About mahatma gandhi

Early Life Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, at Porbandar, in the present-day Indian state of Gujarat. 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. 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. Upon returning to India in mid-1891, he set up a law practice in Bombay, but met with little success. He soon accepted a position with an Indian firm that sent him to its office in South Africa. Along with his wife, Kasturbai, and their children, Gandhi remained in South Africa for nearly 20 years. Did you know? In the famous Salt March of April-May 1930, thousands of Indians followed Gandhi from Ahmadabad to the Arabian Sea. The march resulted in the arrest of nearly 60,000 people, including Gandhi himself. Gandhi was appalled by the discrimination he experienced as an Indian immigrant in South Africa. When a European magistrate in Durban asked him to take off his turban, he refused and left the courtroom. On a train voyage to Pretoria, he was thrown out of a first-class railway compartment and beaten up by a white stagecoach driver after refusing to give up his seat for a European passenger. That train journey served as a turning point for Gandhi, and he soon began developing an...

Bob Fitch photography archive, © Stanford University Libraries Upon his death, Mohandas K. Gandhi was hailed by the London Times as “the most influential figure India has produced for generations” (“Mr. Gandhi”). Gandhi protested against racism in South Africa and colonial rule in India using nonviolent resistance. A testament to the revolutionary power of nonviolence, Gandhi’s approach directly influenced Martin Luther King, Jr., who argued that the Gandhian philosophy was “the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom ” ( Papers 4:478). King first encountered Gandhian ideas during his studies at Crozer Theological Seminary. In a talk prepared for George Davis’ class, Christian Theology for Today, King included Gandhi among “individuals who greatly reveal the working of the Spirit of God ” ( Papers 1:249). In 1950, King heard Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University, speak of his recent trip to India and Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance techniques. King situated Gandhi’s ideas of nonviolent direct action in the larger framework of Christianity, declaring that “Christ showed us the way and Gandhi in India showed it could work ” (Rowland, “2,500 Here Hail Boycott Leader ”). He later remarked that he considered Gandhi to be “the greatest Christian of the modern world ” (King, 23 June 1962). Gandhi was born 2 October 1869, in Porbandar, in the western part of India, to Karamchand Gandhi, chief minister of Porbandar,...

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Early Life Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, at Porbandar, in the present-day Indian state of Gujarat. 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. 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. Upon returning to India in mid-1891, he set up a law practice in Bombay, but met with little success. He soon accepted a position with an Indian firm that sent him to its office in South Africa. Along with his wife, Kasturbai, and their children, Gandhi remained in South Africa for nearly 20 years. Did you know? In the famous Salt March of April-May 1930, thousands of Indians followed Gandhi from Ahmadabad to the Arabian Sea. The march resulted in the arrest of nearly 60,000 people, including Gandhi himself. Gandhi was appalled by the discrimination he experienced as an Indian immigrant in South Africa. When a European magistrate in Durban asked him to take off his turban, he refused and left the courtroom. On a train voyage to Pretoria, he was thrown out of a first-class railway compartment and beaten up by a white stagecoach driver after refusing to give up his seat for a European passenger. That train journey served as a turning point for Gandhi, and he soon began developing an...

Bob Fitch photography archive, © Stanford University Libraries Upon his death, Mohandas K. Gandhi was hailed by the London Times as “the most influential figure India has produced for generations” (“Mr. Gandhi”). Gandhi protested against racism in South Africa and colonial rule in India using nonviolent resistance. A testament to the revolutionary power of nonviolence, Gandhi’s approach directly influenced Martin Luther King, Jr., who argued that the Gandhian philosophy was “the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom ” ( Papers 4:478). King first encountered Gandhian ideas during his studies at Crozer Theological Seminary. In a talk prepared for George Davis’ class, Christian Theology for Today, King included Gandhi among “individuals who greatly reveal the working of the Spirit of God ” ( Papers 1:249). In 1950, King heard Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University, speak of his recent trip to India and Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance techniques. King situated Gandhi’s ideas of nonviolent direct action in the larger framework of Christianity, declaring that “Christ showed us the way and Gandhi in India showed it could work ” (Rowland, “2,500 Here Hail Boycott Leader ”). He later remarked that he considered Gandhi to be “the greatest Christian of the modern world ” (King, 23 June 1962). Gandhi was born 2 October 1869, in Porbandar, in the western part of India, to Karamchand Gandhi, chief minister of Porbandar,...

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License and Republishing World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use. The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.