Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, India, a seacoast town in the Kathiawar Peninsula north of Bombay, India.. He was the fourth child of Karamchand Gandhi, and Purtlibai, his fourth wife.
At the age of thirteen he married Kasturbai, a girl his own age. The childhood ambition of Mohandas was to study medicine, but as this was considered beneath his caste, his father persuaded him to study law instead.
In September 1888 Gandhi went to England to study. He became a lawyer in 1891 and sailed for Bombay. He attempted unsuccessfully to practice law in Rajkot and Bombay, served as lawyer for the prince of Porbandar.
In 1893 Gandhi accepted an offer from a firm of Muslims to represent them legally in Pretoria, the capital of Transvaal in the Union of South Africa. While traveling in a first-class train compartment in Natal, South Africa, a white man asked Gandhi to leave. He got off the train and spent the night in a train station meditating. He decided then to work to end racial prejudice. He had planned to stay in South Africa for only one year, but this new cause kept him in the country until 1914. Shortly after the train incident he called his first meeting of Indians in Pretoria and attacked racial discrimination. This launched his campaign for improved legal status for Indians in South Africa, who at that time suffered the same discrimination as black people.
Gandhi returned to India in January 1915,
he had become known as "Mahatmaji," a title given him by the poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941).This title means "great soul."
The principles of Gandhian philosophy are truth and non-violence. The Gandhi assigns nonviolence stems from two main points.
• First, if according to the Divine Reality all life is one, then all violence committed towards another is violence towards oneself, towards the collective, whole self, and thus “self”-destructive and counter to the universal law of life, which is love.
• Second, Gandhi believed that ahimsa is the most powerful force in existence. Ahimsa had himsa been superior to, humankind would long ago have succeeded in destroying itself. The human race certainly could not have progressed as far as it has, even if universal justice remains far off the horizon.
Nonviolence or love is regarded as the highest law of humankind. Peace and harmony is an essential component of human life.
Gandhian philosophy is supposed to promote universal human values, peace, harmony and co-existence.
India has been a country of universal brotherhood in promoting global peace and also could solve any prevailing problems on the ground of truth and non-violence.
Mahatma Gandhi summed up his philosophy of life with the words, “My Life is my Message”. His multifarious and dynamic personality was based on truth and nothing but the truth. Non – violence was another intrinsic element of this philosophy.
Gandhian philosophy is focused on nature and society, Indian philosophy, Eastern philosophy, Western philosophy etc, with the four principle such as,
• truth(satya),
• non-violence(ahimsa),
• sarvodaya (welfare of all),
• satyagraha (peace protest)
