Mohandas Karamchard Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchard Gandhi was born on October 2 1869 into a family of merchants. Breaking with caste tradition he went to England to study law when he was 19 years of age. His fellow students shunned him because he was an Indian. It was in London where he read Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience", which inspired his principle of non violence. He returned to India in 1891. But two years later he left again to South Africa where he was to stay for 20 years. He was the country's first "coloured" lawyer to be admitted to the bar.

Deeply troubled by the country's racism towards Indians, he founded the Natal Indian Congress to agitate for Indian rights in 1894.

Gandhi was the pre-eminent political n spiritual leader of India during the Indian Independence movement.

The name "mahatma" means "great soul", and his philosophy of peaceful resistance is widely credited with having forced the peaceful end of the British rule of India in 1947, the year before his death. On January 30 1948 India's "Father of the Nation" Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated, he was killed by a fellow Hindu.

He is officially honored in India as Father of the Nation and his birthday is commemorated as a national holiday.