Monday, August 15, 2011

August 15, the Independence Day of India









Today India is celebrating its Independence Day. It was August 15 1947 when India got her Independence from the British. This was after the struggling for Independence for several years. The struggling for Independence was led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi who is the father of India.

Visit the following links to see what is happening today in India:







Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (The father of the India Nation)

Mahatma Gandhi


Mahatma Gandhi in his childhood


Mahatma Gandhi in the dandi salt march 

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement. A pioneer of satyagraha, or resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, a philosophy firmly founded upon ahimsa, or total nonviolence. Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. Gandhi is often referred to as Mahatma (or "Great Soul," an honorific first applied to him by Rabindranath Tagore). In India, he is also called Bapu (or "Father") and officially honoured as the Father of the Nation. His birthday, 2 October, is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Non-Violence.


Gandhi first employed non-violent civil disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian community's struggle for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers in protesting excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, increasing economic self-reliance, but above all for achieving Swaraj -the independence of India from foreign domination. Gandhi famously led Indians in protesting the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km  Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in calling for the British to quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned for many years, on many occasions, in both South Africa and India.


Gandhi strove to practice non-violence and truth in all situations, and advocated that others do the same. He lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn he had hand spun on a charkha. He ate simple vegetarian food, and also undertook long fasts as means of both self-purification and social protest.

For more information about Mahatma Gandhi visit the following links: