Mahatma Gandhi - 2

After an arranged marriage at the age of 13, Gandhi rebelled against his deeply religious upbringing by smoking, eating meat and even stealing. By age 18, he set sail to London to study law.

A fledgling law career in India would eventually send the 24-year-old Gandhi to South Africa. It was here that he witnessed the deep-seated discrimination and racial segregation of South African society.

Perhaps the biggest turning point in young Gandhi’s life occurred on June 7, 1893, where he was thrown off a train station by a white man after he refused to move to the back of the car. That would prove to be Gandhi’s first, but certainly not last, act of civil disobedience.

By 1906, Gandhi had organized his first mass civil disobedience campaign in South Africa. He would spend the next 9 years fighting for Indian rights in the country before returning home to fight for Indian liberation.