| 1869 |
|
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi born in
Porbandar
in Gujarat. |
1893 |
|
Gandhi leaves for Johannesburg for practicing law
and is thrown out of a first class bogie because he is colored. |
1906 |
|
Mohandas K. Gandhi, 37, speaks at a mass meeting
in the Empire Theater, Johannesburg on September 11 and launches a campaign of
nonviolent resistance (satyagraha) to protest discrimination against Indians. The
British Government had just invalidated the Indian Marriage. |
1913 |
|
Mohandas Gandhi in Transvaal, South Africa leads
2,500 Indians into the in defiance of a law, they are violently arrested, Gandhi refuses
to pay a fine, he is jailed, his supporters demonstrate. On November 25, and Natal police fire
into the crowd, killing two, injuring 20. |
1914 |
|
Mohandas Gandhi returns to India at age 45 after
21 years of practicing law in South Africa where he organized a campaign of passive
resistance to protest his mistreatment by whites for his defense of Asian
immigrants. He attracts wide attention in India by conducting a fast --the first of 14
that he will stage as political demonstrations and that will inaugurate the idea of the
political fasting. |
1930 |
|
A civil disobedience campaign against the British
in India begins March 12. The All-India Trade Congress has empowered Gandhi to
begin the demonstrations (see 1914). Called Mahatma for the past decade, Gandhi leads a 165-mile march to the Gujarat coast of the Arabian Sea and
produces salt by evaporation of sea water in violation of the law as a gesture of defiance
against the British monopoly in salt production |
1932 |
|
Gandhi begins a "fast unto
death" to protest the British government's treatment of India's lowest caste
"untouchables" whom Gandhi calls Harijans -- "God's
children." Gandhi's campaign of civil disobedience has brought rioting and has landed
him in prison, but he persists in his demands for social reform, he urges a new boycott of
British goods, and after 6 days of fasting obtains a pact that improves the status of the
"untouchables" (Dalits) |
1947 |
|
India becomes free from 200 years of British
Rule. A major victory for Gandhian principles and non-violence in general. |
1948 |
|
Gandhi is assassinated by
Nathuram Godse,
a Hindu fanatic at a prayer meeting |