Out - of the - hat
"First they ignore you, they they laugh at you,
then they fight you, then you win"
- Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
Born: October 2, 1869 Porbander, India
Died: Assassinated January 30, 1948, New Delhi
Also Known as
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
("Great Soul"),
Father of the nation
Although generally a obedient child, at one point Gandhi experimented with eating meat, smoking and a small amount of stealing which he later regretted these things. By the age of 13 Gandhi was married to Kasturbai.
In his search for vegetarian restaurants, Gandhi found and joined the London vegetarian society which consisted of an intellectual crowd who introduced Gandhi to different authors, such as Henry David Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy.
When the Boer war in Africa began in 1899 Gandhi organized the Indian ambulance corp in which 1100 Indians heroically helped injured British soldiers.
Gandhi was the leading light in India's freedom struggle against the British rule. The uniqueness of this freedom struggle was that it was essentially based on Ahimsa (non - violence) & Satya (truth).
- Mahatma Gandhi's birthday on October 2, is treated as a celebratory day known as Gandhi Jayanti, it is a national holiday
- January 30, the day he was assassinated, is celebrated as martyr's day in India
The Formative Years
Three people had a lasting impression in molding the thoughts and character of the young Gandhi.
- The 1st was his mother Putlibai who was a deeply religious woman. Though unlettered, her qualities of love, sacrifice and service for her children and others, deeply influenced the impressionable mind of the young Gandhi.
- The other two were Shravana & Raja (King) Harishchandra, two very famous historical characters. From Shravana he imbibed the quality of love & from king Harishchandra, he imbibed the value of truth. Gandhi himself admits this in his biography
