Mahatma Gandhi

Born in coastal Gujarat in 1869, Mohandas Gandhi trained as a lawyer in London, then spent 21 years in South Africa starting in 1893, where he raised a family and first tested nonviolent resistance in a civil rights campaign. Returning to India in 1915, he took over the Indian National Congress in 1921 and led nationwide campaigns against British rule - organising peasants and urban laborers, adopting the dhoti to identify with the rural poor, and marching 400 km in 1930 to challenge the salt tax. He was imprisoned repeatedly. When Britain granted independence in August 1947, it carved the subcontinent into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan; religious violence exploded, and Gandhi spent his final months walking through the affected areas and fasting to stop the killing. On 30 January 1948, at 78, he was shot three times at a prayer meeting in Delhi by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist who believed Gandhi had been too protective of Pakistan and Indian Muslims.