 Mohan Das Karamchand Gandhi, born in Porbandar of Gujarat on October 2nd, 1869. He was the son of Karamchand Gandhi, the Devon of Porbandar and Putlibai. His marriage life began at the age of 13. Through an arrangement made by his parents, he was married to Kasturbhai. After completing his school, Gandhi enrolled at Shyamal Das College, Bhavnagar in 1887, but discontinued. Later, he chose lawyer as his profession and joined the University College London and graduated in 1891. He was admitted to the bar of England after which he returned to Bombay and practiced law for a year. Then he went to South Africa to work for an Indian firm. This young barrister landed at Durban, a coastal city in eastern South Africa in 1893 on a one-year contract to sort out the legal problems of a Gujarati merchant. His journey from Durban to Pretoria, another South African city, consisted of a series of racial humiliations. One among them was the infamous incident known to all. He was thrown out of a first-class train compartment by a white man for which he had bought a first-class ticket. This incident changed the course of Gandhi's life. On his arrival in Pretoria, he immediately convened a meeting of the Indians. He tried his best to arouse the Indians in Pretoria to a sense of their own dignity as human beings and persuade them to resist all types of racial disabilities. Gandhi's political activities from 1894 to 1906 may be classified as moderate phase of struggle of the South African Indians. During this phase, his concentration was on petitioning and sending memorials to the South African legislatures, the colonial secretary in London and the British Parliament. By setting up the Natal Indian Congress and starting a paper called Indian Opinion, he attempted to unite the different sections of Indians in South Africa and to give their demands white publicity. His second phase of the struggle in South Africa began in 1906 when his moderate methods of struggle did not reap any benefits. The second phase was characterized by the use of passive resistance or civil disobedience which was named by Gandhi himself as Satyagraha. Gandhi's own legal practice had virtually ceased since 1906. The year he started devoting all his attention to the struggle. At this point, Gandhi even set up Tolstoy form to house the families of the Satyagrahis and give them a way to sustain themselves. The non-violent civil disobedience succeeded in forcing the opponents to the negotiating table. At this moment, the blueprint for the Gandhian method of struggle evolved and Gandhi looked at his native land, India, which was dealing with its own struggle fighting the British. This paved the way for the South African experiment to be tried on a much wider scale on the Indian subcontinent. When Gandhiji came back to India in January 1915, his name was already well known to Indians as a result of which he was warmly welcomed. On Gokhale's advice, he spent the year travelling around the country. The next year as well, he continued to maintain his distance from political affairs including the home role movement that was gathering momentum at this time. This did not mean that Gandhiji was going to remain politically idle. During the course of 1917 and early 1918, he involved in three significant struggles. One in Champaran in Bihar, the other two in Ahmedabad and Kedha in Gujarat. Champaran and Kedha involved the peasants and the one in Ahmedabad involved industrial workers. These struggles helped him find the strengths and weaknesses of the masses in India. He also earned the respect and commitment of many political workers, especially the younger ones. They were impressed by Gandhi's identification with the problems of ordinary Indians and his willingness to take up their cause. This reservoir of goodwill and experience encouraged Gandhiji to call for a nationwide protest against the unpopular legislation in February 1919. Gandhiji suggested the launch of Satyagraha against the famous Raulat Act but the wrongdoings of the British Jailinwala Bagh angered him which led to the launch of another nationwide struggle on a much bigger scale than that of Raulat Satyagraha. This nationwide struggle is popularly known to us as the non-cooperation movement which lasted from 1920 to 1922. The period from 1920 to 1947 is described as the Gandhian era in Indian history. During the period Gandhiji spoke the final word on behalf of the Indian National Congress in negotiating with the British government for constitutional reforms and for chalking out a program for the national movement. The program of non-cooperation included the surrogate of titles and honors, boycott of government-affiliated schools and colleges, law courts, foreign clothes, designation from government services and mass civil disobedience including the non-payment of taxes. But Gandhiji withdrew the movement owing to the Chauri Chhara violent incident. He also persuaded the Congress Working Committee to ratify his decision and thus on 12th February 1922 the non-cooperation movement came to an end. Gandhiji's decision to withdraw the movement in response to the violence at Chauri Chhara raised a controversy. His critics often failed to recognize that mass movements have an inherent tendency to fade out after reaching a certain height. With Raul is not tantamount to betrayal. It is an inevitable part of the strategy itself. But the retreat that was ordered on 12th February 1922 was only a temporary one. It was visible from the article he wrote in the weekly journal Young India on 23rd February 1922 where he said, It is high time that the British people were made to realize that the fight that was commenced in 1920 is a fight to the finish, whether it lasts one month or one year or many months or many years and whether the representatives of the Britain re-enact all the indescribable orgies of the mutiny days with redoubled force or whether they do not. The next major event led by Gandhi is the civil disobedience movement. His ultimatum of 31st January 1930 to Lord Irvin stating the minimum demands in the form of two points had been ignored and there was now only one way out, the civil disobedience. On 6th April 1930 by picking up a handful of salt, Gandhiji inaugurated the civil disobedience movement. The last nail in the coffin is the Quit India movement in 1942 and it was the greatest challenge to the British Empire. Gandhi was a great leader, a saint and a great social reformer. He was spious, truthful and religious. He believed in simple living and high thinking. Everybody who came in contact with him were so deeply influenced by his personality. He was a champion of democracy and was deadly opposed to dictatorial rule. Gandhi showed India and the world the path of truth and non-violence. He believed it was the truth alone that prevailed in the end. According to him, India's real emancipation depended on Swadeshi, that is boycott of foreign goods and the use of Khadi along with the encouragement to village and cottage industries. Gandhi began to work day and night for the freedom of our country. He and his brave followers went to jail again and again and suffered terrible hardships. Thousands of them were starved, beaten, ill-treated and killed. At last, his noble efforts bore fruit and on August 15, 1947, India became free and independent. Gandhi will always be remembered for defeating the mighty British Empire, but by means of strange and utterly new weapons of truth and ahimsa. He worked all through his life for Hindu-Muslim unity and the abolition of untouchability. Gandhi declared untouchability a sin against God and man. Gandhi wrote his famous autobiography under the title, My Experiments with Truth. Gandhi always stood for communal harmony, but he himself was shot dead by a religious fanatic, Nathuram Goatsey, on 30 January 1948. The whole world mourned his death. Think about it, if they had not thrown Gandhi out of the train in South Africa, the English would not have had too much trouble from him. Gandhi, the young attorney, vowed to oppose such unfair treatment through non-cooperation and other non-violent means. Gandhi's ultimate search was for righteous conduct. He believed the means are more important than the end, where the right means, decided ends will follow. Mahatma Gandhi, better known as the father of nation, because it was he who got the freedom for us. He was the maker of modern India. Remembering Gandhi ji on his 153rd birth anniversary, it is resolved to re-dedicate ourselves to the welfare and progress of the nation to follow the mantra of truth and non-violence and to build a clean, capable, strong and prosperous India.