Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Gujarati: મોહનદાસ કરમચંદ ગાંધી, IPA:
[moɦən̪d̪äs kəɾəmʧən̪d̪ gän̪d̪ʱi]) (2 October 1869 – 30 January
1948) was a major political and spiritual leader of India and the
Indian independence movement. He was the pioneer of
Satyagraha—resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience,
firmly founded upon ahimsa or total non-violence—which led India to
independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom
across the world. He is commonly known around the world as Mahatma
Gandhi (Sanskrit: महात्मा mahātmā or "Great Soul", an honorific
first applied to him by Rabindranath Tagore) and in India also as
Bapu (Gujarati: બાપુ bāpu or "Father"). He is officially honoured
in India as the Father of the Nation; his birthday, 2 October, is
commemorated there as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and
world-wide as the International Day of Non-Violence.
Gandhi first employed non-violent civil disobedience as an
expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian
community's struggle for civil rights. After his return to India in
1915, he set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban
labourers in protesting excessive land-tax and discrimination.
Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi
led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, for expanding women's
rights, for building religious and ethnic amity, for ending
untouchability, for increasing economic self-reliance, but above
all for achieving Swaraj—the independence of India from foreign
domination. Gandhi famously led Indians in protesting the
British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km (249 mi) Dandi Salt March
in 1930, and later in calling for the British to Quit India in
1942. He was imprisoned for many years, on numerous occasions, in
both South Africa and India.
Gandhi was a practitioner of non-violence and truth, and advocated
that others do the same. He lived modestly in a self-sufficient
residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and
shawl, woven with yarn he had hand spun on a charkha. He ate simple
vegetarian food, and also undertook long fasts as means of both
self-purification and social protest.