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• 1869 Mohandas Gandhi was born on October 2, in Porbandar, India.

• 1888 he studied law in London.

• 1893 he moved to South Africa to be a lawyer where he fought against the poor treatment of Indian immigrants.

• 1915 he returned to India. Many in India were growing angry at Britain’s refusal to hand over meaningful power despite hundreds of thousands of Indians fighting to defend Britain during World War One.

• Initially Gandhi refused to get involved in politics, but the harsh methods used by the British authorities in India to keep control during World War 1 forced him to begin organising demonstrations, protests and boycotts.

• 1919, he launched an organised campaign of passive resistance in response to the passing of the Rowlatt Act.

• Gandhi is now commonly known as ‘Mahatma Gandhi’.

• ‘Mahatma’ means ‘great soul’. He was given this name for all of the work he did to achieve Indian independence.

On 13 April 1919, over 10,000 men, women and children gathered in an enclosed park in Amritsar, the Jallianwala Bagh, which had only one accessible exit.

The British authorities had given orders banning large gatherings of people, but not everyone had been made aware of this.

Some had gathered to celebrate a Sikh festival and others to protest British rule.

Without warning Colonel Dyer, a British general, had his troops block the only exit and shoot into the unarmed crowd.

Initially over 350 people were estimated killed, with over a thousand more injured. Historians now suggest that the death toll may have been higher.

Reports of the massacre spread across the world. Calls to give India its independence began to grow.

The massacre had a profound effect on Gandhi. He became convinced that India should accept nothing less than full independence.

Gandhi promoted non-violent civil disobedience campaigns in response to the Amritsar Massacre.

In 1921 he assumed leadership of the Indian National Congress (INC) and led several nationwide campaigns. These included easing poverty, building religious and ethnic peaceful harmony, expanding women’s rights and achieving self-rule.

He also became widely known for wearing a simple dhoti and shawl. This was a way of identifying with India’s rural poor.

On March 10, 1922, Gandhi was arrested by the government on sedition charges in Mumbai, known at the time as Bombay.

He was sentenced to six years in prison for his involvement in protesting the British colonial government in India. He served the jail sentence for two years before being released for medical reasons (he had appendicitis).

In 1930, Gandhi led a major protest, know as the Salt March.

The British had been taxing salt in India for decades but this hurt the poorest people most.

To show the world the injustice of British rule Gandhi marched to the coast with a growing number of people to symbolically collect salt from the sea without paying any tax to the British.

This tax made it difficult for poorer Indians to afford British salt, and it was also illegal for them to produce their own salt.

Anyone found to be making their own salt could be imprisoned for up to six months.

Gandhi and 78 other leaders marched 240 miles from the Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi.

They were joined by thousands of people who wanted to protest against British rule.

Gandhi led people to boycott British salt, and encouraged them to produce their own salt from sea water at Dandi.

After this protest, around 60,000 people were arrested, including Gandhi himself.

But the British government accepted that they had to consider some of Gandhi’s requests and invited him to London.

This was a significant turning point, because it showed that the British government was starting to seriously consider Indian independence.

Gandhi was imprisoned for two years during World War Two. He and other Indian leaders had demanded immediate independence as India’s price for aiding Britain in the war.

After his release from prison, he continued to campaign for India’s independence, which it achieved in 1947. India’s land was divided into two new countries: India and Pakistan.

India was torn by clashes between Hindus and Muslims before and after its division. On January 30, 1948, in the city of Delhi, Gandhi was shot and killed by a Hindu man.