Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in Porbandar, in Gujarat, on 2ndOctober 1869. At that time, India was part of the British Empire -a group of countries and lands around the world that were ruled' by Britain. The British made India's Laws and the head of the Indian govemmentz was the British Viceroy in Calcutta. This time of British rule was called the Raj, which means 'rule' in Hindustani, one of the many languages of India. The British East India Company had first come to India at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when it was ruled by the Moghul Emperor3 Jahangir. The British East India Company was a big, important organization that worked in Asia trading -buying and selling things like cotton, tea and silk4• The Portuguese and Dutch had arrived in India before the British and they had taken parts of it. But early in the seventeenth century the British fought against Portugal and the Dutch Republic -now the Netherlands -and won these parts of lndta for themselves. In 1670, King Charles II of England changed the rules of the British East India Company so that it could keep an army, fight wars and take new land. During the eighteenth century, the Moghul emperors began to Lose power5 in India. So the British East India Company fought many battles and began to take control6 of Larger areas