(October 2, 1869 – January 30, 1948) was a prominent political leader of India and its struggle for independence from the British Empire. He was the pioneer[1] and perfector of Satyagraha - the resistance of tyranny through mass civil disobedience strongly founded upon ahimsa (total non-violence) - which led India to independence, and has inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. Gandhi is commonly known and addressed in India and across the world as Mahatma Gandhi (from Sanskrit, Mahatma: Great Soul) and as Bapu (in many Indian languages, Father).

Beginning as an unobtrusive lawyer in South Africa, Gandhi organised the Indian community there in protests and demonstrations against oppressive laws and racial discrimination without any resort to violence. Successful in repealing the oppressive laws, Gandhi again employed the technique in organizing poor farmers in India to protest oppressive taxation and extensive discrimination, and carried it forward on the national stage to protest oppressive laws made by a foreign government. Becoming the leader of the Indian National Congress, Gandhi led a nationwide campaign for the alleviation of the poor, liberation of Indian women, for brotherhood amongst communities of differing religions and ethnicity, and for an end to untouchability and caste discrimination, but above all for Swaraj - the independence of India from foreign domination. Gandhi famously led Indians in the disobedience of the salt tax through the 400 kilometre (248 miles) Dandi Salt March in 1931, and in an open call for the British to Quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned for many years on numerous occasions in South Africa and India.

Throughout his life, Gandhi remained committed to non-violence and truth even in the most extreme situations. Gandhi was a student of Hindu philosophy and lived simply, organizing an ashram that was self-sufficient in its needs. He made his own clothes - the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with a charkha and lived on a simple vegetarian diet. He used rigorous fasts - abstaining from food and water for long periods - for self-purification as well as a means for protest. Gandhi's life and teachings inspired Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Biko and Aung San Suu Kyi and respectively the American civil rights movement and the freedom struggles in South Africa and Myanmar. In India, Gandhi was recognized as the Father of the Nation by Subhas Bose, and later by the whole nation. October 2nd, his birthday is each year commemorated as Gandhi Jayanti, and is a national holiday.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born into a Hindu Modh family in Porbandar, Gujarat, India in 1869. He was the son of Karamchand Gandhi, the diwan (Chief Minister) of Porbandar, and Putlibai, Karamchand's fourth wife (his previous three wives had died in childbirth), a Hindu of the Vaishnava order. Growing up with a devout mother and surrounded by the Jain influences of Gujarat, Gandhi learned from an early age the tenets of non-injury to living beings, vegetarianism, fasting for self-purification, and mutual tolerance between members of various creeds and sects. He was born into the vaishya, or business, caste. In May 1883, at the age of 13, Gandhi was married through his parents' arrangement to Kasturbha Makhanji (also spelled "Kasturbhai" or known as "Ba"), who was the same age as he. They had four sons: Harilal Gandhi, born in 1888; Manilal Gandhi, born in 1892; Ramdas Gandhi, born in 1897; and Devdas Gandhi, born in 1900. Gandhi was a mediocre student in his youth at Porbandar and later Rajkot. He barely passed the matriculation exam for the University of Bombay in 1887, where he joined Samaldas College in Bhavnagar. His family wanting him to become a barrister, he was also unhappy at the college. He leapt at the opportunity to study in England, which he viewed as "a land of philosophers and poets, the very centre of civilization."

At the age of 19 on September 4 1889, Gandhi went to University College London to train as a barrister. His time in London, the Imperial capital, was influenced by a vow he had made to his mother in the presence of a Jain monk Becharji, upon leaving India to observe the Hindu precepts of abstinence from meat, alcohol, and promiscuity. Although Gandhi experimented with adopting "English" customs - taking dancing lessons for example - he could not stomach his landlady's mutton and cabbage. She pointed him towards one of London's few vegetarian restaurants. Rather than simply go along with his mother's wishes, he read about, and intellectually embraced vegetarianism. He joined the Vegetarian Society, was elected to its executive committee, and founded a local chapter. He later credited this with giving him valuable experience in organizing institutions. Some of the vegetarians he met were members of the Theosophical Society, which had been founded in 1875 to further universal brotherhood and devoted to the study of Buddhist and Hindu Brahmanistic literature. They encouraged Gandhi to read the Bhagavad Gita. Not having shown a particular interest in religion before, he read works of and about Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism and other religions. He returned to India after being admitted to the British bar. He had limited success trying to establish a law practise in Bombay. He applied for a part-time job as a teacher at a Bombay high school but was turned down. He ended up returning to Rajkot to make a modest living drafting petitions for litigants but was forced to close down that business as well when he ran afoul of a British officer. In his autobiography, he describes this incident as a kind of unsuccessful lobbying attempt on behalf of his older brother. It was in this climate that (in 1893) he accepted a year-long contract from an Indian firm to a post in Natal, South Africa.

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