Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

Otherwise known as Mahatma (`Great-Soul`), Gandhi was the leader of the Indian nationalist movement against British rule, and is widely considered the father of his country. During his political career, he won wide approval for his doctrine of non-violent protest to achieve political and social progress.

After university, Gandhi went to London to train as a barrister. There he met English socialists and Fabians such as George Bernard Shaw, whose ideas contributed greatly to the shaping of his personality and politics. He returned to India in 1891, then accepted a job at an Indian law firm in South Africa.

Racial intolerance there saw him evicted from train carriages, barred from hotels and beaten up. He became more assertive, and began educating fellow Indians in South Africa on their rights. In 1894 he opposed a bill that would deprive Indians of their right to vote, and rapidly became a proficient political activist. While unable to stop the bill, he succeeded in attracting widespread attention to his cause.

While in South Africa, Gandhi developed the satyagraha (`devotion to truth`), a new non-violent way to redress wrongs. The campaign lasted for over seven years, and in 1913 hundreds of people went to jail - and thousands of striking Indian miners faced imprisonment and injury - for the cause. Eventually the South African government, under British and Indian pressure, agreed to a compromise solution, and peace was restored. Gandhi returned to India in 1914. Then in 1919, British plans to intern people suspected of sedition prompted him to announce a new satyagraha. The result shook the subcontinent, and indirectly led to the Amritsar Massacre, in which nearly 400 Indians were killed by British forces.

By 1920, Gandhi dominated Indian politics. He transformed the Indian National Congress, and his programme of peaceful non co-operation with the British included boycotts of British goods and institutions, leading to arrests of thousands of the satyagrahis - all cheerfully lining up for prison, for defying British laws. In March 1922, however, he was sentenced to six years` imprisonment. He was released after two years, but by then the political landscape had changed dramatically. The Congress Party had split and Hindu-Muslim unity had disintegrated.

Gandhi`s political influence was minimal for some years, until the Calcutta Congress in December 1928, where he demanded dominion status for India, and threatened a nation-wide campaign for complete independence. In 1931 he attended the Round Table Conference, in London, as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress, but resigned from the party in 1934 in protest at its use of non-violence as a political expedient.

The new Labour Government in Britain from 1945 brought negotiations, and these culminated in the Mountbatten Plan of June 1947, and the formation of the two new dominions of India and Pakistan in mid-August.

The country, however, was split. Killings and riots raged between Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi`s appeals for calm were ignored, and so he began fasting. This stopped the riots in Calcutta in September, and in Delhi in January 1948 - but only days later, Gandhi was shot dead in Delhi by Nathuram Godse, a young Hindu fanatic.