•   Gandhi was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist and political ethicist.

•   He is known for employing nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule.

•   Born in a Hindu family in Pobandar (GJ) India, Gandhi was trained in law at the Inner Temple, London, and was called to the bar at age 22 in June 1889.

•   He moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit and went on to live in South Africa for 21 years.

•   He helped found the Natal Indian Congress in 1894, and through this organisation, he moulded the Indian community of South Africa into a unified political force.

•   Mahatma Gandhi founded two ashrams for community living in South Africa – Phoenix Settlement in Durban and Tolstoy Farm in Johannesburg.

•   In 1915, aged 45, he returned to India and soon set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination.

•   Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns and movements for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, and, above all, achieving swaraj or self-rule.

•   For decades he edited several newspapers including Harijan in Gujarati, Hindi and English language, Indian Opinion while in South Africa, Young India, in English, and Navajivan, a Gujarati monthly, on his return to India.

•   One of Gandhi's earliest publications, Hind Swaraj, published in Gujarati in 1909, became the intellectual blueprint for India's independence movement.

•   Gandhi also wrote several books including his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth.

•   His most prominent movements in India against the colonial rule are following:

o  Champaran agitations (1917)

o  Ahamedabad strike (1917)

o  Kheda agitations (1918)

o  Khilafat movement (1920)

o  Non-co-operation movement (1920)

o  Salt Satyagraha (Salt March) (12 March-6 April, 1930)

o  Civil Disobedience movement (1930-1934)

o  Quit India movement (1942)

•   He died in 1948, when Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist, fired three bullets into his chest from a pistol at close range.

•   Gandhi's birthday, 2 October, is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Nonviolence.