Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a major political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian independence movement. In India, he is recognized as the Father of the Nation. A British-educated lawyer, Gandhi first employed his ideas of peaceful civil disobedience in the Indian community's struggle for civil rights in South Africa. Upon his return to India, he led nationwide campaigns for the alleviation of poverty, for the liberation of women, for brotherhood amongst differing religions, and ethnicities, for an end to untouchability and caste discrimination, and for the economic self-sufficiency of the nation, but above all for Swaraj-the independence of India from foreign domination.