Mahatma Gandhi

“Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.” – Mahatma Gandhi.

Today our story is about a famous man, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, later known as Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma refers to a holy person. October 2 is the day of Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday. It is a very important day for our country. This day we celebrate birthday of Mahatma Gandhi — father of our nation. We also call him “Bapu” with great respect and affection. Children..I am sure you all would like to listen story of Bapu whose birthday we are celebrating today across entire India and world.

Birth of Gandhi

Long ago, 142 years back on this day of 1869, Gandhi was born in Porbandar town in Gujarat. Father Karamchand Gandhi and mother Putlibai were very happy. They named the baby “Mohan” — Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. His father brought up Gandhi in a disciplined manner and he was greatly influenced by his father’s honesty and simplicity. His mother thought him many religious matters.

Like other children Gandhi was also shy during his childhood amd learned great values of truthfulness, integrity, honesty and discipline later he demonstrated these values to entire world. When Gandhi grew older, he also fell in bad company and picked up few bad habits as well. He hid these bad deeds from his parents. As he was thought with great values during his childhood from his parents did not allow these bad habits to linger any longer with him. He realised the mistake and repented for his bad habits.

Gandhi’s education

Mohan was sent to England to study law. After study, he became lawyer in India. For a case, he visited South Africa. Those days there was discrimination between white and color people. He was ill-treated by a British who threw him out of first class compartment of a train. It was very humiliating experience. He decided to fight against this inhuman color discrimination by British and came back to India.

Fighting with the Britishers

Gandhi created a new method to fight against British — Satyagrah: protesting injustice in a nonviolent way. Very soon, many people started following him. People called him Bapu (the father) and Mahatma (the saint). Bapu and his followers non-violently galvanized whole India against British rule. British arrested Bapu and his followers and sent them to jail many occasions but it did not deter the satyagrahis’ will to fight against injustice. There was no discrimination in Satyagraha — people with all religions and all castes joined Bapu. Everyone, be it Muslim or Hindu or Sikh or from any other religion, accepted other in Satyagrah as own brother or sister.

Finally British understood that it would not be possible to rule India against Bapu and his followers. Our country got independence on August 15, 1947. It was first time in history of world. Since then whole world has recognized greatness of Bapu and might of his novel method Satyagrah (nonviolent protest). Many other famous leaders throughout the World such as Martin Luther King, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Anna Hazare etc followed Satyagrah and nonviolent method to protest against injustice or to achieve agreement with ruling government. I shall tell you story of these superheroes in coming days. For now let’s pay our sincere homage to our respected Bapu by pledging to follow values he lived.