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Mohandas
K. Gandhi was born in 1869 to Hindu parents in the state of
Gujarat in Western India. He entered an arranged marriage
with Kasturbai Makanji when both were 13 years old. His
family later sent him to London to study law, and in 1891 he was
admitted to the Inner Temple, and called to the bar. In
Southern Africa he worked ceaselessly to improve the rights of the
immigrant Indians. It was there that he developed his creed
of passive resistance against injustice, satyagraha, meaning truth
force, and was frequently jailed as a result of the protests that
he led.
Before he
returned to India with his wife and children in 1915, he had
radically changed the lives of Indians living in Southern
Africa. Back in India, it was not long before he was taking
the lead in the long struggle for independence from Britain.
He never wavered in his
unshakable belief in nonviolent protest and religious
tolerance. When
Muslim and Hindu compatriots committed acts of violence, whether
against the British who ruled India, or against each other, he
fasted until the fighting ceased.
Independence,
when it came in 1947, was not a military victory, but a triumph of
human will. To Gandhi's despair, however, the country was
partitioned into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. The last
two months of his life were spent trying to end the appalling
violence which ensued, leading him to fast to the brink of death,
an act which finally quelled the riots. In January 1948, at
the age of 79, he was killed by an assassin as he walked through a
crowed garden in New Delhi to take evening prayers.
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