6 Things You Might Not Know About Gandhi
1. Gandhi was a teenage newlywed.
At 13, Gandhi, whose father was the “diwan,” or chief minister, of a sequence of small princely states in western India, wed Kasturba Makanji (1869-1944), then additionally a teen and the daughter of a service provider. It was an organized marriage, and Gandhi had been engaged to Kasturba since he was seven. The couple went on to have 4 sons. Even when Gandhi took a vow of celibacy in 1906 for causes of spirituality, self-discipline and dedication to public service, his spouse remained married to him till her loss of life at age 74. She died on the Aga Khan Palace in present-day Pune, India, the place the Gandhis had been interned by the British since 1942 for his or her political activism.
2. Gandhi acquired his begin as an activist in South Africa, not India.
In 1888, Gandhi left India to review regulation in London, England. When he returned to his homeland in 1891, he had problem discovering employment as a lawyer, so in 1893 he traveled to South Africa, the place an Indian agency had given him a one-year contract to do authorized work. In South Africa, which was then below management of the British and the Dutch (referred to as Boers), he, like different Indians there, encountered frequent discrimination. This mistreatment prompted Gandhi to start campaigning for the civil rights of Indians in South Africa, and he finally developed his idea of “satyagraha” (“firmness in truth”), or nonviolent resistance. Despite being arrested and imprisoned a number of occasions, Gandhi remained in South Africa till 1914. Afterward, he returned to India, the place he turned a transformative determine and led the nonviolent social motion motion for his homeland’s independence.
3. Gandhi was murdered by a fellow Hindu.
While strolling to a prayer assembly in New Delhi on the night of January 30, 1948, Gandhi was shot 3 times at shut vary by Hindu nationalist Nathuram Godse. The gunman blamed Gandhi for going together with the 1947 plan that partitioned British India alongside non secular traces into two new unbiased states: Hindu-dominated India and Muslim-dominated Pakistan. (In truth, Gandhi had opposed the partition, however later acknowledged: “Partition is bad. But whatever is past is past. We have only to look to the future.”) Following the partition, riots broke out throughout India between Hindus and Muslims, and Godse was angered by Gandhi’s requires an finish to the bloodshed and believed the pacifist icon was pandering to Muslims. Godse was rapidly apprehended after Gandhi’s homicide, and in November 1949 he and a co-conspirator have been hanged for his or her crimes. Another group of males concerned within the plot, together with Godse’s brother, acquired jail sentences.
4. Gandhi was a person of peace, however by no means received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Gandhi was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1937, 1938, 1939 and 1947, however by no means acquired the award, which was first handed out in 1901. He additionally was nominated in 1948, the 12 months he was assassinated, however the Nobel committee opted to not bestow him with the award posthumously. Instead, the committee introduced there was “no suitable living candidate” that 12 months and no winner was named. American civil-rights chief Martin Luther King Jr., the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner, acknowledged Gandhi‘s work in his acceptance speech, and the 1989 Nobel winner, the 14th Dalai Lama, called his award a tribute to “my mentor, Mahatma Gandhi.” In 2006, the Nobel committee publicly expressed regret that Gandhi had never been given the prize.
5. Gandhi was extremely shy as a child.
When Gandhi was growing up, few people would’ve predicted he’d someday appeal to tens of millions of followers, be thought-about the daddy of his nation. In truth, as a boy, Gandhi was a middling scholar and very shy. He even described working house from faculty so he wouldn’t have to speak to anyone.
6. Mohandas and Indira weren’t associated.
Despite sharing a final title, Mohandas Gandhi and Indira Gandhi (1917-84), India’s prime minister from 1966 to 1977 and 1980 to 1984, weren’t kin. Indira Gandhi was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964), the primary prime minister of unbiased India , from 1947 till his loss of life. After Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards, she was succeeded as prime minister by her son Rajiv (1944-91), who served within the place till 1989. He too was assassinated, in a suicide bombing blamed on a terrorist group from Sri Lanka.
