At 5:17 p.m. on 30 January 1948, a frail man walked across the garden of Birla House in Delhi, surrounded by his grandnieces. Nathuram Godse, a militant nationalist, stepped forward and fired three bullets into his chest, ending a life that had transformed the British Empire.

Born in 1869 in the coastal town of Porbandar, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was the son of a state official. Raised in a devout Hindu household, he was deeply influenced by the religious vows of his mother, Putlibai, and the epic tales of truth-seeking kings like Harishchandra.

A shy law student at the Inner Temple in London, he was called to the bar in 1891. Finding little success in Indian courts, he moved to South Africa in 1893, where he spent 21 years enduring systemic racial discrimination, an experience that forged his resolve to fight for civil rights.

It was in South Africa that he developed the concept of Satyagraha, or soul force. After returning to India in 1915, he reorganised the Indian National Congress, adopting a simple dhoti as a symbol of his solidarity with the rural poor against British colonial rule.

The hinge point of his movement came in 1930 with the 400 km Dandi Salt March. By challenging the British salt tax, he mobilised millions, forcing the imperial government into a series of negotiations that eventually led to his imprisonment alongside tens of thousands of others.

The 1940s brought the final, bitter cost of his vision. While he demanded a unified, pluralistic nation, the British Indian Empire was partitioned in August 1947 into India and Pakistan, triggering catastrophic religious violence across Punjab and Bengal.

In his final months, the 78-year-old leader fasted in Delhi to stem the tide of communal bloodshed, a desperate act of peace that ultimately alienated hardliners. He was assassinated just days after his final fast ended on 18 January 1948.

Today, his birthday on 2 October is observed as the International Day of Nonviolence, cementing his status as the Father of the Nation, though the bullet-scarred site of his death at Birla House serves as a sober reminder of the price of his ideals.