Freshman Classes: Gandhi´s text.

MAHATMA GANDHI
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (October 2nd 1869 – January 30th 1948) was a major political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian independence movement. He was the pioneer of resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, firmly founded upon total non-violence which led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. He is commonly known around the world as Mahatma Gandhi which means "Great Soul". He is officially honoured in India as the Father of the Nation; his birthday, 2 October, is commemorated there as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and world-wide as the International Day of Non-Violence.
Gandhi first employed non-violent civil disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian community's struggle for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he set about organizing peasants, farmers, and urban laborers in protesting excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, for expanding women's rights, for building religious and ethnic amity, for ending untouchability, for increasing economic self-reliance, but above all for achieving the independence of India from foreign domination. Gandhi famously led Indians in protesting the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in calling for the British to Quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned for many years, on numerous occasions, in both South Africa and India.
Gandhi practiced non-violence and truth in all situations, and advocated that others do the same. He lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl. He ate simple vegetarian food, and also undertook long fasts as means of both self-purification and social protest.
On January 30, 1948, Gandhi was shot and killed while having his nightly public walk on the grounds of the Birla House in New Delhi. The assassin, Nathuram Godse, was a Hindu radical with links to the extremist Hindu Mahasabha, who held Gandhi responsible for weakening India by insisting upon a payment to Pakistan.
Gandhi's ashes were poured into urns which were sent across India for memorial services. Most were immersed at the Sangam at Allahabad on 12 February 1948 but some were secreted away.