Why did Gandhi use nonviolent resistance?
Gandhi used nonviolent resistance (satyagraha) because he believed it was both morally superior and strategically effective against British colonial rule. Violence would have given the British justification for brutal repression and played to their military strength. Nonviolence exposed the moral bankruptcy of imperialism, mobilized mass participation including women and the elderly, and won international sympathy.
Mohandas K. Gandhi's commitment to nonviolent resistance — which he called satyagraha, meaning 'truth-force' or 'soul-force' — was both a deeply held moral conviction and a brilliant strategic calculation. Understanding why he chose this path reveals how nonviolence became one of the most powerful political tools of the 20th century.
Gandhi's philosophical commitment to nonviolence drew from multiple traditions. Hindu concepts of ahimsa (non-injury to living beings), Jain teachings on non-harm, the Sermon on the Mount from Christianity, and the writings of Leo Tolstoy and Henry David Thoreau all influenced his thinking. He believed that means and ends were inseparable — that a nation born through violence would be a violent nation, while one that achieved freedom through nonviolent struggle would be better equipped for just self-governance.
But Gandhi was also a shrewd political strategist. He recognized that the British Empire possessed overwhelming military force — any violent uprising would be crushed, as the Indian Rebellion of 1857 had demonstrated. Nonviolent resistance neutralized this advantage. When British forces attacked peaceful protesters — as in the Amritsar Massacre of 1919 or the brutal response to the Salt March of 1930 — they exposed their own moral illegitimacy to the world. Each act of repression against nonviolent resisters strengthened the independence movement and weakened British claims to be a civilizing force.
Nonviolence also enabled mass participation on a scale that armed rebellion could not. Gandhi's campaigns — the Salt March, the Quit India movement, boycotts of British goods, non-cooperation with colonial institutions — involved millions of ordinary Indians, including women, the elderly, and the educated middle class, who would never have joined an armed insurgency. This mass participation demonstrated that the Indian people as a whole rejected British rule, making it impossible for the British to claim they governed with the consent of the governed.
The international dimension was crucial. In an age of growing global media, images of British forces beating and imprisoning peaceful protesters generated enormous sympathy for the Indian cause in Britain itself and around the world. After World War II, in which Britain had fought against fascist tyranny, the moral contradiction of maintaining a colonial empire became unsustainable. Gandhi's nonviolent resistance made that contradiction impossible to ignore.
Gandhi's legacy extended far beyond India. His methods directly inspired Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights movement in the United States, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and nonviolent resistance movements around the world. He demonstrated that disciplined nonviolence could be not just morally admirable but politically effective — one of the most consequential lessons of the 20th century.