Tomer kagan biography of mahatma gandhi for kids

Thinker, statesman and nationalist leader, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi not only led his own country to independence but also influenced political activists of many persuasions throughout the world with his methods and philosophy of nonviolent confrontation, or civil disobedience. For him, the universe was regulated by a Supreme Intelligence or Principle, which he preferred to call satya Truth and, as a concession to convention, God.

Married by arrangement at 13, Gandhi went to London to study law when he was He was admitted to the bar in and for a while practiced law in Bombay. From to he worked for an Indian firm in South Africa. Returning to India in January , Gandhi soon became involved in labor organizing. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre of Amritsar , in which troops fired on and killed hundreds of nationalist demonstrators, turned him to direct political protest.

Within a year he was the dominant figure in the Indian National Congress, which he launched on a policy of noncooperation with the British in Although total noncooperation was abandoned, Gandhi continued civil disobedience, organizing protest marches against unpopular British measures, such as the salt tax , and boycotts of British goods.

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Gandhi was repeatedly imprisoned by the British and resorted to hunger strikes as part of his civil disobedience. He believed in manual labor and simple living; he spun thread and wove cloth for his own garments and insisted that his followers do so, too. He disagreed with those who wanted India to industrialize. Gandhi was also tireless in trying to forge closer bonds between the Hindu majority and the numerous minorities of India, particularly the Muslims.

His greatest failure, in fact, was his inability to dissuade Indian Muslims, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, from creating a separate state, Pakistan. When India gained independence in , after negotiations in which he was a principal participant, Gandhi opposed the partition of the subcontinent with such intensity that he launched a mass movement against it.

Some were attracted by his emphasis on political and economic decentralisation, others by his insistence on individual freedom, moral integrity, unity of means and ends, and social service; still others by his satyagraha and political activism. For others, it cultivated a spirit of non-violence, encouraged the habits of collective self-help, and helped lay the foundations of a stable, morally committed and democratic government.