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Gandhi Era Notes for NDA Exam
• Real Name - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
• Date and Place of Birth : Oct. 2, 1869 and Porbandar, Gujarat (Note: UNO declared Oct 2 as "International Non-
Violence Day")
• Father: Karamachand Gandhi
• Mother: Putali Bai
• Political Guru: Gopal Krishan Gokhale
• Political Guru: Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Private Secretary: Mahadev Desai.
• Literary Influence on Gandhi: John Ruskin’s Unto the Last, Emerson, Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, the Bible and the Gita.
• Literary Works: Hind Swaraj (1909), My Experiments with Truth (Autobiography, 1927)-reveals events of Gandhi’s
life upto 1922.
• As an Editor: Indian Opinion: 1903–15 (in English & Gujarati, for a short period in Hindi & Tamil), Harijan: 1919-31
(in English, Gujarati and Hindi),
• Other Names: Mahatma (Saint) - by Rabindranath Tagore, 1917; Malang Baba/Nanga Faqir (Naked Saint) - by
Kabailis of Noth-West Frontier, 1930; Indian Faqir/Traitor Faqir-by Winston Churchill, 1931; Half-naked Saint by-
Franq Mores, 1931; Rashtrapita (the Father of the Nation)- by Subhash Chandra Bose, 1944.
Important Year & Events:
• 1893: Departure of Gandhi to South Africa.
• 1904: Foundation of Indian Opinion (magazine) and Phoenix Farm, at Phoenix, near Durban.
• 1906: First Civil Disobedience Movement (Satyagaraha) against Asiatic Ordiannce in Transvaal.
• 1907: Satyagraha against Compulsory Registration and Passes for Asians (The Black Act) in Transvaal.
• 1908: Trial and imprisonment-Johanesburg Jail (First Jail Term).
• 1910: Foundation of Tolstoy Farm (Later-Gandhi Ashrama), near Johannesburg.
• 1914: Awarded Kaisar-i-Hind for raising an Indian Ambulance Core during Boer wars
• 1915: Arrived in Bombay (India) on 9 January 1915; Foundation of Satyagraha Ashrama at Kocharab near
Ahmedabad (20 May). In 1917, Ashrama shifted at the banks of Sabarmati;
• 1916: Abstain from active politics (though he attended Lucknow session of INC held in 26–30 December, 1916,
where Raj Kumar Shukla, a cultivator from Bihar, requested him to come to Champaran.)
• 1917: Gandhi entered active politics with Champaran campaign to redress grievances of the cultivators
oppressed by Indigo planter of Bihar (April 1917). Champaran Satyagraha was his first Civil Disobedience
Movement in India.
• 1918: cooperation Movement. In Febuary 1918, Gandhi launched the struggle in Ahmedabad which involved
industrial workers. Hunger strike as a weapon was used for the first time by Gandhi during Ahmedabad struggle.
In March 1918, Gandhi worked for peasants of Kheda in Gujarat who were facing difficulties in paying the rent
owing to failure of crops. Kheda Satyagraha was his first Non
• 1919: Gandhi gave a call for Satyagraha against the Rowlatt Act on April 6, 1919 and took the command of the
nationalist movement for the first time (First all-India Political Movement), Gandhi returns Kaisar-i-Hind gold
medal as a protest against Jallianwala Bagh massacre-April 13, 1919; The All India Khilafat Conference elected
Gandhi as its president (November 1919, Delhi).
• 1920-22: Gandhi leads the Non-Cooperation and Khilafat Movement (August 1, 1920–Febuary 1922), Gandhi
calls off Movement (Feb. 12, 1922), after the violent incident at Chauri-Chaura on Febuary 5, 1922. Non-Co-
operation Movement was the First mass based politics under Gandhi.
• 1925–27 : Gandhi retires from active politics for the first time and devotes himself to ‘constructive programme’
of the Congress; Gandhi resumes active politics in 1927.
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• 1930–34: Gandhi launches the Civil Disobedience Movement with his Dandhi march/Salt Satyagraha (First Phase:
March 12, 1930–March 5, 1931; Gandhi-Irwin Pact: March 5, 1931; Gandhi attends the Second Round Table
Conference in London as sole representative of the Congress: September 7-December. 1, 1931; Second Phase:
January 3, 1932-April 17, 1934).
• 1934–39: Sets up Sevagram (Vardha Ashram).
• 1940–41: Gandhi launches Individual Satyagraha Movement.
• 1942: Call to Quit India Movement for which Gandhi raised the slogan, ‘Do or Die’ (Either free India or die in the
attempt), Gandhi and all Congress leaders arrested (August 9, 1942).
• 1942–44: Gandhi kept in detention at the Aga Khan Palace, near Pune (August 9, 1942-May, 1944). Gandhi lost
his wife Kasturba (Febuary 22, 1944) and private secretary Mahadev Desai; this was Gandhi’s last prison term.
• 1946: Deeply distressed by theory of communal violence, as a result Muslim League’s Direct Action call, Gandhi
travelled to Noakhali (East Bengal-now Bangladesh) and later on to Calcutta to restore communal peace.
• 1947: Gandhi, deeply distressed by the Mountbatten Plan/Partition Plan (June 3, 1947), while staying in Calcutta
to restore communal violence, observes complete silence on the dawn of India’s Independence (August, 15,
1947). Gandhi returns to Delhi (September 1947).
• 1948: Gandhi was shot dead by Nathu Ram Godse, a member of RSS, while on his way to the evening prayer
meeting at Birla House, New Delhi (January 30, 1948).
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