Gandhi: Indias Father

Junior Division
Group Website
Krish Mehta and Pranav Rajpal
Process Paper Word Count: 459

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Originally, we were planning to use Gandhi as our topic last year, but seeing as how it
didnt fit the theme well, we decided to go with a different topic. However, the topic of Gandhi
fit into the theme this year and tied back the strongly to our Indian heritage. We also realized
how perfectly our topic would relate to Taking a Stand. There is also an abundance of primary
sources at our disposal to use for this project.
When we first started our project, we started reading biographies of Gandhis life in order
to get familiar with his life, including his famous protests and his influences. After this, we
started narrowing down our topic to events that we wanted to research for our project, such as
Gandhis movement to free India from British rule. Using this, we started collecting specific
information about these events.
Last year, we did an exhibit, but there were many flaws we find with that kind of
presentation. On the contrary, a website is much more efficient for avoiding human error, seeing
as how you can undo certain mistakes on a virtual display. In addition, there is a lot more
customization available when put in the drivers seat of a website seeing as how we have
experience with website code, or in other words, HTML. It also allows us to work on the website
at different times at different locations, which was yet another restriction of an exhibit. We first
put our thesis on the website, and using that, we wrote summaries of all the subpages, which
would go on the main pages. We then built the rest of our website off of three main elements:
quotes by important people at the time, multiple timelines for numerous important events, and
different perspectives for certain topics. For the quotes, we put sayings by people who played an
important role during Gandhis movement into the subpages. When we did this, we tried to
observe both perspectives, on a certain event by researching people who either supported or went

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against the topic along with their quotes. In the timelines, we put a brief summary about each
important event into an embeddable timeline and then inserted it onto the website.
Mahatma Gandhi took a stand against what he saw as unfair throughout his life. For
example, he is well-known for working against British rule of India through his famous
technique of peaceful protest. He also took a stand against apartheid in South Africa, which
influenced his Indian independence movement.