Mahamat Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869 in Porbander on the west coast of India. He came from a middle class family where his father, Karamchand, was prime minister of a small Indian state (Porbandar). At the age of 13, he married Kasturbai Makanji who was also 13. The fact that he finished middle school, high school and went to law school as a married man deserves some kind of recognition. In 1888, Gandhi sailed to London, England to continue his legal education. Gandhi became a lawyer and returned to India in 1891. After unsuccessfully trying to practice law in India, he moved to Natal South Africa to work at a law firm in 1893. It was then and there that his experiences changed his whole perspective of life and gave him a new direction in life and reason to live. In South Africa, Gandhi was faced with devastating racism against Indians. He and other Indians were barred from first class railroad cars, barred from many hotels, beaten and often mistreated. The humiliation he felt in the hands of British officials turned him into a determined political activist. He used the law to fight against terrible injustices to local Indians. He also formulated a method for fighting political injustice in a nonviolent manner, using boycotts, and noncooperation, the writing of letters, pamphlets and passive resistance. Gandhi called these ideas Satyagraha which means “insistence on truth”. After more than seven years of pressure from Gandhi and his supporters, the South African government gave into some compromises. In 1914, after his success in South Africa, Gandhi returned to India. He entered Indian politics in the quest for Indian independence. He continued his nonviolent methods in order to force the British government to undue their control of India. Gandhi organized the boycott of British goods, led peaceful marches, fasted and urged the mass defiance of many unfair British laws. On August 15, 1947 India became an independent country. It had been a British colony since 1857. Gandhi was successful. India became independent with scarcely any violence against the British. The struggle had been difficult but at the end Britain lowered its flag over India and left. Soon after the British left, the Hindu and Muslim people of India decided that they could not live together. The fighting between them had worsened and in 1948 the country split into two countries, India and Pakistan. Gandhi was against the partition. On January 30, 1948 at the age of 78 Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic that blamed Gandhi for India’s partition. Violence is sometimes inevitable. Admiring to me is how Gandhi was willing to die for a cause but not willing to kill for it. He fought for something he believed in and never gave up. In my eyes he is one of the greatest human beings that ever lived.