Mahatma Gandhi was born in Porbandar in the present state of Gujarat on October 2, 1869. He studied law at a University in London. In 1891 he was admitted to the British bar then later returned to India and tried to establish a law practice in Bombay with little success. He was hired by an Indian firm with interests in South Africa as a legal adviser. In Durban where he worked Gandhi found himself treated as a member of an inferior race. He was appalled at the widespread of denial of civil liberties and political rights to Indian immigrants in Africa. And he fought for elementary rights for Indians. Gandhi remained in South Africa for 20 years where he suffered imprisonment many times. In 1896 after being attacked and beaten by white South Africans, Gandhi started to teach a policy of passive restistance to, and noncooperation with the South African authorites. Gandhi got his insaparation from a Russian writer Leo Tolstoy and also the teachings of Christ and to the 19th century American writer Henry David Thoreau, especially to Thoreau's famous essay "Civil Disobedience." During the Boer War he organized an ambulance corps for the British army and commanded a Red Cross unit. After the war he returned to his campaign for Indian rights. He founded Tolstoy Farm in 1910 near Johannesburg which was a cooperative colony for Indians. In 1914 the government of South Africa gave in to some of his demands including recognition of Indian marriages and abolition of the poll tax. Gandhi then returned to India where he continued his civil rights movement.
             Gandhi became the international symbol of a free India. He lived a spiritual and ascetic life of prayer, fasting, and meditation. He refused earthly possessions, he wore the loincloth and shawl of the lowliest Indian and subsisted on vegetables, fruit juices, and goat's milk. Indians revered to him as a saint and started calling him Mahatma, which means "great soul." Ga...