Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, Kathiawar, India, which was then part of the British Empire. 

Mahatma Gandhi was the leader of India’s non-violent independence movement against British rule and in South Africa who advocated for the civil rights of Indians. Gandhi studied law and organized boycotts against British institutions in peaceful forms of civil disobedience.

Gandhi grew up worshiping the Hindu god Vishnu and following Jainism, a morally rigorous ancient Indian religion that espoused non-violence, fasting, meditation and vegetarianism.

During Gandhi’s first stay in London, from 1888 to 1891, he became more committed to joining the executive committee of the London Vegetarian Society, and started to read a variety of sacred texts to learn more about world religions.

Living in South Africa, Gandhi continued to study world religions. “The religious spirit within me became a living force,” he wrote of his time there. He immersed himself in sacred Hindu spiritual texts.

India’s Independence from Great Britain

http://www.thehindu.com/migration_catalog/article10249384.ece/ALTERNATES/LANDSCAPE_615/Nehru_150734f

India’s Independece from Great Britain

Gandhi returned to India to find himself imprisoned once again in January 1932 during a crackdown by India’s new viceroy, Lord Willingdon. After his eventual release, Gandhi left the Indian National Congress in 1934, and leadership passed to his protégé Jawaharlal Nehru. He again stepped away from politics to focus on education, poverty and the problems afflicting India’s rural areas.

As Great Britain found itself engulfed in World War II in 1942, though, Gandhi launched the “Quit India” movement that called for the immediate British withdrawal from the country. In August 1942, the British arrested Gandhi, his wife and other leaders of the Indian National Congress and detained them in the Aga Khan Palace in present-day Pune. “I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside at the liquidation of the British Empire,” Prime Minister W. Churchill told Parliament in support of the crackdown. With his health failing, Gandhi was released after a 19-month detainment, but not before his 74-year-old wife died in his arms in February 1944.

After the Labour Party defeated Churchill’s Conservatives in the British general election of 1945, it began negotiations for Indian independence with the Indian National Congress and Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s Muslim League. Gandhi played an active role in the negotiations, but he could not prevail in his hope for a unified India. Instead, the final plan called for the partition of the subcontinent along religious lines into two independent states—predominantly Hindu India and predominantly Muslim Pakistan.

Violence between Hindus and Muslims flared even before independence took effect on August 15, 1947. Afterwards, the killings multiplied. Gandhi toured riot-torn areas in an appeal for peace and fasted in an attempt to end the bloodshed. Some Hindus, however, increasingly viewed Gandhi as a traitor for expressing sympathy toward Muslims.

source: https://www.biography.com/people/mahatma-gandhi-930

Question:

1.      Who is inspiring person in the text?

a.       Helen Keler

b.      Mahatma  Gandhi

c.       Mark Zuckerberg

d.      Karamchand Gandhi

2.      When was Mahatma Gandhi born?

a.       October 2, 1869, in Porbandar

b.      January 24, 1932 in London

c.       July 11, 1869, in India

d.      May 10, 1888, in Kathiawar

3.      “The religious spirit within me became a living force,” he wrote of his time there. Word there in that sentence reverse to….

a.       India

b.      London

c.       South Africa

d.      North Africa

4.      When was Mahatma Gandhi  arrested by the British?

a.       In August 1942

b.      In May 1942

c.       In August 1945

d.      In May 1945

5.      Mahatma Gandhi  committed to be

a.       Vegetarian

b.      Doctor

c.       Business man

d.      Lecture