In remembrance of the Architect of India's Freedom!

Martyrs' Day is an annual observance in India to honour all those who gave up their lives in service of the Nation.  The observance is celebrated on January 30th of every year as it marks the 1948 martyrdom of The Father of the Indian Nation, Mahatma Gandhi.


Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, born on 2nd October, 1869 and assassinated on Jan 30, 1948, indeed was a remarkable personality. Millions of people from across the world held him in high esteem. There is some kind of charisma in him which simply fails to fade. His life was dedicated to the ideals of Truth, Non-violence and Love. 'The Bhagavad Gita is my mother,' he once said; and the name of Sri Rama was his shield. He was the architect of India's freedom and one of the greatest men of this century.


On the occasion of Martyr’s Day, we would like to share some little known facts about him which most of us don’t know.

• Mahatma Gandhi spoke English with an Irish accent, for one of his first teachers was an Irishman.
• During the freedom struggle, he wore nothing but a loin cloth, but for years he lived in London and used to wear a silk hat and spats and carried a cane.
• He was educated at London University and became an attorney. But the first time he attempted to make a speech in court, his knees trembled, and he was so frightened that he had to sit down in confusion and defeat.
• His income in South Africa touched fifteen thousand dollars a year! Something still a dream for most Indians!
• Despite this worldly success he was not happy. On seeing the untold misery of millions of his fellow countrymen; on seeing thousand of them dying of starvation; the worldly success seemed cheap and unimportant to him. He gave up all his money and ‘took the vow of poverty, and since that time, he consecrated his life to helping the poor and the downtrodden.
• Mahatma Gandhi experimented with diets to see how cheaply he could live and remain healthy. He started living principally on fruit and goats’ milk and olive oil.
• Mahatma Gandhi got inspiration of Civil Disobedience by reading a book of an American! He had been greatly influenced by the teachings of an American by the name of David Thoreau. 
• Mahatma Gandhi inspired millions of people world over to take the path of non-violence and civil disobedience. 5 world leaders who got Noble Peace prize viz. Martin Luther King Jr. (USA), Dalai Lama (Tibet), Aung San Suu Kyi (Myanmar), Nelson Mandela (S. Africa) and Adolfo Perez Esquivel (Argentina) have acknowledged the fact that they were influenced by the philosophy of Gandhi. Yet, Mahatma Gandhi; the man who inspired these Nobel Peace Prize winners, never got a Noble Prize!