BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF MAHATMA GANDHI & FEW OF HIS MEMORABLE QUOTES

Known as 'Mahatma' (great soul), Gandhi was the leader of the Indian nationalist movement against British rule, and is widely considered the father of his country. His doctrine of non-violent protest to achieve political and social progress has been hugely influential.

                                            

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 in Porbandar in Gujarat. After university, he went to London to train as a barrister. He returned to India in 1891 and in 1893 accepted a job at an Indian law firm in Durban, South Africa. Gandhi was appalled by the treatment of Indian immigrants there, and joined the struggle to obtain basic rights for them. During his 20 years in South Africa he was sent to prison many times. Influenced primarily by Hinduism, but also by elements of Jainism and Christianity as well as writers including Tolstoy and Thoreau, Gandhi developed the satyagraha ('devotion to truth'), a new non-violent way to redress wrongs. In 1914, the South African government conceded to many of Gandhi's demands.

Gandhi returned to India shortly afterwards. In 1919, British plans to intern people suspected of sedition - the Rowlatt Acts - prompted Gandhi to announce a new satyagraha which attracted millions of followers. A demonstration against the acts resulted in the Amritsar Massacre by British troops. By 1920, Gandhi was a dominant figure in Indian politics. He transformed the Indian National Congress, and his programme of peaceful non-cooperation with the British included boycotts of British goods and institutions, leading to arrests of thousands.

In 1922, Gandhi himself was sentenced to six years' imprisonment. He was released after two years and withdrew from politics, devoting himself to trying to improve Hindu-Muslim relations, which had worsened. In 1930, Gandhi proclaimed a new campaign of civil disobedience in protest at a tax on salt, leading thousands on a 'March to the Sea' to symbolically make their own salt from seawater.

In 1931, Gandhi attended the Round Table Conference in London, as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress, but resigned from the party in 1934 in protest at its use of non-violence as a political expedient. He was replaced as leader by Jawaharlal Nehru.

In 1945, the British government began negotiations which culminated in the Mountbatten Plan of June 1947, and the formation of the two new independent states of India and Pakistan, divided along religious lines. Massive inter-communal violence marred the months before and after independence. Gandhi was opposed to partition, and now fasted in an attempt to bring calm in Calcutta and Delhi. On 30 January 1948, he was assassinated in Delhi by a Hindu fanatic.

Mahatma Gandhi was a great scholar, thinker & his knowledge about life, world, religion, people,society was remarkable. What he said are pearls to the quotes collectors. Few of his quotes are given below not for only quote lovers but for everyone of anywhere of anytime -

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others." 

"We may stumble and fall but shall rise again; it should be enough if we did not run away from the battle."

"Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment."

"The good man is the friend of all living things."

"Poverty is the worst form of violence."

"I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following."

"I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won't presume to probe into the faults of others."

"Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men."

"There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed."

"Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it."

"Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion."

"Man can never be a woman's equal in the spirit of selfless service with which nature has endowed her."

"Where love is, there God is also."

"The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly. The soul must languish when we give all our thought to the body."

"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty."

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