Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on this day in 1948. Born in 1869 and raised in the pacifistic religion Jainism, Gandhi studied law in 1888 and, after experiencing racism while working in South Africa, dedicated his life to fighting injustice and defending the rights of Indians.
He became a leader of the Indian rights movement in South Africa, where many Indians lived and worked. In 1914 he returned to India and lived an abstinent, religious life. He protested the mandatory military draft of Indians by the British Empire, eventually lifting him to leadership status in the Indian independence movement. He was imprisoned on sedition charges for two years, the first of several arrests to come. Four years after his release, he launched a massive protest against a British salt tax. The march, numbering over 60,000, turned independence into an international conversation.
When Britain agreed to negotiate Indian independence in 1945, Gandhi was heartened. But when it became clear that the British colony would be divided into the states of Pakistan and India, the mood changed. Violence quickly broke out between Hindus and Muslims.
Gandhi was one of the lives lost in that conflict. He frequently went on vigils to troubled areas of the country to encourage peaceful resolutions to internal conflicts. While clearly more sympathetic more to Indians, he wasn't entirely hostile to Muslims either. That caused friction with Hindu extremists. On one of his journeys to New Delhi, Nathuram Godse, one of those extremists, assassinated Gandhi.
You can learn more about Gandhi's life and death at the Encyclopedia Britannica.
