Missesmidnight's List: History- Figures Research Paper

• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
• earning a degree in law in 1891 from the University College London
• Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, increasing economic self-reliance, but above all for achieving Swaraj—the independence of India from foreign domination.
• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi^[8] was born on 2 October 1869^[1] in Porbandar, a coastal town which was then part of the Bombay Presidency, British India.
• His father, Karamchand Gandhi (1822–1885), who belonged to the Hindu Modh community, served as the diwan (a high official) of Porbander state, a small princely state in the Kathiawar Agency of British India.^[10][11] His grandfather was Uttamchand Gandhi, also called Utta Gandhi.^[10] His mother, Putlibai, who came from the Hindu Pranami Vaishnava community, was Karamchand's fourth wife, the first three wives having apparently died in childbirth.
• In May 1883, the 13-year-old Mohandas was married to 14-year-old Kasturbai Makhanji (her first name was usually shortened to "Kasturba", and affectionately to "Ba")
• "As we didn't know much about marriage, for us it meant only wearing new clothes, eating sweets and playing with relatives."
• encouraged Gandhi to join them in reading the Bhagavad Gita both in translation as well as in the original.^[22] Not having shown interest in religion before, he became interested in religious thought.

• Gandhi dedicated his life to the wider purpose of discovering truth, or Satya. He tried to achieve this by learning from his own mistakes and conducting experiments on himself. He called his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth.

   

  Watson argues that Gandhi based satyagraha on the Vedantic ideal of self-realization, and notes it also contains Jain and Buddhist notions of nonviolence, vegetarianism, the avoidance of killing, and 'agape' (universal love). Gandhi also borrowed Christian-Islamic ideas of equality, the brotherhood of man, and the concept of turning the other cheek.^[96]
• Gandhi summarised his beliefs first when he said "God is Truth". He would later change this statement to "Truth is God". Thus, Satya (Truth) in Gandhi's philosophy is "God
• Gandhi stated that the most important battle to fight was overcoming his own demons, fears, and insecurities.
• The essence of Satyagraha (lit. 'insistence/holding of truth') is that it seeks to eliminate antagonisms without harming the antagonists themselves
• It arms the individual with moral power rather than physical power.
• “makes no distinction between kinsmen and strangers, young and old, man and woman, friend and foe.”
• If we want to cultivate a true spirit of democracy, we cannot afford to be intolerant.
• Although Gandhi was not the originator of the principle of non-violence, he was the first to apply it in the political field on a large scale.
• "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
• "There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for."^[104]
• He told the British people in 1940, "I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions... If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them."
• , "where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence."
• He wrote the book The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism and wrote for the London Vegetarian Society's publication.^[110]
• Gandhi became a strict vegetarian
• Gandhi used fasting as a political device, often threatening suicide unless demands were met. Gandhi noted in his autobiography that vegetarianism was the beginning of his deep commitment to Brahmacharya; without total control of the palate, his success in Bramacharya would likely falter. "You wish to know what the marks of a man are who wants to realize Truth which is God," he wrote. "He must reduce himself to zero and have perfect control over all his senses-beginning with the palate or tongue."
• Congress publicized the fasts as a political action that generated widespread sympathy.
• his beliefs regarding health offered a critique of both the traditional Hindu system of ayurvedic medicine and Western concepts.
• "brahmacharya" or the elimination of all desire in the face of temptation.
• Nai Talim is a spiritual principle which states that knowledge and work are not separat
• The three pillars of Gandhi's pedagogy were its focus on the life-long character of education, its social character and its form as a holistic process. For Gandhi, education is 'the moral development of the person', a process that is by definition 'life-long'.
• His idea was that true self-rule in a country means that every person rules his or herself and that there is no state which enforces laws upon the people.
• This would be achieved over time with nonviolent conflict mediation, as power is divested from layers of hierarchical authorities, ultimately to the individual, which would come to embody the ethic of nonviolence. Rather than a system where rights are enforced by a higher authority, people are self-governed by mutual responsibilities.
• A free India for him meant the existence of thousands of self-sufficient small communities (an idea possibly from Tolstoy) who rule themselves without hindering others.
• One of Gandhis earliest publications, Hind Swaraj published in Gujarati in 1909 is recognised as the intellectual blueprint of India's freedom movement. The book was translated into English the next year, with a copyright legend that read “No Rights Reserved”
• Gandhi's complete works were published by the Indian government under the name The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi in the 1960s.
• a revised edition of the complete works sparked a controversy, as Gandhian followers argue that the government incorporated the changes for political purposes.^{[citation needed]}The Indian government later withdrew the revised edition.
• The word Mahatma, while often mistaken for Gandhi's given name in the West, is taken from the Sanskrit words maha (meaning Great) and atma (meaning Soul). Rabindranath Tagore is said to have accorded the title to Gandhi.^[133] In his autobiography, Gandhi nevertheless explains that he never valued the title, and was often pained by it.^[134]

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