Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (lahir di Porbandar, Gujarat, India Britania, 2 Oktober 1869 – meninggal di New Delhi, India, 30 Januari 1948 pada umur 78 tahun) (aksara Devanagari: मोहनदास करमचन्द गांधी) juga dipanggil Mahatma Gandhi (bahasa Sanskerta: "jiwa agung") adalah seorang pemimpin spiritual dan politikus dari India. Pada masa kehidupan Gandhi, banyak negara yang merupakan koloni Britania Raya. Penduduk di koloni-koloni tersebut mendambakan kemerdekaan agar dapat memerintah negaranya sendiri. Gandhi adalah salah seorang yang paling penting yang terlibat dalam Gerakan Kemerdekaan India. Dia adalah aktivis yang tidak menggunakan kekerasan, yang mengusung gerakan kemerdekaan melalui aksi demonstrasi damai.Gandhi lahir pada 2 Oktober 1869 di negara bagian Gujarat di India. Beberapa dari anggota keluarganya bekerja pada pihak pemerintah. Saat remaja, Gandhi pindah ke Inggris untuk mempelajari hukum. Setelah dia menjadi pengacara, dia pergi ke Afrika Selatan, sebuah koloni Inggris, di mana dia mengalami diskriminasi ras yang dinamakan apartheid. Dia kemudian memutuskan untuk menjadi seorang aktivis politik agar dapat mengubah hukum-hukum yang diskriminatif tersebut. Gandhi pun membentuk sebuah gerakan non-kekerasan. Ketika kembali ke India, dia membantu dalam proses kemerdekaan India dari jajahan Inggris; hal ini memberikan inspirasi bagi rakyat di koloni-koloni lainnya agar berjuang mendapatkan kemerdekaannya dan memecah Kemaharajaan Britania untuk kemudian membentuk Persemakmuran.
Rakyat dari agama dan suku yang berbeda yang hidup di India kala itu yakin bahwa India perlu dipecah menjadi beberapa negara agar kelompok yang berbeda dapat mempunyai negara mereka sendiri. Banyak yang ingin agar para pemeluk agama Hindu dan Islam mempunyai negara sendiri. Gandhi adalah seorang Hindu namun dia menyukai pemikiran-pemikiran dari agama-agama lain termasuk Islam dan Kristen. Dia percaya bahwa manusia dari segala agama harus mempunyai hak yang sama dan hidup bersama secara damai di dalam satu negara. Pada 1947, India menjadi merdeka dan pecah menjadi dua negara, India dan Pakistan. Hal ini tidak disetujui Gandhi. Prinsip Gandhi, satyagraha, sering diterjemahkan sebagai "jalan yang benar" atau "jalan menuju kebenaran", telah menginspirasi berbagai generasi aktivis-aktivis demokrasi dan anti-rasisme seperti Martin Luther King, Jr. dan Nelson Mandela. Gandhi sering mengatakan kalau nilai-nilai ajarannya sangat sederhana, yang berdasarkan kepercayaan Hindu tradisional: kebenaran (satya), dan non-kekerasan (ahimsa). Pada 30 Januari 1948, Gandhi dibunuh seorang lelaki Hindu yang marah kepada Gandhi karena ia terlalu memihak kepada Muslim.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the preeminent leader of Indian independence movement in British-ruled India. Employing nonviolent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahatma (Sanskrit: "high-souled", "venerable"—applied to him first in 1914 in South Africa,-is now used worldwide. He is also called Bapu (Gujarati: endearment for "father", "papa" in India. Born and raised in a Hindu merchant caste family in coastal Gujarat, western India, and trained in law at the Inner Temple, London, Gandhi first employed nonviolent civil disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian community's struggle for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, but above all for achieving Swaraj or self-rule.
Gandhi famously led Indians 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 in 1942. He was imprisoned for many years, upon many occasions, in both South Africa and India. Gandhi attempted to practise nonviolence and truth in all situations, and advocated that others do the same. He lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn hand spun on a charkha. He ate simple vegetarian food, and also undertook long fasts as the means to both self-purification and social protest. Gandhi's vision of a free India based on religious pluralism, however, was challenged in the early 1940s by a new Muslim nationalism which was demanding a separate Muslim homeland carved out of India. Eventually, in August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and Muslim 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 official celebration of independence in Delhi, Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to provide solace. In the months following, he undertook several fasts unto death to promote religious harmony. The last of these, undertaken on 12 January 1948 at age 78,[8] also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan.[8] Some Indians thought Gandhi was too accommodating. Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist, assassinated Gandhi on 30 January 1948 by firing three bullets into his chest at point-blank range. Indians widely describe Gandhi as the father of the nation.[10][11] His birthday, 2 October, is commemorated as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and world-wide as the International Day of Nonviolence. He was the mentor of Indira Gandhi.
