Mahatma Gandhi, India's Father of the Nation, led the country's independence movement through 'Satyagraha', resistance to oppression through mass civil disobedience, and 'ahimsa', total non-violence. He has inspired movements for civil rights across the world.

Born on October 2, 1869, at Porbandar, Kathiawar in western Indian state of Gujarat, to Karamchand Gandhi and Putlibai, he was married at the age of 13 to 14-year old Kasturbai Makhanji. He had four sons.

Gandhi first employed non-violent civil disobedience in South Africa, in the resident Indian community's struggle for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers in protesting excessive land-tax and discrimination by the British government.

In 1921, he assumed the leadership of the Indian National Congress and led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, for expanding women's rights, for building religious and ethnic amity, for ending untouchability, and above all for achieving the independence of India from foreign domination.

Gandhi led the Non-cooperation movement in 1922. To protest the British-imposed salt tax, he led 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, a practitioner of non-violence and truth, advocated that others follow the principles. He lived modestly and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn he had hand spun on a charkha. He ate simple vegetarian food, and also undertook long fasts as means of both self-purification and social protest.

Gandhi was also a prolific writer. For decades he edited several newspapers including Harijan in Gujarati, Hindi and English; Indian Opinion while in South Africa and, Young India, in English, and Navajivan, a Gujarati monthly. He also wrote a few books including his autobiography, An Autobiography or My Experiments with Truth.

On 30 January 1948, Gandhi was shot and killed on the grounds of the Birla Bhavan (Birla House) in New Delhi.

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