Mahathma Gandhi - The Father of Nation (India)

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Timeline of Mahathma Gandhi's Life

1869 - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi born in Porbandar in Gujarat.

1893 - Gandhi leaves for Johannesburg for practicing law and is thrown out of a first class bogie because he is colored.

1906 - Mohandas K. Gandhi, 37, speaks at a mass meeting in the Empire Theater, Johannesburg on September 11 and launches a campaign of nonviolent resistance (satyagraha) to protest discrimination against Indians. The British Government had just invalidated the Indian Marriage.

1913 - Mohandas Gandhi in Transvaal, South Africa leads 2,500 Indians into the in defiance of a law, they are violently arrested, Gandhi refuses to pay a fine, he is jailed, his supporters demonstrate. On November 25, and Natal police fire into the crowd, killing two, injuring 20.

1914 - Mohandas Gandhi returns to India at age 45 after 21 years of practicing law in South Africa where he organized a campaign of “passive resistance” to protest his mistreatment by whites for his defense of Asian immigrants. He attracts wide attention in India by conducting a fast --the first of 14 that he will stage as political demonstrations and that will inaugurate the idea of the political fasting.

1930 - A civil disobedience campaign against the British in India begins March 12. The All-India Trade Congress has empowered Gandhi to begin the demonstrations (see 1914). Called Mahatma for the past decade, Gandhi leads a 165-mile march to the Gujarat coast of the Arabian Sea and produces salt by evaporation of sea water in violation of the law as a gesture of defiance against the British monopoly in salt production

1932 - Gandhi begins a "fast unto death" to protest the British government's treatment of India's lowest caste "untouchables" whom Gandhi calls Harijans -- "God's children." Gandhi's campaign of civil disobedience has brought rioting and has landed him in prison, but he persists in his demands for social reform, he urges a new boycott of British goods, and after 6 days of fasting obtains a pact that improves the status of the "untouchables" (Dalits)

1947 - India becomes free from 200 years of British Rule. A major victory for Gandhian principles and non-violence in general.

1948 - Gandhi is assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu fanatic at a prayer meeting
Mahathma Gandhi's rare pictures

Man and Wife : Mohandas and Kasturba

Gandhiji reads news paper infront of his spinning wheel

Gandhi (center) with colleagues at his Law Office, South Africa, 1913

Gandhi as a young adult in England

Gandhiji's view on Education

“I say without tear of my figures being challenged successfully, that today India is more illiterate than it was fifty or a hundred years ago, and so is Burma, because the British administrators, when they came to India, instead of taking hold of things as they were, began to root them out. They scratched the soil and began to look at the root, and left the root like that, and the beautiful tree perished. The village schools were not good enough for the British administrator, so he came out with his program. Every school must have so much paraphernalia, building, and so forth. Well, there were no such schools at all. There are statistics left by a British administrator which show that, in places where they have carried out a survey, ancient schools have gone by the board, because there was no recognition for these schools, and the schools established after the European pattern were too expensive for the people, and therefore they could not possibly overtake the thing. I defy anybody to fulfill a program of compulsory primary education of these3 masses inside of a century. This very poor country of mine is ill able to sustain such an expensive method of education. Our state would revive the old village schoolmaster and dot every village with a school both for boys and girls. ”(Mahatma Gandhi at Chatham House, London, October 20, 1931)


Gandhi on BhagawadGita:
" The Gita is the universal mother. She turns away nobody. Her door is wide open to anyone who knocks. A true votary of Gita does not know what disappointment is. He ever dwells in perennial joy and peace that passeth understanding. But that peace and joy come not to skeptic or to him who is proud of his intellect or learning. It is reserved only for the humble in spirit who brings to her worship a fullness of faith and an undivided singleness of mind. There never was a man who worshipped her in that spirit and went disappointed. I find a solace in the Bhagavad-Gita that I miss even in the Sermon on the Mount. When disappointment stares me in the face and all alone I see not one ray of light, I go back to the Bhagavad-Gita. I find a verse here and a verse there , and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming tragedies -- and my life has been full of external tragedies -- and if they have left no visible or indelible scar on me, I owe it all to the teaching of Bhagavad-Gita. "

Quotes of Mahathma Gandhi

• I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides, and my windows to be closed. Instead, I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.
  
• I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.
  
• To forgive and accept injustice is cowardice.
  
• Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness... It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.
  
• God is because Truth is.
  
• One must be the change one wishes to see in the world.
  
• Poverty is but the worst form of violence.
  
• Untouchability is a crime against God and Mankind.
  
  

Related Internet Websites
An Assasin Speaks - "All his experiments were at the expense of the Hindus"
Book by Gandhi - Constructive Programme: Its meaning and place
Gandhi by Vinay Lal - A very good account of how the history of India is interwoven with Gandhi's movements.
Gandhi E-Book - Mahatma - Book online by D. G. Tendulkar with a forward by Nehru
Gandhi on Gandhi - What Gandhi thought of himself
Gandhi Picture Gallery - Picture Gallery at the IndianCultureOnline Site
Gandhi Speaketh - A number of quotes of Mohandas Gandhi
GandhiServe Foundation - Mahatma Gandhi Research and Media Service
Mahatma Gandhi Canadian Foundation - Multimedia Resources on Gandhiji
Mahatma Gandhi Picture Album - Rare pictures from TIME
Manibhavan Institute - Website of the Gandhi museum and library in Mumbai
Pencil Gandhi - Illustrations of Gandhi's Life by Artist Adimoolam (excuse the custom fonts)
Sacred Warrior - Nelson Mandela's tribute to Gandhi as appeared in TIME
Salt of Freedom - Prof. Vinay Lal's essay on the famous Dandi March
The Light is Gone.. - Nehru announcing the assasination of Gandhi
The Patron Saint - India-Today remembers the man who shaped India
Video Clips of Gandhi - Relive the times of Mohandas Gandhi
Virual Ashram - Has a lot of useful information and a pictorial archive