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Gandhi Was One of the Greatest Men to Ever Live Essay

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I am going to try to answer an interesting question as to who is the greatest man in the world today. In seeking an answer to this inquiry, I predict that people would first instinctively go back to the days of the great wars in history, and go over the names of the men who held positions of vast responsibility and power in that astonishing conflicts, people who succeed in front of their task and, thus, were considered heroes. However, I turn away from the storm of wars, and from the men who rode that storm to power and place; and I look further for that man who impresses me as the greatest man who lived in the world. A man, who people can surely call the greatest, should be a universal man — a man who combines in perfect balance the …show more content…

Later still, he took the vow of poverty, and thus became a beggar. In England in 1914, he ate only rice, drank only water, and slept on the bare boards of a wooden floor. However, he was still an educated and well-read man, with “a certain indefinable suggestion of saintliness” (Holmes). Gandhi was indeed become a saint. He had deliberately swept out of his life every last sign of self-indulgence, that no slightest desire of the flesh might stand in the way of devotion to his ideals. From early in his life he was a man apart, with every last energy of soul and body dedicated to the service of humanity. His public career divides itself into two distinct periods. The first period extends from 1893 to 1914 and is identified with South Africa. The second period, which belongs to India itself, runs from 1915 to 1948. In Gandhi’s first period of life in South Africa, in the end of the 19th century, there was massive population of Indians, mainly in the province of Natal. In 1896, due to the oppression, the Indians in South Africa had to ask Gandhi to come and help them. He accepted their call, for it was his conviction that, if his countrymen were anywhere suffering, it was both his duty and privilege to suffer with them (Holmes). As he was still a lawyer at this time, he began his fight for the rights of Indians in South Africa and won. Not once in

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