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Birth
Born, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, in Porbandar, Kathiawar, India. His father, Karamchand Gandh, served as a chief minister in Porbandar and other western states in India. His mother, Putlibai, was a very religious woman who fasted regularly.
Mahatma grew up worshiping Vishnu, a Hindu god and practiced Jainism which encouraged non-violence, fasting, meditation, and vegetarianism. -
Marriage
At the age of 13, he wed, in an arranged marriage, Kasturba Makanji, a merchant’s daughter.
Mahatma had always been a timid child, but after his marriage, he rebelled by smoking, eating meat, and stealing change from servants that worked in his house. -
Father's Death
In 1885 Gandhi endured his father's passing and shortly after the death of his first child.
Although he had always dreamed of being a doctor his father encouraged him to be a government minister and his family helped steer him into the legal profession. -
Law School
After his first of four surviving sons was born, Gandhi who was 18 years old, sailed to London England to study law.
He struggled with the transition to Western culture and during his 3 years in London he became even more committed to eating meatless, even joining the London Vegetarian Society. During this time he was also learning more about world religions. -
Return to India
When Gandhi had returned to India he had learned of his mother's passing just weeks before.
He struggled to gain his footing as a lawyer. In his first courtroom case, Gandhi blanked when the time came to cross-examine a witness. He immediately left the courtroom after reimbursing his client for his legal fees -
Durban, Natal, South Africa
Gandhi got a one year contract to preform legal services in South Africa and in 1893 he sailed in Durban in the South African State of Natal. -
Arriving in South Africa
Upon arriving in South Africa Gandhi was appalled by the discrimination and racial segregation faced by Indian immigrants at the hands of the authorities, mainly white British men. During his first appearance in a Durban courtroom, Gandhi was asked to remove his turban. He refused and left the court instead and was later mocked in print. -
Influential Moment
During a train trip to Pretoria a white man objected to Gandhi's presence in the first-class railway compartment, even though he had a ticket. Gandhi refused to move to the back of the train, and was forcibly removed from his seat and the train. This awoke in Gandhi a determination to devote himself to fighting the “deep disease of color prejudice.” He vowed to “try, if possible, to root out the disease and suffer hardships in the process.” -
Natal Indian Congress
Gandhi formed the Natal Indian Congress to fight discrimination. At the end of his contract, Gandhi prepared to return to India until he learned of a bill before the Natal Legislative Assembly that would deprive Indians of the right to vote. Fellow immigrants convinced Gandhi to stay and to lead the fight against the legislation. Although Gandhi could not prevent the law’s passage, he drew international attention to the injustice. -
Return to India
After a brief trip to India, Gandhi returned to South Africa with his wife and kids. His wife gave birth to 2 more sons while in South Africa.
Gandhi ran a thriving legal practice. At the outbreak of the Boer War, he raised an all-Indian ambulance group of 1,100 volunteers to support the British cause. He argued that if Indians expected to have full rights of citizenship in the British Empire, they also needed to hold their responsibilities as well. -
World religions
During his time in South Africa Gandhi continued to learn about world religions. He immersed himself in sacred Hindu spiritual texts and adopted a life of simplicity, austerity and celibacy that was free of material goods. -
First Mass Civil Disobedience
Gandhi organized his first mass civil-disobedience campaign in response to the Transvaal government’s new restrictions on the rights of Indians, including the refusal to recognize Hindu marriages. He called this campaign, “Satyagraha” (“truth and firmness”). -
Compromise
Under pressure, after years of protests and the government imprisonment of hundreds of Indians in 1913, the South African government accepted a compromise negotiated by Gandhi and General Jan Christian Smuts that included recognition of Hindu marriages and the abolition of a poll tax for Indians. -
Returning Home
Gandhi and his family set sail to return home in 1914. -
WWI
At the outbreak of World War I, Gandhi returned to India from London, which was still under the firm control of the British. He founded an ashram in Ahmedabad open to all castes. Gandhi took to wearing a simple loincloth and shawl, and lived a strict life devoted to prayer, fasting and meditation. He became known as “Mahatma,” which means “great soul.” -
Political Reawakening
When the newly enacted Rowlatt Act authorized British authorities to imprison those suspected of sedition without trial, Gandhi had a political reawakening. In response, he called for a Satyagraha campaign of peaceful protests and strikes.
Violence broke out instead, which culminated, in the Massacre of Amritsar when troops fired machine guns into a crowd of unarmed demonstrators and killed nearly 400 people. -
Gave up Allegiance to Britain
Gandhi was no longer able to pledge allegiance to the British government, he returned the medals he earned for his military service in South Africa and opposed Britain’s mandatory military draft of Indians to serve in World War I. -
Leading Figure
He became a leading figure in the Indian home-rule movement. He called for mass boycotts, urged government officials to stop working for the Crown, students to stop attending government schools, soldiers to leave their posts and citizens to stop paying taxes and purchasing British goods.
Rather than buy British-manufactured clothes, he began to use a portable spinning wheel to produce his own cloth, and the spinning wheel soon became a symbol of Indian independence and self-reliance. -
Hindu and Muslim Relations
After British authorities arrested Gandhi in 1922, he plead guilty to three counts of sedition. Although sentenced to a six-year imprisonment, Gandhi was released in 1924 after appendicitis surgery. He discovered upon his release that relations between India’s Hindus and Muslims had devolved during his time in jail, and when violence between the two religious groups flared again, Gandhi began a three-week fast in the autumn of 1924 to urge unity. -
Salt March
After staying away from active politics in the later 1920's Gandhi returned to protest the British Salt Acts which not only prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt (a staple in their diet), but also imposed a heavy tax that hit the country’s poorest particularly hard.
Gandhi planned a new Satyagraha campaign that entailed a 240-mile march to the Arabian Sea, where he and many others would collect salt in symbolic defiance of the government monopoly. -
Salt March
Gandhi set on March 12, 1930, with a few dozen followers, wearing a homespun white shawl and sandals and carrying a walking stick. The ranks of the marchers grew by the time he arrived 24 days later in the coastal town of Dandi. Gandhi made salt from evaporated seawater, breaking the law. -
Inspiring Mass Civil Disobedience
The Salt March inspired similar protests, and mass civil disobedience swept across India. Approximately 60,000 Indians were jailed for breaking the Salt Acts, including Gandhi.
The protests against the Salt Acts elevated Gandhi into a transcendent figure around the world, and he was named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” for 1930. -
End of the Salt Protest
Gandhi was released from prison in January 1931, and two months later he made an agreement with Lord Irwin to end the Salt protest in exchange for concessions that included the release of thousands of political prisoners.
However, the agreement largely kept the Salt Acts intact, but it did give those who lived on the coasts the right to harvest salt from the sea. -
London Round Table Conference
Gandhi attended the London Round Table Conference on Indian constitutional reform in August 1931, as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress, hoping that the agreement would be a stepping-stone to home rule. Unfortunately, the conference proved fruitless. -
Return to India
When Gandhi returned to India he was once again imprisoned during a crackdown by India’s new Lord. Later that year, while incarcerated Gandhi started on a six-day fast to protest the British decision to segregate those on the lowest rung of India’s caste system, by allotting them separate electorates.
The public outcry forced the British to amend the proposal. -
Refocusing
Eventually Gandhi was released from prison and left the Indian National Congress in 1934. He passed the leadership to his protégé. Again, he stepped away from politics to focus on education, poverty and the problems afflicting India’s rural areas. -
WWII
Gandhi started the “Quit India” movement that called for the immediate British withdrawal from the country. In August 1942, the British arrested Gandhi, his wife and other leaders of the Indian National Congress and detained them.
With his health failing, Gandhi was released after a 19-month detainment, but not before his wife died in February 1944. -
Plans for Independence
The Labour Party defeated the Conservatives in the British general election and began negotiations for Indian independence with the Indian National Congress and Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s Muslim League. Gandhi played an active role in the negotiations, but his hope for a unified India did not prevail.
Instead, the final plan called for the land to be divided along religious lines into two independent states—predominantly Hindu India and predominantly Muslim Pakistan. -
Independence
Violence between Hindus and Muslims started before independence took effect. After it took effect, the killings multiplied. Gandhi toured riot-torn areas in an appeal for peace and fasted in an attempt to end the bloodshed.
However, some Hindus increasingly viewed Gandhi as a traitor for expressing sympathy toward Muslims. -
Assassination
Gandhi, 78-year-old, still weak from repeated hunger strikes, clung to his two grandnieces as they led him from his living quarters to a prayer meeting. Hindu extremist Nathuram Godse was upset at Gandhi’s tolerance of Muslims. He knelt before the Mahatma and pulled out a semiautomatic pistol and shoot him three times at point-blank range. The violent act took the life of a pacifist who spent his life preaching non-violence.
Godse and a co-conspirator were executed by hanging.
