Mahatma Gandhi was born in British-India in 1869, he was a major political and spiritual leader of India. As a young man he moved to England to study law and after being admitted to the bar, he accepted a position in South Africa. While traveling to South Africa in the first-class section of the train, he was asked by a white man to leave. This experience of racial discrimination led him down the path of political activism and shortly after he pioneered the Satyagraha philosophy, which he based on truth and resistance to evil through active, non-violent resistance.
Gandhi began his inspirational movement in South Africa, teaching peaceful civil disobedience in the Indian community’s struggle for civil rights and he continued the movement upon his return to India. He took over leadership of the Indian National Congress and led nationwide campaigns for the relief of poverty, for the liberation of women, for brotherhood amongst different religious and ethnic groups, for an end to caste discrimination, and for the economic self-sufficiency of the nation, but above all for Swaraj (the independence of India from foreign domination).
Gandhi led his nation in the disobedience of the British salt tax imposed in India and he led an open call for the British to Quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned for many years on numerous occasions in both South Africa and India.
Gandhi practiced and advocated non-violence and truth in all situations. He lived simply, making his own clothes, while living on a simple vegetarian and, later, fruitarian diet. He underwent long (at times over a month) fasts, for both self-purification and protest. Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi was assassinated in 1948, he was 78 years old.
