The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (825 page)

(1869–1948).
Called Mah
tm
, ‘great soul’, spiritual and practical leader of India (especially in pursuit of independence from British rule). When asked for his message to the world, he said, ‘My life is my message.’ Born into the
Vai
ya
caste, in a
Vai
avite
family, with Jain friends (both of which influenced his later attitudes), he left a wife and infant son in 1888 to study law in London. He returned in 1891 to India, carrying with him Christian influences, but when he failed to establish his legal career in India, he went to S. Africa in 1893 (to assist a Muslim in a court case), where his experience of, and resistance to, racial abuse and oppressive government began. He founded the Natal Indian Congress, and began to develop his way of non-resistance, based on
ahi
s
,
saty
graha
(lit., ‘truth-insistence’, a term which he coined and defined as ‘soul-force’),
tapasya
, renunciation (cf.
TAPAS
), and
swaraj
, ‘self-rule’. He was much influenced by (within his general Hindu perspective) the
Bhagavadg
t
, and by such writings as the
Sermon on the Mount
,
Tolstoy's
The Kingdom of God is Within You
, Ruskin's
Unto this Last
, Thoreau's
Civil Disobedience
.
But his inclusive style led to suspicion among orthodox Hindus, and he was shot on 30 Jan. 1948, uttering the name of
R
ma
as he died.

 
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