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Mahatma Gandhi timeline infographic
Graphic shows key events in Mahatma Gandhi’s life.
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Mahatma Gandhi timeline

January 30, 2008 - People in India and around the world mark the 60th anniversary of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, who led the Indian nationalist movement against British rule but was shot dead by a Hindu fanatic just months after independence and partition from Pakistan. Officially accorded the status of Father of the Nation, Gandhi’s doctrine of non-violent protest has inspired civil rights movements across the world.

“Generations to come...will scarcely believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon earth”. Albert Einstein’s words from 1944 bear testimony to the near-mythical status held by Mahatma (the title means “great soul”) Gandhi in his own lifetime.

Campaigning first in South Africa against racial oppression of Indian immigrants, then against British rule in India where he rose to lead the Congress Party, he espoused strategies that graduated from orderly petition to passive resistance to civil disobedience -- but never violence.

Eschewing the material wealth available to him as a lawyer, he walked the world stage in a white loincloth, steel-rimmed spectacles and pauper’s shoes, causing Winston Churchill to spit that he was “a seditious Middle Temple lawyer posing as a fakir”.

In fact, Gandhi’s adopted style was the result of harsh personal scrutiny and deep consideration of the moral structure of the world. He read widely across all religions and was greatly influenced towards an ascetic life by the writings of Leo Tolstoy.

Gandhi was imprisoned several times, notably at the height of his Non-Cooperation Movement and after the defining act of civil disobedience -- when he led thousands of peasants in a march to the ocean to evaporate sea water into salt in protest at the British monopoly on salt production.

Not just an anti-colonialist, he also campaigned against the caste system and for religious tolerance between Muslims and his own Hindus. This last campaign, in the overheated atmosphere of newly-partitioned India, prompted Hindu fanatic Nathuram Godse to fire the three gunshots that ended Gandhi’s life.

Six decades after Gandhi’s assassination, the legacy of the man officially accorded the status of Father of the Nation remains as powerful as ever. Last June, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution declaring October 2, Gandhi’s birthday, to be the “International Day of Non-Violence”.

And on January 30, the 60th anniversary of his death, some of his final ashes will be scattered on the Arabian Sea. After Gandhi’s cremation several urns containing his ashes were dispatched to his followers across the country to be displayed at memorials, and one of those urns was handed over last year to a museum dedicated to Gandhi by an Indian business family that had preserved it since 1948. The museum had planned to display the urn along with Gandhi’s personal belongings, but deferred to the wishes of his descendants, who asked that the ashes be scattered on water in accordance with Hindu tradition.

Sources
PUBLISHED: 28/1/2008; STORY: Graphic News; PICTURES: Getty Images, Associated Press
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