Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, nationalist and political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India’s independence from British rule, and to later inspire movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.
Gandhi is most famous for his philosophy of nonviolence that has inspired civil rights leaders around the world. But his legacy is facing fresh scrutiny against modern ideas about race, feminism and nationalism.
On what Gandhi would think of India now I don’t think he would have been utterly despairing of India today. He would have welcomed the “untouchability” [the idea that people born into India’s lowest caste are unclean and should be segregated]. He would have welcomed the spirit of entrepreneurship of young Indians and the fact that we’ve had 17 successive free elections
The Champaran Satyagraha of 1917 was the first Satyagraha movement led by Gandhi in India and is considered a historically important revolt in the Indian Independence Movement. It was a farmer’s uprising that took place in Champaran district of Bihar, India, during the British colonial period. The farmers were protesting against having to grow indigo with barely any payment for it.
When Gandhi returned to India from South Africa in 1915, and saw peasants in northern India oppressed by indigo planters, he tried to use the same methods that he had used in South Africa to organize mass uprisings by people to protest against injustice
Champaran Satyagraha was the first popular satyagraha movement. The Champaran Satyagraha gave direction to India’s youth and freedom struggle, which was tottering between moderates who prescribed Indian participation within the British colonial system, and the extremists from Bengal who advocated the use of violent methods to topple the British colonialists in India.
On 2 October 1869, gave birth to her last child, Mohandas, in a dark, windowless ground-floor room of the Gandhi family residence in Porbandar city. As a child, Gandhi was described by his sister as “restless as mercury, either playing or roaming about. One of his favourite pastimes was twisting dogs’ ears.” The Indian classics, especially the stories of Shravana and king Harishchandra, had a great impact on Gandhi in his childhood. In his autobiography, he admits that they left an indelible impression on his mind. He writes: “It haunted me and I must have acted Harishchandra to myself times without number.” Gandhi’s early self-identification with truth and love as supreme values is traceable to these epic characters.
The family’s religious background was eclectic. Gandhi’s father Karamchand was Hindu and his mother was from a Pranami Vaishnava Hindu family. Gandhi’s father was of Modh Baniya caste in the varna of Vaishya. His mother came from the Krishna bhakti based Pranami tradition, whose religious texts include the Bhagavad Gita, the Bhaga vata Purana, and a collection of 14 texts with teachings that the tradition believes to include the essence of the Vedas, the Quran and the Bible. Gandhi was deeply influenced by his mother, an extremely pious lady who “would not think of taking her meals without her daily prayers… she would take the hardest vows and keep them without flinching. To keep two or three consecutive fasts was nothing to her.”In 1874, Gandhi’s father Karamchand
Gandhi called for nonviolent untouchability to British ruleGandhi’s doctrine of nonviolent protest was called satyagraha.
FACT OF MAHATMA GANDHI
It was adopted as an important device for protesting British colonial rule by the Indian independence movement. In Sanskrit and Hindi, satyagraha means “holding onto truth”. Mahatma Gandhi introduced the concept to describe a committed but nonviolent resistance to evil.Gandhi first developed the idea of satyagraha in 1906 in opposition to legislation that discriminated against Asians in the British colony of the Transvaal in South Africa. Satyagraha campaigns took place in India from 1917 to 1947, incorporating fasting and economic boycotts.
