PERSON I ADMIRE MOST

MAHATMA GANDHI

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was an Indian lawyer,  who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for india independce from British Rule, and in turn inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. 

 He was raised by a Hindu family in coastal  Gujarat,  western india, Gandhi was trained in law at the Inner Temple, London, and call to the bar at age 22 in June 1891. After two uncertain years in India, where he was unable to start a successful law practice, he moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit. He went on to stay for 21 years. It was in South Africa that Gandhi raised a family, and first employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights. In 1915, aged 45, he returned to India. He set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the India National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, and above all for achieving Swarajor self-rule.The same year Gandhi adopted the Indian loincloth, or short dhoti and, in the winter, a shawl, both woven with yarn hand-spun on a traditional Indian spinning wheel, , as a mark of identification with India's rural poor. Thereafter, he  ate simple vegetarian food, and long fasting as a means of self-purification and political protest. Bringing anti-colonial nationalism to the common Indians, Gandhi led them in challenging the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km (250 mi) Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in calling for the British to Quit India 1942. He was imprisoned for many years, upon many occasions, in both South Africa and India.Gandhi's vision of an independent India based on religious pularism was challenged in the early 1940s by a new Muslim nationalism which was demanding a separate Muslim homeland carved out of India. In August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire  was partitoined into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs made their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in the Punjab and Bengal. Eschewing the offical celebration of independce  in Delhi, Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to provide solace. In the months following, he undertook several fasts unto death to stop religious violence. The last of these, undertaken on 12 January 1948 when he was 78,  also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan.Som e Indians thought Gandhi was too accommodating. Among them was Nauthuram Godse , a Hindu nationalist, who assasinated Gandhion 30 January 1948 by firing three bullets into his chest.Gandhi's birthday, 2 October, is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanthi, a natgional holiday, and worldwide as the International Day Inviolence.