MAHATMA GANDHI Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 into a Gujarati Hindu Modh Bania family in Porbandar (also known as Sudamapuri), a coastal town on the Kathiawar Peninsula and then part of the small princely state of Porbandar in the Kathiawar Agency of the British Raj. His father, Karamchand Uttamchand Gandhi (1822 _ 1885), served as the dewan (chief minister) of Porbandar state. His family originated from the then village of Kutiana in what was then Junagadh State. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi , was an Indian revolutionary, anticolonial nationalist, and political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule and later inspire movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific epithet Mahatma (Sanskrit: "great-souled", "venerable"), first applied to him in 1914 in South Africa, is now used throughout the world.