2. Who Was Mahatma Gandhi?
Gandhi was born on October 2nd, 1869 to Karamchand and Putlibai Gandhi. Gandhi's parents were very wealthy people and belonged to the Vaishya or Merchant caste. As a Young boy Gandhi had his turn of problems and disputes, for example Gandhi defied his religion Hinduism when he ate meat with the Muslim Sheik Methab who was the bully at his school. At the age of thirteen Gandhi's parents married him to Kasturbai, for child marriages were common in India. In School, Gandhi was a mediocre student and got into a lot of trouble with his parents.
As a young Adult Gandhi decided he should be a lawyer just like his grandfather and Donning a British Suit, went to London to study law. After he Graduated he lived as an attorney in Johannesburg, South Africa. Even though he was very successful he had been treated unfairly and was Discriminated there. That is when Gandhi thought it was time for a change. Leaving Worldly Possessions, Western Ideals and Dress, he reverted to a Hindi lifestyle.
Gandhi loved to read and he occasionally read the Bhagavad-Gita The Hindi Bible. He also read the New Testament in the Christian Bible. by reading the works of Count Leo Tolstoy Gandhi learned to embrace poverty and David Thoreau's "Essay on Civil Disobedience" taught him a way to fight back at the British Nonviolently. This "Transformation" as Gandhi called it, helped Gandhi become the Solider of nonviolence that liberated India.
From 1896 to 1915 Gandhi lived and worked in South Africa as an attorney. There he experienced Prejudice firsthand and this marked the beginning of his fight against Racial Prejudice in South Africa. Starting with Partitions and letters of Protest to the British Government, Gandhi increased the pressure by organizing an opposition to the Transversal Asiatic Laws. It was at a mass meeting that Gandhi called for an oath of Passive Resistance; This would become a major theme in the fight for Indian Independence. In 1907 he would replace Passive Resistance with the word Satyagraha.
Gandhi's fight in South Africa led him to champion many causes, among them: Miners, Opposition to the Asiatic Restriction Act; the marriage law. For their part in it, both Gandhi and his wife were jailed. It was in this time that he wrote Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule which foreshadowed the fight he was about to embark on in 1915