Gandhi Jayantī

When it falls

2 October every year, one of India's three national holidays, with Republic Day and Independence Day. The United Nations keeps the same date as the International Day of Non-Violence.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born at Porbandar in Gujarat on 2 October 1869. He was a lawyer in South Africa for twenty-one years, where he first built the method he called satyāgraha, holding to truth: non-violent refusal to obey an unjust law and acceptance of the punishment. In India from 1915 he led the non-cooperation movement, the Salt March of 1930 and the Quit India movement of 1942, and was shot dead in Delhi on 30 January 1948, five months after independence.

The day is a dry day across India, with no sale of alcohol, in keeping with his views; the Swachh Bharat cleanliness mission was launched on it in 2014.

How the day is kept

• Prayer meetings at Rāj Ghāṭ in Delhi, the memorial at the site of his cremation, with the President and Prime Minister laying flowers and the singing of his favourite hymns, Raghupati Rāghava Rājā Rām and Vaiṣṇava jana to.
• Schools and colleges hold speeches, essay competitions and spinning-wheel demonstrations; his statues are garlanded in every town.
• Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad and his birthplace at Porbandar hold the day's largest gatherings.

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