Residence 1
📍Kirti Mandir, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Porbandar, Gujarat 360575, India
1869 – 1888“I was born in Porbandar on the coast of Gujarat in 1869, into a family of senior government administrators in the princely states. The Porbandar house — modest by the standards of the professional class — was where I spent my earliest years before my father moved to Rajkot. The Gujarat coast, the merchant Hindu tradition, the Jain influence of non-violence that permeated the region — these formed me before I had words for what was forming me. I went to London to study law and then to South Africa, and it was only when I returned to India in 1915 that I understood my life's work. Porbandar was the beginning: the sea, the merchant values, the non-violence that I would carry across the world.”
👍 LovedThe Gujarat coast and the particular quality of its light. The merchant Hindu tradition's values of honesty and non-violence. The Jain influence that made ahimsa feel like a natural principle rather than an acquired one.
👎 DislikedThe child marriage at thirteen that I later wrote about with regret. The sense of being formed for a world I had not yet seen. The shyness that made the legal career in London harder than expected.
🗺️ Approximate location today
📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons
Sources: Gandhi, M. The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927), Navajivan; Fischer, L. The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (1950), Harper
Residence 2
📍Gandhi Ashram Road, Ahmedabad, Gujarat 380027, India
1917 – 1930“I chose the banks of the Sabarmati river to build an ashram because it offered a lesson in humility. The prison and the slaughterhouse stood nearby — I told my followers we must not flinch from either. We spun khadi cloth here every morning, making from our own hands what the British mills would have us buy. From this small complex of white buildings I planned the Salt March of 1930 — a walk of 241 miles that broke the moral authority of the Empire.”
👍 LovedThe simple rhythm of ashram life — the prayer at dawn, the spinning, the evening walk along the riverbank
👎 DislikedThe fasts I undertook to prevent violence — each one diminished me physically but seemed the only language some leaders understood
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today
Residence 3
📍Sevagram, Wardha, Maharashtra 442102, India
1936 – 1948“I founded Sevagram — the village of service — in 1936 in the heart of India, in a poor agricultural district three hundred miles from Bombay. I was sixty-seven, my health was failing, and India's independence was still unfinished. I chose this location specifically because it was backward and forgotten — if the ashram could improve life here, the model would be worth copying. The huts were simple mud-and-thatch buildings; I lived in the one called Bapu Kuti and worked at a desk with no electricity, by correspondence that travelled on bullocks and bicycles. From here I ran the Quit India campaign of 1942 — which the British responded to by imprisoning me at the Aga Khan Palace in Pune. Kasturba died there in 1944, in my arms. I was released in 1944 and returned to Sevagram to continue. I was shot in New Delhi on the thirtieth of January 1948. I had been in the city only days. Sevagram was where I lived. Delhi was where I died.”
👍 LovedThe simplicity — a hut, a spinning wheel, a walking stick, and the conviction that these were sufficient for the work that needed doing
👎 DislikedThe partition of India, which I spent my last years trying to prevent and could not — the violence of 1947 and 1948 was the great failure of my life
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today
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