The Wealth of Mahatma Gandhi

What was Mahatma Gandhi’s net worth?

Mahatma Gandhi was an Indian leader who had a net worth of $1. Mahatma Gandhi was born in Porbandar, Kathiawar Agency, British India, in October 1869 and passed away in January 1948. Mahatma Gandhi is not related to the political Gandhi family that has been involved in Indian politics for decades, led by Sonia Gandhi.

He was the leader of the Indian independence movement in the British-ruled India and employed nonviolent civil disobedience. He led the country to independence and inspired civil rights and freedom movements across the world. He worked as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa and then returned to India, where he assumed leadership of the Indian National Congress. He led Indians in the Dandi Salt March in 1930 to challenge a British-imposed salt tax. Gandhi also led Indians in the Quit India movement in 1942. He served many years in prison in India and South Africa. He was known for fasting and has been described as the father of the Indian nation. His birthday is now celebrated as a national holiday and as the International Day of Nonviolence. The name Mahatma was first applied to him in 1914 and means high souled or venerable. Mahatma Gandhi died in an assassination on January 30, 1948, at 78 years old.

Gandhi believed in creating positive change through peaceful defiance and non-violent protest. Dedicated to such movements, he readied himself for the task through personal introspection, physical sacrifice, and the honing of psychological and spiritual strength.

Early Life

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born to Karamchand Uttamchand Gandhi and his fourth wife, Putlibai, on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, a city in Gujarat, India. His father, chief minister of Porbandar, had been widowed by his first two wives. When his third wife failed to produce a child, he obtained her permission to remarry. Mohandas was the youngest of their four children, which included son Laxmidas, daughter Raliatbehn and son Karsandas.

In 1874, the family relocated to Rajkot, the fourth largest city in Gujarat, where Karamchand was employed as a counselor for Thakur Sahib. There, Mohandas attended the local school and went on to Alfred High School, where his grades were those of an average student.

Marriage & Children

At thirteen, Mohandas engaged in an arranged marriage with fourteen-year-old Kasturbai Gokuldas Kapadia. Their first child was born in 1885 but only lived a few days.

He graduated from high school in 1887 and, the following year, enrolled at Samaldas College in Bhavnagar. Another child, son Harilal, was then born to him, and he soon dropped out of school and returned to Porbandar, leaving again a few months later to study English literature at University College in London. He then attended the Honourable Society of the Inns School of Law for future attorneys of England.

In 1893, he agreed to legally represent an Indian merchant who was involved in a lawsuit in North Africa. With his wife and son, and another child born in 1892, Manilal, he relocated to North Africa. There, he helped found the Natal Indian Congress in 1894, an effort to provide the Indian community with political support.

Two additional children were then born: Ramdas in 1897 and Devdas in 1900. Life, however, was almost unbearable in South Africa for the Indian Hindu. Due to his ethnicity and religion, he was humiliated, physically assaulted, and arrested when he refused to comply with belittling orders such as the removal of his turban.

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Commitment to the Poor

During the Boer War, Mohandas formed the Natal Indian Ambulance Corps and raised over 1,000 volunteers to provide medical intervention on the front lines. Eight years later, when a new act called for the registration of Indian and Chinese individuals residing in South Africa, he urged defiance of the order through peaceful protest.

To further publicize the issue of discrimination, he began publishing a newspaper called ‘Indian Opinion’ and, in 1910, settled a self-sufficient community near Johannesburg called ‘Tolstoy Farm.’

It was in 1914 that the name ‘Mahatma’ was first applied to Mohandas, meaning ‘great-souled.’ He had begun wearing a dhoti, a loose-fitting lower garment made of homespun yarn, to show his alliance with the poor and voluntarily endured lengthy periods of fasting.

In 1915, he returned to India to campaign for the civil rights of the lower financial classes, organizing protests among the peasant farmers concerning excessive taxes. In 1917, he successfully protested fixed prices on their behalf and, the following year negotiated the suspension of revenue collection from those who had been negatively affected by recent floods and secured their release from prison. He then joined the Indian National Congress and, during World War I, attempted to recruit Indians for battle. Many felt this was a hypocritical move. He explained that one must realize they are willing and capable of violence before they are able to refuse utilizing it.

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Politics & Peace

Mohandas was arrested again on April 9, 1919, for entering Delhi to protest the Rowlatt Act, which gave the British government free rein to arrest anyone without legitimate reason. Unfettered, his eventual freedom allowed him to resume his work, and, in 1921, he took over leadership of the Indian National Congress and began national campaigns against religious and ethnic discrimination, poverty among certain classes, and the lack of rights for people to self-govern. He encouraged a boycott of British products in an effort to financially destroy the British government in India. For this, he was arrested on March 10, 1922, and charged with committing political crimes. He was sentenced to serve six years in prison but was released after serving only two.

In March 1930, he organized a 250-mile-long demonstration against the salt tax, and the next year, the British government signed the Gandhi-Irwin Pact. All political prisoners were freed in return for the suspension of the civil disobedience movement Gandhi had begun. He went on to take part in the Round Table Conferences, political conversations regarding an end of British rule in India. Eleven years later, he was still seeking Indian independence from Britain when he gave a speech called ‘Quit India’ for which he was arrested and jailed for two years.

Indian independence was finally granted in 1947, however, Britain partitioned the empire into two portions – India and Pakistan. A deadly revolt broke out among suddenly displaced Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. Mohandas began a hunger strike on January 12, 1948, pleading for the violence to stop. On January 30, he was attending an interfaith prayer meeting in New Delhi when Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist, stepped up and assassinated him with three bullets to the chest.