Mahatma Gandhi Memorial

Mahatma Gandhi led India to freedom from British rule in 1947 and is hailed as the father of the nation. A crusader for human rights and liberty, thinker, writer, reformer, and apostle of truth and non-violence, he united millions of people of all faiths across India in a mass movement of civil disobedience. Born in 1869, Gandhi renounced worldly possessions and devoted his life to the dignity and uplift of the downtrodden. Called a mahatma, or “Great Soul,” he made purity of means and peaceful resistance central to campaigns against racial discrimination in South Africa from 1893 to 1914, led the famous 1930 march to the sea against the increase of salt tax in India, and became the central figure in India’s struggle for freedom. Inspired by the world’s great religions and influenced by Ruskin, Thoreau, and Tolstoy, his life and message went on to inspire leaders around the world. On his seventieth birthday, Albert Einstein wrote that generations to come might scarcely believe that such a person ever walked the earth in flesh and blood.

Washington, District of Columbia · United States