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Gandhi - 1982

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While it is not possible to say that he did not crave fame, his actions were instrumental in gaining India its freedom. For anyone to give up a successful career and spend time living an idealistic life with few comforts and dedicate a large portion of your life to a single goal is a tough ask. It is therefore not fair to judge just a few of his  actions, but judge him on his achievement on the whole.

He also fasted for months till his organs begin to fail to send a message to the people to stop fighting and religions be at peace and work together but was shot to his death by a Hindu who didn't agree with his stand.

It is my understanding that Gandhiji's personal motive in the independence struggle was an India free of white control and racism, of Indian's not being second class citizens in their own country.

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" I propose to discard at least up to 31st of October my topi and vest and to content myself with a loincloth, and a chaddar whenever necessary for protection of my body. I adopt the change because I have always hesitated to advise anything I may not be prepared to follow …"
- Gandhi

At this time, he did not want to use this dress all his life and only wanted to ‘experiment for a month or two’. But soon he saw this as his duty to the poor, and he never wore any other dress

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The most familiar image of Mahatma Gandhi is of him seated,bare chested and in a short dhoti, at the spinning wheel.
He made spinning on the charkha and daily use of khadi , or coarse cloth made from homespun yarn , very powerful symbols.
These were not only symbols of self reliance but also of resistance to the use of British mill - made cloth.

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Soon he decided that dressing ‘unsuitably’ was a more powerful political statement. In Durban in 1913, Gandhi first appeared in a lungi and kurta with his head shaved as a sign of mourning to protest against the shooting of Indian coal miners.
On his return to India in 1915, he decided to dress like a peasant. Only in 1921 did he adopt the short dhoti, the form of dress he wore until his death. On 2 September 1921, a year after launching the non-cooperation movement, which sought swaraj in one year, he announced:

. He consciously rejected the well-known clothes of the Indians and adopted the dress of the poorest Indian. Khadi, white and coarse, was to him a sign of purity, of simplicity, and of poverty. Wearing it became also a symbol of nationalism, a rejection of Western mill- made cloth.

He wore the short dhoti without a shirt when he went to England for the Round Table Conference in 1931. He refused to compromise and wore it even before King George V at Buckingham Palace. When he was asked by journalists whether he was wearing enough clothes to go before the King, he joked that that ‘the King had enough on for both of us’!

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Mahatma Gandhi’s life and his experiments with clothing sum up the changing attitude to dress in the Indian subcontinent. As a boy from a Gujarati family, he usually wore a shirt with a dhoti or pyjama, and sometimes a coat. When he went to London to study law as a boy of 19 in 1888, he cut off the tuft on his head and dressed in a Western suit so that he would not be laughed at. On his return, he continued to wear Western suits, topped with a turban. As a lawyer in Johannesburg, South Africa in the 1890s, he still wore Western clothes.

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Revered the world over for his nonviolent philosophy of passive resistance, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was known to his many followers as Mahatma, or “the great-souled one.”

He began his activism as an Indian immigrant in South Africa in the early 1900s, and in the years following World War I became the leading figure in India’s struggle to gain independence from Great Britain.

Known for his ascetic lifestyle–he often dressed only in a loincloth and shawl–and devout Hindu faith.

Gandhi was imprisoned several times during his pursuit of non-cooperation, and undertook a number of hunger strikes to protest the oppression of India’s poorest classes, among other injustices.

After Partition in 1947, he continued to work toward peace between Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi was shot to death in Delhi in January 1948 by a Hindu fundamentalist.