Who was Gandhi?

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi — known as the Mahatma, or 'Great Soul' — was the central figure of India's independence struggle and one of the most influential leaders of the 20th century. His life demonstrated that nonviolent resistance could be a powerful political weapon, and his legacy shaped liberation movements from the American South to apartheid South Africa.

Born in 1869 in Porbandar, Gujarat, to a prominent Hindu family, Gandhi trained as a lawyer in London before moving to South Africa in 1893, where he spent twenty years fighting racial discrimination against Indians. It was in South Africa that he developed satyagraha — a philosophy of nonviolent resistance rooted in Hindu, Jain, and Christian principles that combined moral conviction with strategic shrewdness. He returned to India in 1915 as a figure of considerable reputation.

Gandhi transformed the Indian independence movement from an elite affair into a mass movement that encompassed hundreds of millions of people across every class, caste, and region. His genius lay in choosing symbolic issues that resonated with ordinary Indians. The Salt March of 1930 — a 240-mile walk to the sea to make salt in defiance of the British salt monopoly — was a masterstroke of political communication. The Non-Cooperation Movement, the boycott of British goods (especially textiles, symbolized by Gandhi's own hand-spinning), and the Quit India Movement of 1942 each escalated the pressure on British rule.

Gandhi's personal austerity was inseparable from his political message. He dressed in a simple loincloth and shawl made of hand-spun cloth, lived in an ashram, practiced vegetarianism, and undertook fasts — sometimes nearly to the point of death — to influence political outcomes and quell communal violence. His lifestyle embodied his argument that Indian civilization was spiritually superior to the materialistic West, and that India should seek not just political independence but moral regeneration.

Independence came on August 15, 1947, but was shadowed by the Partition of India into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan — a division Gandhi had desperately tried to prevent. The communal violence of Partition, which killed up to two million people, was a devastating repudiation of his vision of Hindu-Muslim unity. Gandhi spent his last months trying to stop the violence, including a fast that ended only when community leaders pledged peace. On January 30, 1948, he was assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist who blamed him for being too sympathetic to Muslims.

Gandhi's influence extended far beyond India. Martin Luther King Jr. explicitly adopted Gandhian methods for the American civil rights movement. Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, and Aung San Suu Kyi all acknowledged his inspiration. His demonstration that nonviolent resistance could defeat an empire remains one of the most consequential lessons of the modern era.