Happy Birthday, Gandhiji

Today is a major holiday in India. All schools and most businesses are closed in honor of the birthday of Mohandas Gandhi. He was born in 1869 and was a major political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian independence movement.

Gandhi employed non-violent civil disobedience as a lawyer in South Africa, when fellow Indians were struggling for civil rights. When he returned to India in 1915, he set about organizing peasants, farmers, and urban laborers in protesting excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, for expanding women's rights, for building religious and ethnic unity, for increasing economic self-reliance, but above all for achieving independence of India from foreign domination. He was imprisoned for many years, on numerous occasions, in both South Africa and India. On 30 January 1948, only a few months after India became independent, Gandhi was shot and killed by a Hindu extremist while having his nightly public walk on the grounds of the Birla House in New Delhi.

Dave and Beth (with thanks to Wikipedia)