The tree is at the back of a border with the plaque in front of it. Some
foliage is hanging over the plaque so not all of the wording is visible. No
doubt a gardener will attend to it.
The plaque reads:
Born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, India, Mahatma
Gandhi studied law and came to advocate for the rights of Indians, both at
home and in South Africa. Gandhi became a leader of India's independence
movement, organizing boycotts against British institutions in peaceful forms
of civil disobedience. He was killed by a fanatic in 1948.
Indian nationalist leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, more commonly known as
Mahatma Gandhi, was born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, Kathiawar, India.
He studied law in London, England, but in 1893 went to South Africa, where
he spent 20 years opposing discriminatory legislation against Indians. As a
pioneer of Satyagraha, or resistance through mass non-violent civil
disobedience, he became one of the major political and spiritual leaders of
his time. Satyagraha remains one of the most potent philosophies in freedom
struggles throughout the world today.
In 1914, Gandhi returned to India, where he supported the Home Rule
movement, and became leader of the Indian National Congress, advocating a
policy of non-violent non-co-operation to achieve independence. His goal was
to help poor farmers and laborers protest oppressive taxation and
discrimination. He struggled to alleviate poverty, liberate women and put an
end to caste discrimination, with the ultimate objective being self-rule for
India.
Following his civil disobedience campaign (1919-22), he was jailed for
conspiracy (1922-24). In 1930, he led a landmark 320 km/200 mi march to the
sea to collect salt in symbolic defiance of the government monopoly. On his
release from prison (1931), he attended the London Round Table Conference on
Indian constitutional reform. In 1946, he negotiated with the Cabinet
Mission which recommended the new constitutional structure. After
independence (1947), he tried to stop the Hindu-Muslim conflict in Bengal, a
policy which led to his assassination in Delhi by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu
fanatic.
Even after his death, Gandhi's commitment to non-violence and his belief in
simple living--making his own clothes, eating a vegetarian diet, and using
fasts for self-purification as well as a means of protest -- have been a
beacon of hope for oppressed and marginalized people throughout the world.