Mohandas Gandhi was born in 1869 in Porbandar, India, the youngest son of the dewan, or chief minister, from a family of three generations of dewans. He was a middling student, extremely shy, more of a bookworm than an athlete, and very devoted to his parents. His mother was very religious, practicing nonviolence toward all living creatures, and would often fast in efforts at self-purification. He married at age 13 along with his brother and cousin to save wedding expenses, in an arranged marriage to Kasturba, age 14. Still immature, Mohandas was given to fits of jealousy and anger and especially lust. When his father became seriously ill with a fistula, Mohandas acted as a nursemaid after school. He never really forgave himself for leaving his father’s bedside to sleep with his wife on the night he died. Shortly after, Kasturba gave birth to a still born.

After he finished school, an esteemed uncle decided that Mohandas should study law in England. His mother did not endorse this idea because she thought London would corrupt Mohandas, and she made him take a vow that he would swear off meat, alcohol, and women before she would consent. Gandhi set off for London, leaving his wife and a young son behind, and embarked on a life as an English gentleman scholar. He began elocution, dance, and music lessons and joined both a vegetarian and Theosophical Society. With his monthly expenses rising, Gandhi soon realized that he needed to focus on his studies, stopped his lessons, moved to smaller lodgings, and began a more frugal lifestyle, eliminating meals and certain foods altogether. Once focused on his studies, he began to do well and studied Latin, Roman, and Common law in addition to his curriculum.

However, Gandhi never got over his fear of public speaking, and when he returned to India to practice law, this became a huge problem. Unable to cross-examine witnesses, he limited the type of law he could practice. Finding a niche in writing petitions, he made a huge misstep when he tried to call in a favor from a British officer he had known in London. Unlike in England, racism was a hallmark of Indian society, and the British officer was aghast at Gandhi’s impudence considering him an equal and Gandhi effectively ended his nascent career.

Fortunately, Gandhi was offered a job representing an Indian merchant living in Durban, in the South African province of Natal, along the coast, in a case against another merchant, that was expected to take about a year. He traveled to Durban and had a rude awakening as to how Indians were treated there. First, he was ejected from his first class cabin on the train, and next he was forced to sit outside on the stage coach to the city. His initial refusals were met with severe beatings. For years, the British Empire had been encouraging Indian immigration to South Africa as indentured servants to work the sugar cane fields and mines, and when Gandhi arrived, the South African governments were reacting by trying to curb further Indian immigration and cracking down on the rights of Indians, including the rights to own land, own businesses, to move freely about South Africa, and even to use public footpaths.

After Gandhi negotiated a settlement in his legal case, his friends threw him a farewell party at which he learned of the Natal government’s efforts to disenfranchise Indians. That night, Gandhi vowed to stay on in South Africa and help his friends fight for their rights. Recognizing the deteriorating environment, the established merchants in Natal realized that they needed someone with English fluency and legal knowledge to advocate for them, and in 1894, they formed the Natal Indian Congress with Gandhi as a leader. Gandhi’s first efforts were writing petitions, articles, and letters, informing government ministers and outsiders of the injustices Indians faced. He also started a printing press to publish The Indian Opinion, which covered Indian issues.

When Gandhi returned to India to bring his wife and sons over, he published The Green Pamphlet, which outlined the racism and the working conditions Indians faced in South Africa. This sparked outrage back in South Africa and upon his return, he was nearly lynched at the dock. Fortunately, the local police were friendly to Gandhi and both rescued him and rounded up the perpetrators, but Gandhi refused to press charges, believing that good people were often brainwashed by their culture to do evil deeds.

During the Second Boer War (1899-1902), which was a struggle between the two Boer colonies and the British Empire for control of the northern parts of South Africa, Gandhi showed his loyalty to Britain by organizing an Indian ambulance corps, which was rewarded for their bravery during the war. After the Boers defeat, the British formed the Union of South Africa. However, the British were not any less discriminatory towards the Indian population than the Boers. Several years later, during the Zulu Bambatha Rebellion, Gandhi once again rallied his Indian comrades to serve as an ambulance corps for the British. This was particularly difficult for Gandhi as the British were ruthless in putting down the rebellion, unnecessarily massacring thousands of Zulus and imprisoning more. Gandhi’s reasons for contributing, nonviolently, to these war efforts was to prove to the British that Indians were loyal and worthy subjects and capable of great valor.

Becoming more and more interested with religious life, Gandhi established a commune at Phoenix, based on the writings of Tolstoy, just north of Durban. He also began to simplify his household, taking on most household tasks with Kasturba, and to experiment with his diet, eliminating dairy and cooked foods. This eventually led to a vow of celibacy or Brahmcharya.

When the colony of Transvaal, the central part of South Africa where Pretoria and Johannesburg are located, began to severely restrict the rights and the travel of Indians, Gandhi turned his attention there, establishing another commune called Tolstoy farm and started to develop his philosophy of nonviolent noncooperation, which he named Satyagraha or keeping firmly to the truth. His eight-year Satyagraha campaign began as a protest to the Black Act, which required Asians to obtain certificates in order to travel. Gandhi petitioned and protested this act, obtaining a promise from Governor Smuts to repeal it if Gandhi himself registered. Gandhi did, but the act was not repealed, leading to a protest where Indians burned their certificates in a bonfire. This was the start of many organized campaigns and mass strikes against various new laws forcing indentured servants back into servitude, curtailing immigration, denying the legality of non-Christian marriages, and restricting travel to the Transvaal. The culmination of this campaign was a mass protest in 1913 where thousands of Indians marched from Natal into Johannesburg, defying the law prohibiting their entry. Thousands were arrested including Gandhi and Kasturba.

By the end of 1913, many businesses had closed due to striking workers. This, combined with an uproar in England from the stories of police brutality against the protesters, forced Transvaal Governor Smuts to the negotiating table. Gandhi was released and they compromised on the Indian Relief Act of 1914, which recognized traditional marriages and eliminated the tax that kept Indians in indenture. Feeling that his work in South Africa was done, Gandhi set sail for India with his friends and family via London, during which WWI was declared.

When he returned to India, he had been away for 30 years and was a stranger in his own land, although his work in SA and his writings made his name known. His mentor told him to acquaint himself with Indian issues, so Gandhi set off on a journey by train to visit regions of India and learn the plight of its people. While still in South Africa, Gandhi had written a book called Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule that outlined how India must reject British and Western culture and use passive resistance to overthrow the British. Although Gandhi wanted to agitate for independence, he did not want to take advantage of the war to do so, and instead, used his name to help recruit Indians for the army. He believed that loyalty during war would reward the Indian people with independence.

He founded the Satyagraha Ashram and began to look for smaller interventions to practice Satyagraha, finding a cause in 1917 in Champaran where farmers were forced to plant indigo with little payment for their crops during a famine. Gandhi organized protests and strikes against the landowners until the British government granted concessions giving the farmers more control over their crops, fair compensation, and a hiatus of collections until the famine abated.

The next year, Gandhi provided his guidance to the Kheda peasant tax revolt. The British authorities had increased the taxes of Kheda by 23% while the area was experiencing a famine and outbreaks of disease. The peasants had petitioned the government for tax relief but that was rejected, and the peasants were threatened with seizure of property if they declined to pay. With great discipline, the residents of Kheda refused to pay and cooperated with the forfeiture of their lands. However, anyone who tried to buy the seized lands was ostracized. Eventually, the government declared a tax holiday for two years, lowered the planned increase, and returned the confiscated properties. In the same year. Gandhi helped mill workers in Ahmedabad strike for higher wages. As the strike wore on, many of the workers were tempted to return, desperately in need of their wages. Gandhi declared a personal hunger strike to foment unity. After a three-day fast, the mill owners came to an agreement with the workers and the strike ended.

It wasn’t until after the end of the war and the passage of the Rowlatt Act, which gave the police the authority to arrest anyone without reason or due process, that Gandhi began to agitate for independence at the national scale. He called for an India-wide hartal or strike on April 6^th, 1919 where businesses closed and people either protested or prayed. To Gandhi, conducting the protests without violence was critical to success, but sporadic violent outbreaks occurred in the Punjab, Delhi, and Gujarat, making Gandhi call off the resistance movement. The army was brought in to the Amritsar in the Punjab, where two local Indian leaders had been arrested, and they massacred hundreds of unarmed civilians who had been peacefully protesting the arrests. This massacre opened Gandhi’s eyes to British obstinancy and brutality, and he realized that independence would never be given freely.

In 1920, he launched a non-cooperation movement with the aim to win independence. This campaign consisted of spurning all British enterprises, including their schools and government agencies, boycotting British goods and shops, and advocating for the creation of Indian substitutes, especially homespun cloth. The non-cooperation campaign also consisted of local hartels and protest marches throughout India. When two police officers were murdered by a mob in Chauri Chaura, Gandhi once-again called off the resistance, but he was arrested later that year anyway. After serving only two years of a six-year sentence, Gandhi was released in 1924 after acute appendicitis. For the next few years, Gandhi retired from politics and spent his energy advocating for the rights of women, untouchables, and Hindu-Muslim unity as well as economic independence via spinning and other village crafts.

In 1928, Gandhi returned to political life when the Viceroy informed him of a commission to study Indian issues and propose political reforms. When Gandhi learned that there would be no Indians on the commission, he advocated boycotting the commission. The Viceroy later insinuated that Britain was considering dominion status for India, and Indian leaders gathered to write a constitution. The promise of dominion status turned out to be empty, and Gandhi declared that January 26, 1930 would be India independence day followed by a mass civil disobedience program. In March, Gandhi and members of his ashram started off on a march to the sea to obtain salt, in defiance of a law preventing people from making their own. Thousands of people joined them, and this kicked off more acts of civil disobedience including a raid on government salt works where many of the protesters were brutally beaten.

Thousands of people were arrested, including Gandhi and most of the Indian leaders, overcrowding the jails, disrupting the economy, and creating terrible publicity. When Gandhi was released, he met with the Viceroy Irwin and they reached an agreement to roll back provisions of the Rowlatt Act. Gandhi also agreed to negotiations a Second Roundtable Conference in London, and so he called for an end to the resistance movement. While his trip to London achieved little in the way of political reform, it was a fantastic public relations win as Gandhi’s charm, humility, and gentleness won popular support even among the mill workers who lost their jobs due to his homespun campaign. Upon his return to India, though, a new viceroy started a more repressive approach to Indian resistance and the Gandhi-Irwin pact was essentially nullified.

As a result, Gandhi restarted the noncooperation movement and was again arrested.

In 1932, the British decided to grant the untouchables and other underclasses their own separate congress. Many felt this was a way to divide the Hindus. Gandhi vowed for a fast until the death unless this was repealed. In jail, Gandhi negotiated with leaders of the depressed classes for a set number of representatives in the Indian legislature and the separate congress initiative was scrapped.

After his release from jail in 1933, frustrated with lack of progress toward independence, the persistent classification of untouchability, and growing hostility between Hindus and Muslims, Gandhi resigned from Congress, founded another ashram, and retired from political life. He spent the next few years working on educating the rural population, fighting to remove untouchability, and promoting the use of the spinning wheel and other cottage industries to become self-sufficient.  

With the start of WWII, the Indian Congress saw an opportunity to win independence and offered to fight alongside Britain as an equal and independent partner. Churchill refused, bringing about resignations and non-cooperation of Indian leaders, most of whom were jailed. With Japan overrunning most of Asia, and the Allied victory not at all assured, the British turned to the Indian congress to support their war effort and supply troops for the defense of India in return for their independence after the war. This offer was rejected as too little too late, and Gandhi called for another resistance campaign called Quit India, where he called for the immediate withdrawal of the British and complete independence for India. With most of the Indian national congress in jail and the war still raging, the movement did not achieve much.

After the war ended, maintaining the British Empire was untenable for England and real negotiations for terms of India’s independence finally began. Muslim leadership and the Muslim population were agitating for their own state, and violence between Hindus and Muslims made this seem like the only alternative. Although Gandhi was opposed to this split, he reluctantly agreed as the violence escalated, and India was divided into India and Pakistan. As the British pulled out, mass movements of Hindus and Muslims began across the new borders, sparking even more violence. Once again, Gandhi decided to fast until death until the violence subsided. Newspapers reported on his deteriorating health and soon the violent outbreaks were quelled. Shortly after, in 1948, he was assassinated on his way to prayer by a Hindu extremist who felt that Gandhi’s support of Muslims had betrayed the Hindus.

All of India mourned the man they called both Bapu “father” and Mahatma “enlightened one.”