Gandhi Jayanti
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi, the’ apostle of peace and the father of the nation was born on 2 October 1869 at Porbandar in Gujarat. In his autobiography
My experiments with Truth Gandhi recalls that his childhood and teen age years were characterized by education in a local school, marriage to Kasturba at the age of 13 and an intrinsic love for ‘truth’ and ‘duty’.
At the age of the eighteen, he went to England to study law. In 1891, Gandhi returned to India- and set up practice at Rajkot.
In 1893, he received an offer from an Indian firm in South Africa. With his two minor sons and Kasturba, he went to South Africa at the age of twenty-four.
Colonial and racial discrimination showed its ugly colours in the famous train incident, when he was thrown off the compartment meant for the ‘Sahibs’.
Gandhi returned to India in 1915. After an interrupted stay in Santiniketan in February-March, 1915, Gandhi collected his companions of Phoenix and established the Satyagraha Ashram in Ahmedabad city.
Between 1917 and 1918 Gandhi participated in two peasant movements in Champaran (Bihar) and Kaira (Gujarat) and in the labour dispute in Ahmedabad itself.
Gandhi was approached for counsel; and in a meeting of the All India Khilafat Conference on 24 November 1919, he proposed that India should respond by non-violent non-cooperation.
1926 was declared by Gandhi to be his year of silence. His famous march to Dandi in March 1930 started a countrywide movement to violate the Salt-Law.
Gandhi was arrested on 4 May 193o, and the Government struck hard to crush the movement, but failed.
Gandhi was in prison when the Communal Award was announced in August 1932, providing for the introduction of separate electorate for the Depressed Classes. He opposed this attempt to divide the Hindu community and threatened to fast unto death to prevent it.
On 8 May 1933 he announced a fast for 21 days for the Harijan cause. After coming out of prison Gandhi devoted himself exclusively to the cause of the `Harijans’. The weekly Harijan now took the place of the Young India, which had served the national cause from 1919 to 1932.
In 1942, his ‘Quit India” slogan was to serve as the final signal to British dominion in India. The partition of India and Pakistan came as a personal shock to Gandhi. On 30 January 1948, Gandhi was assassinated in New Delhi.
