Gandhi and Indian History

Question: What language did Mohandas Gandhi grow up speaking?

Answer: Mohandas Gandhi grew up speaking Gujarati. He was born in the coastal city of Porbandar, in Gujarat.

Question: When was the Indian National Party founded?

Answer: Many Indians wanted their own government under British rule. In 1885 some of the people formed a political party called the Indian National Congress Party.

Question: Who was the first Sikh to serve as India’s prime minister?

Answer: In 2004 Manmohan Singh became the first Sikh to serve as India’s prime minister.

Question: Who was the first prime minister of India?

Answer: Jawaharlal Nehru was the first prime minister of independent India (1947–64) and one of the principal leaders of India’s independence movement in the 1930s and ’40s.

Question: Who was the only Indian prime minister to die abroad?

Answer: Lal Bahadur Shastri was India’s third prime minister. He died in 1966 while on a state visit to the Soviet Union.

Question: What method of protest did Mohandas Gandhi advocate?

Answer: In 1920 Mohandas Gandhi began urging Indians to resist British rule. He asked them to protest British laws peacefully, not violently. This method of protest is called civil disobedience.

Question: What substance did Mohandas Gandhi’s 1930 march to the sea produce?

Answer: In 1930, in protest of a tax on salt, Mohandas Gandhi led thousands of Indians on a 240-mile (385-kilometer) march to the sea to make their own salt.

Question: Who was Mohandas Gandhi assassinated by?

Answer: On January 30, 1948, in the city of Delhi, Gandhi was shot and killed by a Hindu man who was upset by the partition of India and Pakistan.