Mahatma Gandhi

01Early life

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 in Porbandar, in present-day Gujarat, into a Modh Bania family. His father served as a chief minister (diwan) to local princely states, and his mother's deep religious devotion shaped Gandhi's early moral outlook, particularly around vegetarianism, fasting, and nonviolence. He married Kasturba Makhanji at the age of thirteen, in keeping with the customary practice of the time.

02Education and background

Gandhi travelled to London in 1888 to study law, qualifying as a barrister in 1891. After a brief and largely unsuccessful legal practice in India, he accepted a contract to work in South Africa in 1893, where he remained for over two decades. It was in South Africa that Gandhi first developed and tested satyagraha — a philosophy and method of nonviolent resistance — while organising the Indian community there against discriminatory laws, most notably through the Natal Indian Congress and later campaigns against pass laws and registration requirements.

03Major contributions

Gandhi returned to India in January 1915 and, after a period of observation and travel across the country, began applying satyagraha to Indian conditions — first in local campaigns at Champaran (1917, over indigo cultivation) and Kheda (1918, over famine and tax relief), then at a national scale from 1920 onward. His central contribution was to make nonviolent, mass, disciplined civil resistance the primary strategic method of the Indian National Congress, transforming the freedom movement from an elite, urban affair into one with genuine rural and mass participation.

He also promoted khadi (hand-spun cloth) and economic self-reliance as both a practical and symbolic form of resistance, campaigned against untouchability under the term "Harijan," and advocated for Hindu-Muslim unity throughout his political life, even as communal tensions grew in the movement's final years.

04Important movements

• Champaran and Kheda Satyagrahas (1917–18) — Gandhi's first major campaigns in India, addressing local agrarian grievances.
• Non-Cooperation Movement (1920–22) — his first nationwide mass campaign; read the full article.
• Civil Disobedience Movement & Dandi March (1930) — the salt satyagraha; read the full article.
• Quit India Movement (1942) — his final mass campaign, launched with the "Do or Die" call; read the full article.

05Major writings

Gandhi was a prolific writer. His autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, remains widely read, and his 1909 pamphlet Hind Swaraj laid out his early critique of industrial modernity and his vision of self-rule based on individual moral transformation. He also edited several periodicals over his career, including Young India and Harijan, through which he communicated directly with a national audience.

06Historical significance

Gandhi is widely regarded as the central strategist and public face of India's mass freedom movement from 1920 until independence, and his method of nonviolent civil resistance influenced later movements internationally, including the American civil rights movement. Within India, he is commonly referred to as "Father of the Nation" and "Mahatma" (great soul), an honorific rather than a formal title.

07Criticism and debates

Gandhi's legacy is actively debated by historians. His decision to suspend the Non-Cooperation Movement after Chauri Chaura in 1922 was criticised by contemporaries, including younger and more radical leaders, as a lost opportunity. His views and actions regarding caste, and his relationship with Dr. B. R. Ambedkar — particularly during negotiations over separate electorates for depressed classes in the early 1930s — remain a significant subject of historical and political discussion, with Ambedkar himself a sharp critic of aspects of Gandhi's approach. Gandhi's early writings in South Africa also included statements about Black South Africans that are now widely criticised as reflecting the racial attitudes of his era; his views evolved substantially over his life. Serious historical accounts generally engage with this fuller, more complicated record rather than presenting a simplified narrative.

08Timeline