‘Get down!’ the official said. ‘Or I will get a constable to push you out!’

‘Do that,’ I told him. ‘I will not get off this train!’

We know Mahatma Gandhi as the father of the nation, as the benign looking old man whose picture graces our currency notes. But who was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and what made him the phenomenon he was? Born into a middle class Gujarati family, Gandhi gave evidence of his thirst for the truth at an early age. Tirelessly striving for the truth, Gandhi was usually harder on himself than on anyone else. His moral courage and implicit faith in truth and above all his belief that love and non-violence were the perfect weapons to win any fight made him a charismatic leader whose life and words continue to influence people today.