Mahatma Gandhi
A barrister who spent twenty years in South Africa and found there the instrument of his life — satyagraha, holding firmly to truth: refusing to obey an unjust law, accepting the punishment for it, and never returning the blow. Back in India he turned the struggle for independence from the business of educated townsmen into the business of the village: the spinning wheel, homespun cloth, the boycott of British goods. The Salt March of 1930 — 390 kilometres to the sea for a handful of salt — showed the empire that a law could be broken without raising a hand. India became free in 1947, at the price of partition, which Gandhi never accepted: he spent his last months fasting to stop the killing between Hindus and Muslims. In January 1948 a Hindu radical shot him.
He was born in Porbandar on 2 October 1869 at 7:11 local mean time: India had no single time zone until 1906, so the hour is reckoned by the longitude of the town on the coast of Gujarat.