Mahatma Gandhi

2 Oct 1869 – 31 Jan 194855 items

colonialismindia
Gandhi, with a walking stick, leads marchers on the Salt March, March 1930. Photographer unknown. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Gandhi, with a walking stick, leads marchers on the Salt March, March 1930. Photographer unknown. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

From Porbandar to Birla House

A shy lawyer who could not get a question out in a Bombay court spent twenty-one years in South Africa, where he invented a way of fighting a government by breaking its laws in public and going to jail for it. Back in India he turned it on the British Empire: a march to the sea for a pinch of salt, fasts, and more than six years in prison. Independence came in 1947 with a partition he opposed, and five and a half months later a Hindu nationalist shot him on his way to prayers.

How it is built

Periods frame the life: childhood in Kathiawar, London, twenty-one years in South Africa, the ashrams, the campaigns and the prisons. Campaigns are bands with their key days inside them, and the Salt March and the Great March of 1913 are drawn on the map as routes. Every date is Gregorian and every time UTC; India is five and a half hours ahead.

His views on race in South Africa and on caste are contested. Where they are, the notes give what he said and what named historians and B. R. Ambedkar said of it. Death tolls are given as the ranges the cited sources give.

Threads to follow

  • protest: satyagraha, from Johannesburg to Dandi

  • prison: the Old Fort, Yerwada and the Aga Khan Palace

  • fasts: from the Ahmedabad mill strike to the last fast

  • caste: untouchability, the Poona Pact and Ambedkar

  • independence: from non-cooperation to 15 August 1947

  • family: Kasturba and their four sons

Items

  1. Childhood in Porbandar and Rajkot

    ≈ 18 years, 11 months · Rajkot

  2. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is born in Porbandar

    Kirti Mandir, Porbandar

  3. Married at thirteen to Kasturbai Makhanji

    Kirti Mandir, Porbandar

  4. Sails from Bombay to study law

    Bombay (Mumbai)

  5. A law student in London

    ≈ 2 years, 8 months · The Inner Temple, London

  6. Called to the bar at the Inner Temple

    The Inner Temple, London

  7. Tongue-tied in a Bombay court

    Bombay (Mumbai)

  8. South Africa

    ≈ 21 years

  9. Thrown off the train at Pietermaritzburg

    Pietermaritzburg railway station

  10. The Natal Indian Congress is founded

    Durban

  11. Attacked by a mob in Durban

    Durban

  12. Stretcher-bearers at Spion Kop

    Spion Kop, Natal

  13. Phoenix Settlement, after a night with Ruskin

    Phoenix Settlement, Inanda, near Durban

  14. Stretcher-bearers in the Bambatha rebellion

  15. Satyagraha in the Transvaal

    ≈ 7 years, 10 months

  16. The oath at the Empire Theatre

    Empire Theatre (demolished), Johannesburg

  17. First prison sentence

    The Old Fort prison, Constitution Hill, Johannesburg

  18. Registration certificates burned at the Hamidia Mosque

    Hamidia Mosque, Fordsburg

  19. Hind Swaraj, written at sea

  20. Tolstoy Farm

    ≈ 3 years, 1 month · Tolstoy Farm, Lawley, near Johannesburg

  21. The Great March into the Transvaal

    The Great March, Charlestown to Balfour

  22. The Gandhi–Smuts agreement

  23. Home to Bombay

    Apollo Bunder, Bombay

  24. Champaran: defying an order to leave

    Motihari, Champaran

  25. The Sabarmati ashram

    ≈ 12 years, 8 months · Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad

  26. His first public fast, for Ahmedabad’s mill workers

    Ahmedabad

  27. Kheda: peasants refuse to pay the land tax

    Nadiad, Kheda district

  28. A national strike against the Rowlatt Acts

  29. The Amritsar massacre

    Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar

  30. Non-cooperation

    ≈ 1 year, 6 months

  31. Takes to the loincloth at Madurai

    Madurai

  32. Chauri Chaura

    Chauri Chaura, near Gorakhpur

  33. Prisoner in Yerwada

    ≈ 1 year, 10 months · Yerwada Central Jail, Poona

  34. The Great Trial

    Ahmedabad

  35. Twenty-one days’ fast for Hindu–Muslim unity

    21 days

  36. The Salt March

    25 days · The Salt March, Sabarmati to Dandi

  37. A lump of salt at Dandi

    Dandi beach

  38. Beatings at the Dharasana salt works

    Dharasana salt works

  39. The Gandhi–Irwin Pact

    Viceroy’s House (Rashtrapati Bhavan), New Delhi

  40. The second Round Table Conference, London

    2 months, 25 days · St James’s Palace, London

  41. With the mill workers of Darwen

    Darwen, Lancashire

  42. Fast unto death against separate electorates

    6 days · Yerwada Central Jail, Poona

  43. The Poona Pact

    Yerwada Central Jail, Poona

  44. Settles at Sevagram

    Sevagram Ashram, near Wardha

  45. Annihilation of Caste, and Gandhi’s reply

  46. “Quit India”: Do or Die

    Gowalia Tank (August Kranti) Maidan, Bombay

  47. Detained in the Aga Khan Palace

    ≈ 1 year, 9 months · Aga Khan Palace, Poona

  48. A twenty-one-day fast in detention

    Aga Khan Palace, Poona

  49. Kasturba dies in detention

    Aga Khan Palace, Poona

  50. Walking through Noakhali

    3 months, 25 days · Noakhali district, East Bengal (now Bangladesh)

  51. Independence and Partition

    Hydari Manzil, Beliaghata, Calcutta

  52. The Calcutta fast

    3 days · Hydari Manzil, Beliaghata, Calcutta

  53. The last fast, in Delhi

    5 days · Birla House (now Gandhi Smriti), New Delhi

  54. Assassinated at Birla House

    Birla House (now Gandhi Smriti), New Delhi

  55. Cremation at Raj Ghat

    Raj Ghat, Delhi