Mahatma Gandhi, travelling with a first-class ticket, is forcibly ejected from the carriage at Pietermaritzburg because of his colour

Mahatma Gandhi, confronted by racial discrimination in South Africa, launches a programme of passive resistance (satyagraha)

Mahatma Gandhi, on a visit to India, publishes a pamphlet entitled Hind Swaraj ("Indian Home Rule")

Mahatma Gandhi returns to India after more than twenty years in South Africa

Mahatma Gandhi is arrested by the British in India as an agitator and is sentenced to six years in prison

Mahatma Gandhi leads a 240-mile march from Ahmedabad to the sea to defy the British salt tax, thus launching a campaign of civil disobedience

Mahatma Gandhi launches the Quit India Movement, calling on a large crowd in Bombay to 'do or die' in the struggle to expel the British

Mahatma Gandhi and nearly all the leaders of India's Congress party are arrested and will remain in prison until the end of the war

Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated at a Delhi prayer meeting by a Hindu extremist, Nathuram Godse

Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, becomes India's prime minister as leader of the Congress party

British director Richard Attenborough creates an epic film, Gandhi, from the life of the pacifist Indian leader

Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi uses the army to dislodge militant Sikhs occupying the Golden Temple in Amritsar

Indira Gandhi is assassinated in Delhi by members of her Sikh bodyguard, in retaliation for the desecration of the Golden Temple

Rajiv Gandhi succeeds his mother as leader of the Congress party and prime minister of India

Rajiv Gandhi is killed near Chennai, during an election campaign, by a suicide bomber on behalf of Tamil militants