Allisson lozz biography of mahatma gandhi

Among these was Nathuram Godse , a militant Hindu nationalist from Pune , western India, who assassinated Gandhi by firing three bullets into his chest at an interfaith prayer meeting in Delhi on 30 January Gandhi's birthday, 2 October, is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanti , a national holiday , and worldwide as the International Day of Nonviolence.

Allisson lozz biography of mahatma gandhi

Gandhi is considered to be the Father of the Nation in post-colonial India. During India's nationalist movement and in several decades immediately after, he was also commonly called Bapu, an endearment roughly meaning "father". Early life and background Parents Gandhi's father, Karamchand Uttamchand Gandhi — , served as the dewan chief minister of Porbandar state.

His first two wives died young, after each had given birth to a daughter, and his third marriage was childless. In , Karamchand sought his third wife's permission to remarry; that year, he married Putlibai — , who also came from Junagadh, [6] and was from a Pranami Vaishnava family. Karamchand's family then rejoined him in Rajkot. As a child, Gandhi was described by his sister Raliat as "restless as mercury, either playing or roaming about.

One of his favourite pastimes was twisting dogs' ears. In his autobiography, Gandhi states that they left an indelible impression on his mind. Gandhi writes: "It haunted me and I must have acted Harishchandra to myself times without number. Mohandas was born into a Gujarati Hindu Modh Bania family. To keep two or three consecutive fasts was nothing to her.

There, he studied the rudiments of arithmetic, history, the Gujarati language and geography. Recalling the day of their marriage, Gandhi once said, "As we didn't know much about marriage, for us it meant only wearing new clothes, eating sweets and playing with relatives. Many decades later, Gandhi wrote "if animal passion had not blinded me, I should have been spared the torture of separation from my father during his last moments.

The two deaths anguished Gandhi. However, Gandhi dropped out and returned to his family in Porbandar. Gandhi's uncle Tulsidas also tried to dissuade his nephew, but Gandhi wanted to go. To persuade his wife and mother, Gandhi made a vow in front of his mother that he would abstain from meat, alcohol, and women. Gandhi's brother, Laxmidas, who was already a lawyer, cheered Gandhi's London studies plan and offered to support him.

Putlibai gave Gandhi her permission and blessing. British authorities arrested Gandhi in March and tried him for sedition; he was sentenced to six years in prison but was released in after undergoing an operation for appendicitis. A Divided Movement In , after British authorities made some concessions, Gandhi again called off the resistance movement and agreed to represent the Congress Party at the Round Table Conference in London.

In , Gandhi announced his retirement from politics in, as well as his resignation from the Congress Party, in order to concentrate his efforts on working within rural communities. Drawn back into the political fray by the outbreak of World War II , Gandhi again took control of the INC, demanding a British withdrawal from India in return for Indian cooperation with the war effort.

Instead, British forces imprisoned the entire Congress leadership, bringing Anglo-Indian relations to a new low point. In view of those developments, he reached out to the Muslims and tried to corporate with them in the fight against Britain. He worked extensively with the Sunni Muslims and the Khilafat movement, an organization that was in bed with the Ottomans.

This move of Gandhi drew sharp criticism from influential Hindus in the society. They were against all sorts of cooperation with the Sunni Muslims. Regardless, his cooperation with the Muslims catapulted him into the most prominent Indian civil rights activist at the time. His efforts also helped reduce tensions between Hindus and Muslims.

He reasoned that should that cooperatin come to an end, British rule in India would end. So he sought to halt all forms of cooperation with Britain. This stance of his came after Britain failed to heed his protest against the passage of the Rowlatt Act, a very discriminatory law that economically and politically disenfranchised Indians.

Upon the passage, he galvanized his nation and rallied scores of people to engage in what is termed as satyagraha, peaceful protest. Additionally, he entreated his fellow Indians to boycott English goods and services. In April , he was arrested for defying an order to enter Delhi. Shortly after his arrest, there were massive protests and riots all across the country.

Those protests culminated in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of April 13, On that day, scores of Indians were shot down by British officers under the command of Reginald Dyer. Gandhi was disheartened by the horrific events that took place Jallianwala. He criticized his fellow Indians for resorting to violent protests against Britain. He vehemently rejected such moves and called for only peaceful forms of protests.

To put an end to the violence, he engaged in a series of fasting rituals, which almost killed him. Shortly after that, the riots in the country abated and a modicum of law and order was restored. Buoyed on by this, he was elected leader of the Indian National Congress. Campaigning on themes such as Swaraj i. He sought to make India unattractive for Britain by going after the revenue streams.

Fellow immigrants convinced Gandhi to stay and lead the fight against the legislation. After a brief trip to India in late and early , Gandhi returned to South Africa with his wife and children. Gandhi ran a thriving legal practice, and at the outbreak of the Boer War, he raised an all-Indian ambulance corps of 1, volunteers to support the British cause, arguing that if Indians expected to have full rights of citizenship in the British Empire, they also needed to shoulder their responsibilities.

After years of protests, the government imprisoned hundreds of Indians in , including Gandhi. Under pressure, the South African government accepted a compromise negotiated by Gandhi and General Jan Christian Smuts that included recognition of Hindu marriages and the abolition of a poll tax for Indians. In Gandhi founded an ashram in Ahmedabad, India, that was open to all castes.

Wearing a simple loincloth and shawl, Gandhi lived an austere life devoted to prayer, fasting and meditation. In response, Gandhi called for a Satyagraha campaign of peaceful protests and strikes. Violence broke out instead, which culminated on April 13, , in the Massacre of Amritsar. Troops led by British Brigadier General Reginald Dyer fired machine guns into a crowd of unarmed demonstrators and killed nearly people.

Gandhi became a leading figure in the Indian home-rule movement. Calling for mass boycotts, he urged government officials to stop working for the Crown, students to stop attending government schools, soldiers to leave their posts and citizens to stop paying taxes and purchasing British goods. Rather than buy British-manufactured clothes, he began to use a portable spinning wheel to produce his own cloth.

The spinning wheel soon became a symbol of Indian independence and self-reliance. Gandhi assumed the leadership of the Indian National Congress and advocated a policy of non-violence and non-cooperation to achieve home rule. After British authorities arrested Gandhi in , he pleaded guilty to three counts of sedition.