gandhi

Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand (1869-1948), Indian thinker, statesman, and nationalist leader who led India out of the British Empire. Gandhi, also known as Mahatma Gandhi, was born in Porbandar, in the modern state of Gujarat, on October 2, 1869, into a political Hindu family, both his father and grandfather having been prime ministers to the rulers of two adjacent and tiny princely states. After a mediocre career at school, he went to London in 1888 to train as a lawyer, leaving behind his young and illiterate wife, whom he had married when she was barely in her teens. Gandhi qualified as a barrister three years later and returned to India.

II EARLY CAREER

Young Mohandas Gandhi Mohandas Gandhi was educated in Great Britain and received a law degree from University College, London. After he was admitted to the British bar, he practised law in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, and later in Durban, South Africa. While in South Africa, he was treated as a member of an inferior race, which spurred him into his lifelong quest to achieve civil rights for all races.

After an undistinguished performance in a legal practice in India, Gandhi left for South Africa in 1893 to serve as legal adviser to an Indian firm. The 21 years that he spent there marked a turning point in his life. The racial indignities to which he and his countrymen were subjected there turned the hitherto shy and diffident lawyer into a courageous political activist. Realizing that violence was evil and rational persuasion often unavailing, he developed a new method of non-violent resistance, which he called satyagraha and which he used with some success to secure racial justice for his people. Gandhi also reflected deeply on his own religion, interacted with Jewish and Christian friends, and evolved a distinct view of life based on what he found valuable in his own and other religions. He commanded a Red Cross unit in the South African Wars, and organized a commune near Durban based on the ideas of Leo Tolstoy

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