. Instead of breezing into Indian politics, he thought it necessary to travel across
India, and had the first adult up-close-and-personal experience of his country. What he saw was an India crippled by
poverty and ignorance, and the apathetic handling of the countrys affairs by the British. Appalled by an abject India,
he set up the Sabarmati Ashram near Ahmedabad and went on to live there in quest of his Holy Grail. But peace was
hard to come by when his country folk were at the mercy of feudal lords, and colonisation as a phenomenon was
rearing its ugly head in various pockets of the world. His quintessential need to see the world at peace spearheaded
him into the whirlpool of politics, after which there was, of course, no looking back. and the once tongue-tied lawyer
would kindle a nations imagination and shape its history.
The Swadeshi Movement
That he was an ace economist, theologian, politician and sociologist is evident from his mastery and handling of each
of these branches of knowledge. and his dialogue with the Indians and the British was based on a personal discourse
that emerged at the crossroad of these disciplines. With an unparalleled understanding of the needs, wants and
beliefs of the neglected and forgotten Indians, 80% of whom lived in villages, Gandhi was ready to make a difference.
The Swadeshi Movement that exhorted the people of India to wear khadi (home-spun cotton) and shun Europeangoods as the first step towards self-reliance, is just one of the numerous revolutions he engineered successfully. But
the remarkable quality about Gandhi, and perhaps the reason of his sorrow, was that in spite of his obvious practical
good sense, he ached for the ideal. His standards proved to be, more often than not, too high for the world around
him.
A Great Philosopher
He increasingly tended towards asceticism, and believed in Thoreaus philosophy of complete self-reliance and the
dignity of labour, wearing a khadi loincloth and a shawl that he had woven himself. The spinning wheel that he
worked on religiously every day is profoundly symbolic of the Mahatma and his beliefs to this day. Deeply aggrieved
by the unyielding caste system in his country, he worked all his life for the upliftment of the ones he called Harijans
(Children of God). His innate belief in the goodness in life and the spirituality enshrined in each human being was
unshakable. He dreamt of a free and self-reliant India, where Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Harijans would live in
harmony and work towards a better world.
Perhaps the most profound of his philosophies was his quest for truth, an untainted non-sectarian truth, universal in
appeal. He found this aspect in ahmisa, roughly translated as non-violence. He believed in and practised ahimsa in
thoughts, words, and actions that sprung from a love for mankind that lay beyond the continent of calculations andrewards a personal philosophy inspired by the Bhagavad Gita considered as perhaps the most lucid representation
of Hinduism, and by many as the most sacred book of the Hindus.
End of The Legendary Hero
Gandhi led the Congress for a period of 25 years, and during this time the party truly came to represent united Indias
struggle for freedom. Gandhis charisma caught the imagination of millions. Villagers and city dwellers, men, women
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and children rallied behind the Congress as it led Indias march towards freedom from the British. Freedom came, but
at a price. A nation was partitioned to yield a Hindu-dominated India and a Muslim-dominated Pakistan. Gandhi
opposed the partition that left millions dead, mutilated and homeless, bitterly till the end. By upholding the cause of
the Muslims and Harijans, he alienated himself from the Hindu majority. and on January 30th
1948, in an India that
was finally free, a Brahman named Nathuram Godse walked right upto Gandhi and shot him at point-blank range.
Both India and Pakistan continue to be plagued by the repercussions of partition till this day. That Gandhi wasassassinated by a man who regarded him as a saint but could not live with his ideals, and that Gandhi hankered after
the ideal in a practical world far-removed from ideality, shall forever remain a paradox.
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This is about Gandhi. He was a great man who led his people to independence. He helped people to
realize how to fight without violence. Gandhi was very Christ like in his teachings and was a genius when
it came to weaknesses in others as well as himself. Gandhi was a man who would never give up and just
take fate as it was. He was willing to give up his English ways as a lawyer, and fight for what he believed
was right. This is his story.
Mohandas K. Gandhi was born in Porobandar, India on October 2, 1869. His mother aught him the Hindu
ways and told him to make something of himself. He became interested in law. He went to England to go
to law school, and became a lawyer. He was very shy in court. So his friends saved his neck by giving him
an assignment in South Africa.
On a train in South Africa, Gandhi had an experience that changed his life. He was riding in the first class
car when someone noticed that he was colored. They told the conductor and he came to see what was
going on. When he saw Gandhi, he told him that he would throw Gandhi off at the next station if he didnt
go sit in third class.
Gandhi decided right then and there that it must be fought, but he didnt want to hurt anyone. First he
wrote a letter to the press. Then he told every Indian to gather in a square to burn the passes that every
Indian had to have. Gandhi got beat for burning the passes; nevertheless he kept on burning them until he
couldnt move. The British arrested him for sedition. This news spread around, and that made more
people come to the next meeting, after Gandhi got out of jail.
In that meeting, Gandhi told everyone not to obey the British laws that were unjust. This method called
civil disobedience, or passive resistance was very effective. Gandhi claimed that by using this method they
could not lose. He said, They cannot take away our self-respect unless we give it to them. He said that
the Indians would receive many blows, but that they should not give any. Through our pain we will makethem see their injustice, he proclaimed.
Then he led a march to the prison to try to convince the British to let their friends out. When the police
officers charged at them with their horses, they just lied down in the road so the police officers couldnt
get through. This was another way to fight back.
Gandhi took his methods of passive resistance back home with him to India. He wore Indian clothes from
then on to show defiance against the British government. He took a train around India to see what it was
like. If I want to be like them I have to live like them, he said. His travels taught him of Indias extreme
poverty. He told people to wear home-spun clothes and to burn all of their English made clothes.
We can write a custom essay on Gandhi for you!He was invited to an Indian National Congress meeting, and inspired the congress as well as all the
listeners who were there. They started calling him Bapoo, or father. The British started to arrest Gandhi
under the charge of sedition. One British general went so far as massacring a large group of Indians that
were meeting together. This was called the Massacre of Amritsar. The general who was responsible for
this was severely punished. The British had always kept the Hindus and Muslims fighting. During their
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struggle for independence, riots broke out between these two religions. Every time one of these riots
occurred, Gandhi would fast until the violence stopped.
Gandhi had some wonderful ideas of how to fight nonviolent battles against the British Empire. One way
was to set up a day of prayer and fasting. No work would be done that day, and as a result the whole
country would stop. He also had the idea of leading a march to the sea to get salt. This way, Indians
wouldnt have to pay tons of taxes on salt. They could just get it for a minimum price.
The end of World War II was also the end of the British Empire in India. India was finally free. The
controversy and riots over religions caused India to split up and become India and Pakistan. They both
thought that the other would gain more power and they both had very different ideas of what their civil
rights should be. There were many riots. Again Gandhi fasted until the fighting stopped. After this final
fast, that almost caused his death, he was going to go to Pakistan to settle some issues. He was going to
make a speech before he left, but he didnt make it that far. Right there, in that garden, a Hindu
antagonist shot Gandhi dead in front of everyone. Many riots broke out over Gandhis death. Many of
Gandhis followers, such as Nehru, mourned greatly over the tragedy.
Gandhi ironically died in bloodshed, but lived his life preaching against it. His life of nonviolence left his
mark upon the world and has impacted my life as well. Learning about Gandhi has stressed to me the
truth that one person can make a difference. He taught that it is more productive to take time to think
things through and use creative, powerful methods such as his march to the sea to make salt, encouraging
home spun clothes, and establishing a day of fasting and prayer than to use violence. By these acts of
courage, he was able to make great strides in achieving his goals. Mohandas K. Gandhi spent his life
fighting for what was right. His choice to sacrifice his life for the benefit of others is an example for us all.
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Summary: A biography of Mahandas Gandhi, the famous leader of the
nonviolent movement to uproot British control of India.
A heroic person can be considered as one who is willing to stand by his
principles regardless of the consequence, is a leader or apioneer in his field, andis looked upto by people and sets an example for others to follow. One great
man who possessed all these great qualities was Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi. At, an outer appearance, he was a man of simple means,
but later turned out to be an individual with great principles. This great man
took his first breath in this world in the year of 1869, in a wealthybusiness
class family. The roots of Gandhi principles can be found in his early life, when
Gandhi learned and adhered the consepts of non-injury to living beings,
vegetarianism, fasting for self-purification, and mutual tolerance between
members of various creeds and sects.Gandhi believed that everyone should have equal treatment, and this can beseen in one incident that occurred when he was in England to pursue his
education. In those times non-white men were not allowed the same priveleges
as them. Gandhi believing that all men are equal, got on a train from which he
was promptly told to depart, he even tried to reason with the gentleman and
almost got arrested for sticking to his beliefs. Gandhi founded a political party in
South Africa, that tried to get Indian people their rights in South Africa. Later,
after seeing the oppresion of Indians by the British in India, he decided to fight
for their cause. He was a wealthy man in his own way, so he did not really need
to worry about the poor people, but he stuck to his beliefs. When the country
was immersed in bloodshed and turmoil Gandhi stepped in and guided them to
the path of non-violence. Like a true hero he led the people onto the right track
for achieving their goals.
There were many other freedom fighters in Indi at that time, but they all took
the route of non-violence. But in the end, it was Gandhi's method of non-
violence that succeeded in establishing India's freedom. He visited villages, that
were deterioraing in condition, he talked to the villagers, listening to their
grievance and helping in any ways possible, he built schools and hospitals. He
championed the cause of poor and exploited people. But most inportantly he
empowered the, he made them realize that the power of getting freedom and
independance was in their hands. Gandhi believed that India, should not be
exploited for their rich resources, and the profits that came from the hard work
of Indian workers belonged to the indians, and to deal with this issue Gandhi
told the indians to boycott British goods that were made on their hard work.
Gandhi himself followed this principle, by spinning his own clothes and giving up
clothes sold by the British. This method of non co-operation was a success.
Gandhi's methods helped many violent individuals in finding the right path to
freedom. Whatever principles he preached, he made sure he himself and his
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whole family followed them too. Gandhi also believed that women too should
join in this endeavour of acquiring freedom. Gandhi was a man of peace and
many times he had to go even go to jail, for supporting his cause, but he did
not give up. It was Gandhi's movement, "Quit India," that was finally successful
in uprooting the British control from India. Before Gandhi entering the scene,
there were many freedom fighters fighting for the cause individually, but theseminor outbursts were overlooked by the British. But it was Gandhi that united
all these freedom fighters together and showed them the way to success.
Gandhi's life was filled with ups and downs and many crisis like the death of his
wife in the year 1940, but like a great man that he was, he still continued on for
the sake of others. This great phenomena, took his last breath in the year 1948,
but not before he achieved what he had set out to do. Gandhi left behind a
legacy or an example for others to follow in the form of their freedom. Gandhi
will be remembered by all the Indians for his great contribution to their society
and their country.