Gandhi Facts For Kids | The Greatest Leader Of British India

He was the finest and the most famous leader of the Indian Independence Movement during British Raj in the Indian subcontinent from 1858 to 1947. He led a civil disobedience movement against the British Raj in a peaceful manner and this nonviolent means became his hallmark afterwards by sparking off several other civil rights movements around the world followed on the same pattern. The Civil Rights movement in USA by African-Americans under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. is one of the movements that took inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi’s movement in India. So now let’s discover more about this extraordinary leader of the 20th century in Gandhi facts for kids.

Gandhi Facts For Kids

Full Name: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Common Name: Mahatma Gandhi

Other Names: Bapu, Gandhiji

Date of Birth: October 2, 1869

Place of Birth: Porbandar, Kathiawar Agency

Age: 78

Number of Children: 4

Date of Death: January 30, 1948

Place of Death: New Delhi, India

Family and Marriage

1. The name of his father was Karamchand Gandhi. He was the Chief Minister of the state of Porbander. In Persian language, he was given a title known as Dewan.
2. The name of his mother was Putlibai. She was the fourth wife of his father. His previous three wives passed away while giving birth to a child.
3. The name of his wife was Kasturba Gandhi. Her birth name was Kastur Kapadia. Like her husband, she was also an active political woman fighting for civil rights.
4. Mohandas (Gandhi) and Kasturbai were married in May 1883. At the time, Mohandas was only 13 years old and her wife was 14 years old.
5. At the time when Gandhi was married to Kasturbai, it was a common tradition that the wife does not live with her husband rather she spent most of the time with her parents in their home.
6. After 2 years of marriage, Gandhi and Kasturbai gave birth to a child in 1885. Gandhi was only 15 years old at the time. However the newborn baby died after surviving for few days.
7. They had 4 kids. Gandhi had no daughter.
8. The names of his four sons were Ramdas, Devdas, Harilal and Manilal.
9. His father passed away in the same year when his newborn baby died. However, his father died before the child’s death.

Early Years

1. When he was a child, Gandhi was very much impressed by the tales of the ancient king in Hindu religious scripts called Harishchandra.
2. He was not a very bright student in his schooldays. He was especially weak in the subject of Geography.
3. Gandhi went to London in 1888 to study Law in order to become a Barrister which was the desire of his family.
4. He worked in South Africa for about 21 years and refined his political ideas.

Later Years and Racial Discrimination

1. While he was in South Africa, he faced a lot of ethnic discrimination. Once when he took a first-class seat on a train, he was thrown out of it in South Africa’s city known as Pietermaritzburg.
2. He was once riding on a carriage while a European person came and wanted to sit along with him. However, when he turned down to give him any space; the driver hit him for not doing so.
3. On several occasions, he was not allowed to stay on various hotels in South Africa.
4. In Durban, the court magistrate gave him an order to get rid of his turban but Gandhi turned down his order.

Final Years and Death

1. Gandhi became leader of the Congress party in 1920.
2. He walked out as a member of Congress in 1934.
3. Mahatma Gandhi was killed by a person named Nathuram Vinayak Godse. He was a Hindu nationalist and fired three bullets into Gandhi’s chest. He was hanged on November 8, 1949.
4. Gandhi was murdered at 5:17 pm.
5. More than 2 million people participated in his funeral.
6. A museum is dedicated to Gandhi in New Delhi called Gandhi Smriti. The old name of this place was Birla House. This was the very place where he had spent his last 144 days before his murder.

More Gandhi Facts For Kids

1. The word ‘Mahatma’ is a Sanskrit word. It is made up of two words; ‘Maha’ meaning ‘Great’ and ‘Atma’ meaning ‘Soul’. Thus, Mahatma means ‘Great Soul’.
2. Rabindranath Tagore gave Gandhi the title of ‘Mahatma’.
3. He is also known by the name of ‘Bapu’. It is a word in Gujarati language which means ‘Father’.
4. One of the very first books by Gandhi was called ‘Hind Swaraj’ in 1909. It was published in Gujarati.
5. He wrote an autobiography known as ‘The Story of My Experiments with Truth’.
6. In 1930, the Time magazine honored Mahatma Gandhi by the title ‘Man of the Year’.

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