mahatma gandhi Biography

mahatma gandhi full name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.He was born in 2 October 1869 and raised in a Hindu merchant caste family in coastal Gujarat, western India, At school, first the primary at Porbandar, and later the Albert High School, Rajkot, Gandhi showed no particular brilliance, played no games, avoided company. He read little beyond text books, but respected his teacher, though, even at his biding, he would not copy from his neighbour’s answers .He was trained in law at the Inner Temple, London, Gandhi first employed nonviolent civil disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian community's struggle for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, but above all for achieving Swaraj or self-rule.

Gandhi spent 20 years in South Africa working to fight discrimination. It was there that he created his concept of satyagraha, a non-violent way of protesting against injustices. While in India, Gandhi's obvious virtue, simplistic lifestyle, and minimal dress endeared him to the people. He spent his remaining years working diligently to both remove British rule from India as well as to better the lives of India's poorest classes. Many civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., used Gandhi's concept of non-violent protest as a model for their own struggles.

Gandhi visited the cotton mills District in Lancashire, hard hit by foreign cloth boycott. Looms were idle, chimneys unsmoking, men unemployed, women miserable. But when he talked to them, explained the plight of India’s peasants, they understood him and even cheered him. And he took time off to attend the Dairy Animal show at Islington and to pat the prize-winning goats.

1932: Returning to India, Gandhiji saw Willingdon’s Ordinance raj everywhere: close associates and colleagues were arrested. Soon he himself was taken to Yeravda Prison. In September he fasted against the Communal violence lying under the mango tree. He stirred the Hindu conscience, that led to the Yeravda Pact. On a second fast, in May 1933, for Harijan work, he was released.In July 1933, after the solemn last prayer, Gandhi disbanded the Sabarmati Ashram. In September he moved to Satyagraha Ashram at Wardha. Henceforth, the morning walks were on Wardha’s plains. In November, he commenced his country-wide Harijan tour, starting from Nagpur, for rousing the masses to a sense of their duty in regard to the abolition of untouchability.The story of Gandhiji is the story of his tireless pilgrimage throughout the length and breadth of the country for the emancipation of the dumb, downtrodden masses. The tour of 1934 had, for its aim, the upliftment of the "untouchable" whom he called the "Hari Jans" or the children of god.In October 1934, at the Bombay congress he parted company. He differed from congress in the interpretation of the goal: Poorna Swaraj. For his was much more than independence. Means mattered as much as ends. The Congress session paved the way for the setting up the All-India Village Industrious Association.Harijan upliftment dominated Gandhiji’s mind; he held counsel with trusted social workers such as Thakkar Bapa. At the same time, he combined with thought and deed the act of prayer, leading the tallest of his associates to mass prayers in the Bhangi or Harijan colony. Meanwhile, the Government of India Act of 1935 was on the anvil.The first time Gandhi officially used satyagraha was in South Africa beginning in 1907 when he organized opposition to the Asiatic Registration Law (known as the Black Act). In March 1907, the Black Act was passed, requiring all Indians - young and old, men and women - to get fingerprinted and to keep registration documents on them at all times. While using satyagraha, Indians refused to get fingerprinted and picketed the documentation offices. Mass protests were organized, miners went on strike, and masses of Indians illegally traveled from Natal to the Transvaal in opposition to the Black Act. Many of the protesters were beaten and arrested, including Gandhi. (This was the first of Gandhi's many jail sentences.) It took seven years of protest, but in June 1914, the Black Act was repealed. Gandhi had proved that nonviolent protest could be immensely successful.Having spent twenty years in South Africa helping fight discrimination, Gandhi decided it was time to head back to India in July 1914. On his way home, Gandhi was scheduled to make a short stop in England. However, when World War I broke out during his journey, Gandhi decided to stay in England and form another ambulance corps of Indians to help the British. When the British air caused Gandhi to take ill, he sailed to India in January 1915.

Gandhi at the Birla House Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte returned to Pune via Mumbai (Bombay). With the help of Dattatraya Parchure and Gangadhar Dandavate, Nathuram Vinayak Godse and Narayan Apte purchased a Beretta and reached Delhi on 29 January 1948, checking into the retiring room No. 6 at Delhi Railway Station where they chalked out the plan for his assassination.Gandhi's fast was for the restoration of Hindu-Muslim peace and continued for three days after the cabinet announced it's decision to give the money to Pakistan. It is possible that Godse may not have known of this, however this cannot be said for certain Godse felt that the sad situation and suffering caused during and due to the partition could have been avoided if the Indian government had lodged strong protests against the treatment meted out to the Minorities (Hindus and Sikhs) in Pakistan. However, being "under the thumb of Gandhi" they resorted to more feeble ways. He also felt that Gandhi had not protested against these atrocities being suffered in Pakistan and instead resorted to fasts.^[8] In his court deposition, Godse said, “I thought to myself and foresaw I shall be totally ruined, and the only thing I could expect from the people would be nothing but hatred ... if I were to kill Gandhiji. But at the same time I felt that the Indian politics in the absence of Gandhiji would surely be proved practical, able to retaliate, and would be powerful with armed forces.”In Godse's own words during his final deposition in the court during the trial, "...it was not so much the Gandhian Ahimsa teachings that were opposed to by me and my group, but Gandhiji, while advocating his views, always showed or evinced a bias for Muslims, prejudicial and detrimental to the Hindu Community and its interests. I have fully described my Point of view hereafter in detail and have quoted numerous instances, which unmistakably establish how Gandhiji became responsible for a number of calamities which the Hindu Community had to suffer and undergo"

As he walked up the four steps leading to the prayer mandap, a young man, aged about 35, came before Gandhiji and, bending his body forward at a distance of less than two yards, offered pranam. Gandhiji returned the salute, when the young man remarked “You are late to-day for the prayer.” Gandhiji smiled and replied, “Yes, I am”; but just at that moment, the young man pulled out his revolver and rang out three shots from point-blank range, the bullets piercing the frail body of the great leader just below the heart and stomach. Immediately, Gandhiji collapsed; but Ava Gandhi and Manu Gandhi stuck to their place by his side and held him firmly. But that was the last of the Nation’s Father. It was then 5.12 p.m

Mahatma Temple:

Mahatma Gandhi is revered all over the country, but people at a sleepy little village off Sambalpur town in Orissa remember him in a very special way - by worshipping his idol in a temple. 
The temple at Bhatra village attracts people of all religions and castes who offer their obeisance to the idol of Gandhiji sitting under the Tricolour. 
Pramod Kumar, president of the Gandhi temple development committee, said the temple symbolizes communal amity among the people in western Orissa.