Mohandis Gandhi (1869 - 1948)
Childhood
In the Indian town of Porbandar, overlooking the Arabian Sea, on 2 October 1869, a hero was born. His name was Mohandis Karamchand Ghandi. It was in this city that he lived in a large three storey house with the families of five of his uncles.
His early childhood was heavily influenced by his two parents. His mother was Hindu, like the rest of his family including him, but was accepting and understanding of other people's beliefs. This was demonstrated in her acceptance that India's other main religion besides Hindu, Islam, offered an equally acceptable way of finding God. His mother's attitude of accepting other's beliefs and rights would've influenced some of the decisions he made later on in his life.
His dad was the prime minister of the semi-independent (from Britain) state that they lived in.
Marriage
At the age of 13, he married a girl called Kasturbai in an arranged marriage. Later in his life, he became a campaigner against child marriage, mainly based on his negative experiences in the early stages of his own marriage.
Like many other men of his time did, Gandhi tried to restrict her freedom by making her stay at home to turn her into an obedient wife. However, he was forced to recognize that she had as much rights to do what she wanted as he did when she went out by herself and did what she wanted to.
Vegetarian
Being brought up as a Hindu, Gandhi followed its belief that eating meat was wrong. However, a Muslim friend of his convinced him that if he wanted to become strong like British rulers of India, he had to eat meat like they did. They secretly ate some but Gandhi became sick almost instantly. This made him feel very guilty and he never ate meat again for the rest of his life.
England
At the age of 19, Gandhi left for England to study as a lawyer. His time in England was tough as he had to get use to the different ways that they did things over there compared to India. A few of them were the use of forks and knives (he, like many other Indians ate with their fingers), how they dressed, and the lack of knowledge about vegetarianism.
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Even though most Brits hadn't heard vegetarianism before, it was this belief by Gandhi that helped him make his first friends in England. He became a regular customer at a vegetarian restaurant and became friends with most of the other regular customers. There, he bought a book by Henry Salt called A Plea for Vegetarianism. Reading this book convinced him even more that he shouldn't eat meat. Most of the friends he made there were members of the Vegetarian Society of England, a group in which he soon became a member of.
Return to India
After three years in England, Gandhi passed his exams to become a lawyer and left to go back to India. When he arrived back there, he discovered that his mum had died a few months ago and no one he knew was interested in the knew things that he'd discovered while in England like the different cutlery, clothes and food such as porridge.
South Africa
In 1893, he left for South Africa (at this time, it was still under the control of the British like India was) after accepting an offer to represent a Muslim Indian company in a legal dispute.
Shortly after arriving there, he experienced the injustice of South Africa's apartheid policy. First, he was thrown off a train after refusing to move out of a first class part of a train; then he beaten up by a conductor after refusing to sit on the footboard of the stagecoach when he wanted to sit outside to smoke (he was already being forced to sit outside of the coach next to the driver). In Johannesburg, he was refused entry into the Grand National Hotel there. These events would not have made a good first impression of the country to Gandhi. However, he knew that many of the whites knew that apartheid was wrong because quite a few stood up for him when he was discriminated.
Although the reason he was in South Africa was because he was a lawyer, it didn't stop him from helping the many Indians there who were discriminated because of their skin colour. It was here in South Africa that he became really passionate about bringing peace and equality into the minds of people including those that had the power to enforce it on other people.
Untouchables
This helped him realize that the caste system that Hindus used was very discriminatory a tried to get other people to understand this too. The caste system was how Hindu society was divided based on their jobs and socio-economic status. There were four main groups and the Untouchables who were classified below these four groups. The Untouchables were a group of people who basically lived off other peoples rubbish and worked as slaves.
