Mohandas Karamchand "Mahatma" Gandhi was perhaps one of the most influential people of the 20th Century, yet, held no office or title, and possessed no wealth. Mahatma Gandhi's influence and accomplishments were largely responsible for India's Independence from Britain. He won no elections, and claimed no scientific discoveries or inventions. His legacy, a philosophy of non-violence and non-cooperation, continues to this day with a profound effect on the world. It was the inspiration for Martin Luther King's fight for racial equality, the environmental movement's strategy, and Burmese dissident and Nobel Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi's fight for democracy in Burma.
Since his death from an assassin's bullet in 1948, popular interest in Gandhi has shifted but never relaxed. Independence movements all over the world have drawn inspiration from his struggle to free India of British rule, modelling their own strategies after the marches and strikes that formed his campaign of civil disobedience. .
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Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, a town of about 70,000 people, ruled by a native prince whom the British usually left alone as long as he did what he was told. The Gandhi's belonged to the Modh Bania subdivision of the Vaisya caste. On the old Hindu social scale, the Vaisyas, all of whom are supposed to be tradesmen or farmers, ranked third and the Bania, which had a connotation of moneylender, slightly lower. Gandhi's father, as his father had been before him, was a diwan, or chief minister for the Porbandar prince.
The youngest of six children, Mohandas spent his early years in a three-story house that had been in the family since 1777. As an infant he could not always tell his brother and sisters from his numerous cousins, for, following Hindu custom, his father shared the house with five brothers, their children and their children's children. The immediate family lived in two rooms - one of them 20 by 30 feet and the other 13 by 12.