Gandhi got rid of British rule in India and changed the lives of millions of people. And, unlike lots of other hard nuts of history, he did it without bashing anybody.
YOUNG GANDHI
Mohandas Gandhi was born in Porbandar, in the Gujarat region of India, in 1869. He trained as a lawyer in England, but when he came back to India there weren’t many law jobs to be had. He took a job in Natal, South Africa instead.
UNFAIR LAWS
In South Africa, Gandhi was thrown out of train compartments, barred from hotels, and beaten up by a carriage driver – all because he was Indian rather than European (Natal was ruled by the British at the time). He decided to do something about it. He didn’t find public speaking easy, but fuelled by a fierce sense of injustice he organised other Indians against unfair laws – without using violence. Gandhi said there were many ways to react to injustice: you could put up with it, you could run away, you could fight using violence or, the best and bravest way in Gandhi’s view, you could fight it without using violence. He ended up in prison because of his organised protests, and so did hundreds of the people who followed him. Finally, he forced the South African government to agree to a compromise and release him and his followers from prison.
BRITISH INDIA
Gandhi came back to India in 1914 and in just a few years, he became the most important politician in the country with millions of followers. India was still part of the British Empire, but Gandhi thought that India should be run by Indians. He led protests, and encouraged people to boycott British goods, courts of law and schools. As a result, he was put in prison from 1922–24. When the British taxed salt in 1930, Gandhi led thousands of Indians on a 320-kilometre march to the sea to collect their own. He was sent to prison again, along with 60,000 of his followers.
INDEPENDENCE
Gandhi’s way of changing things was peaceful but – eventually – just as powerful as if he’d had an army behind him. In 1947 India became independent from Britain. Gandhi had won his victory. He was trying to make peace between the two major religious groups in India, the Muslims and the Hindus, but, the following year, he was shot and killed.
