Mahatma Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (October 2, 1869 – January 30, 1948) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial patriot, and political ethicist who led the successful movement for India's independence from British control through peaceful resistance. He sparked ivil rights and freedom movements all across the world. The epithet Mahtm (from Sanskrit for 'great-souled, venerable') was initially ascribed to him in South Africa in 1914 and is now used worldwide. Gandhi, he was brought up in a Hindu family on the Gujarat coast, learned law at the Inner Temple in London, he was called to the bar at the age of 22 in June 1891. He traveled to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a dispute after two uncertain years in India, when he was unable to establish a successful law practice. He afterwards spent 21 years in South Africa. It was here that Gandhi raised a family and first used nonviolent resistance in a civil rights struggle. In 1915, at the age of 45, he went to India and immediately began organizing peasants, farmers, and urban laborers to protest exorbitant land taxation and discrimination. Read More Read Less