“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” These words, written by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, exhaustively describe the life of this great person. His was called “the conscience of the humankind,” a prophet, a saint. But his contemporaries first of all saw him as India’s spiritual leader in its struggle for liberation from British domination.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, also known as Mahatma – the Great Soul – was born on October 2, 1869, in the Gujarati princely state of Porbandar. Unlike the majority of Indian politicians, he did not belong to the upper society, but came from the cast of traders. Nevertheless, his ancestors managed to make successful careers and for several generations they had held fairly high positions. Mohandas’s grandfather, Utta Gandhi, became chief minister under the Prince of Porbandar. His father, Karamchand, also held this position for some time and later was appointed chief minister of the Rajkot princely state.

The family hoped that Mohandas would choose the same path and prepared him for the minister’s position since childhood. The young man received a fairly good education at a local English school; he learned etiquette, to wear European clothes, to communicate with colonial officials and to respect the British crown. In 1888, he was sent to England to study law. Three years later, Gandhi returned home and took up a lawyer’s practice in Bombay. In 1893, he went to South Africa as a lawyer with an Indian company.

It was there that Gandhi for the first time showed himself to be a successful political leader. Soon he led fight against racial discrimination and encroachment on the rights of Indians, who were already numerous in the south of the African continent. He organized peaceful demonstrations, sent petitions to the government and published a weekly newspaper. As a result, South African Indians managed to get some discriminating laws abolished.

In South Africa, Gandhi developed the tactic of nonviolent resistance, which he called satyagraha. He limited social struggle to exclusively peaceful forms, condemning any violence, including between classes and during revolutions. “Be the change you want to see in the world.” For conducting satyagraha campaigns he was often arrested, and in November 1913, when he led the march of 2,000 Indian miners from Natal to Transvaal, he was jailed three times in four days. The campaign ended in an agreement with Jan Smuts, then South Africa’s defense minister. In July 1914, Gandhi left the country.

Returning to India, Gandhi founded a new ashram near Ahmadabad. At that time, he became close to the Indian National Congress party. Not being its official head, he soon became its ideological and spiritual leaders, one of the leaders of the national liberation movement. In 1918, he held his first hunger strike – and there were to be many in his life!

In 1919, when the British adopted laws that extended the restrictions of Indians’ civil freedoms, he announced the first All-Indian satyagraha. Thousands of the country’s citizens expressed their protest peacefully, without resorting to violence, but there were mass riots in many places. The British response was tough. The events made Gandhi to reconsider his attitude towards the British Empire and made him a decisive opponent of the crown.

Gandhi started the second Indian satyagraha in 1920. He called on his compatriots to boycott British textile goods and to manufacture their own fabrics on hand looms. In 1922, he was arrested for sedition and sentenced to six years in jail.

In those years, Gandhi organized active campaigns against untouchability and in favor of Muslim and Hindu unity, for women’s rights, improvement of elementary education, prohibition of alcohol and introduction of personal hygiene rules. In 1929, the leaders of the Indian National Congress declared January 26 the Day of National Independence, and Gandhi led the third All-Indian satyagraha. Next year, he protested against the raise of the salt tax.

At the beginning of 1932, he was arrested again and announced a six-day hunger strike. In 1933, his hunger strike lasted 21 days, and the rebel was let out of prison for fear that he would die and it would lead to accusations against the British authorities. At that time, his wife, Kasturbai, also took up politics. She was also jailed several times.

In 1942, the Indian National Congress adopted the resolution “Quit India!”, and Gandhi led the last All-Indian satyagraha campaign. He was again arrested together with his wife and thrown to jail in Puna. Next year, Kasturbai died, and Gandhi’s health significantly deteriorated. In May 1944, he was let out of prison.

In August 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru received a proposal from the British to form a government. Then, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League announced the Direct Action Day, which resulted in a confrontation between Hindus and Muslims. In November, Gandhi went around East Bengal and Bihar on foot, urging to end the fratricidal massacres. He decisively objected to India’s breakup and when, on August 15, 1947, Pakistan was officially separated from India and the countries declared their independence, Gandhi held a hunger strike to express his grief and to try to stop clashes between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. ”An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” he said, but, unfortunately, no one listened to the wise man at the time.

Mahatma Gandhi wrote, “The value of the ideal is in it receding as you approach it.” Nevertheless, he kept moving towards this ideal all his life. And he fought for it using methods he considered to be the only possible and correct ones.

Rabindranath Tagore thought it possible to compare Gandhi with Buddha, describing his impact on people as follows, “He stood on the doorstep of the cabins of thousands of the miserable, dressed like them. He addressed them in their language, and here, finally, was the live truth, not quotations from books… In response to Gandhi’s call, India again opened up for great deeds.”

The role of a person in history can be debated a lot, but most probably, no one will argue that the ideas of this great man became the stone that caused the avalanche of national liberation struggle in South Asia. It was due to a large extent to Mahatma Gandhi’s self sacrifice that India became independent and “opened up for great deeds.”