Mahatma Gandhi

He is called the Father of the Nation. He bought India its independence and that too without any war or violence, he did it through his weapon called satyagraha. He is such an important person in the history of India that we have his photo on every currency note. He signifies the qualities of truth, love and non violence.

Every educated Indian knows what all he has done for India's Independence, he did a lot of satyagraha, fasting and dandi march. He was born on 2nd October 1869, and every year this day is celebrated as Gandhi Jayanti and is a national holiday.

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, for expanding women's rights, for building religious and ethnic amity, for ending untouchability, for increasing economic self-reliance, but above all for achieving Swaraj—the independence of India from foreign domination.

Gandhi was a practitioner of non-violence and truth, 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.

There is also a very hit bollywood film based on Gandhiji, called Lage Raho Munnabhai starring Sanjay Dutt and Vidya Balan, it is a must watch movie for those who don't know much about Gandhiji and it is also good entertainment movie.