Essay on mahatma gandhi and his philosophy
Answers
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in Porbandar , Gujarat , on 2nd October , 1869. His parents were Karamchand Gandhi and Putlibai.
The life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a unique journey along the path of greatness. He courageously proclaimed that his life was his message. A simple man clad in a handwoven dhoti , he believed that the greatest weapon is one's own character.
Gandhiji lived in troubled times , when India's social and political existence was crushed by the mighty British Empire. His clarity of vision , and his mission ignited the minds of thousands of people.
Under his leadership , the freedom struggle for India , for the first time , became a truly mass movement. He had no armies to command , yet the mightiest empire of the times was no match for his determined leadership , clear vision and strength of character.
True , Gandhiji was the greatest leader of modern India, Yet , to millions of people across the world , he was much more than that. To them , he was a saint whose values will have a everlasting relevance.It's no wonder that the whole world came to worship him as a great soul - Mahatma
Explanation:
Born and raised in a Hindu family in coastal Gujarat, western India, Gandhi was trained in law at the Inner Temple, London, and called to the bar at age 22 in June 1891. After two uncertain years in India, where he was unable to start a successful law practice, he moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit. He went on to stay for 21 years. It was in South Africa that Gandhi raised a family, and first employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights. In 1915, aged 45, he returned to India. 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, and above all for achieving Swaraj or self-rule.The same year Gandhi adopted the Indian loincloth, or short dhoti and, in the winter, a shawl, both woven with yarn hand-spun on a traditional Indian spinning wheel, or charkha, as a mark of identification with India's rural poor. Thereafter, he lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community, ate simple vegetarian food, and undertook long fasts as a means of self-purification and political protest. Bringing anti-colonial nationalism to the common Indians, Gandhi led them in challenging the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km (250 mi) Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in calling for the British to Quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned for many years, upon many occasions, in both South Africa and India.Gandhi's vision of an independent India based on religious pluralism was challenged in the early 1940s by a new Muslim nationalism which was demanding a separate Muslim homeland carved out of India. In August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs made their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in the Punjab and Bengal. Eschewing the official celebration of independence in Delhi, Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to provide solace. In the months following, he undertook several fasts unto death to stop religious violence.