How Mahatma Gandhi changed political protest

Mahatma Gandhi was a lawyer and activist whose nonviolent approach to political change helped India gain independence after nearly a century of British colonial rule.

Often called the “father of India” and a “great soul in beggar’s garb,” Gandhi was a frail man with a will of iron, who provided a blueprint for future social movements around the world. He remains one of the most revered figures in modern history. Here’s what to know about his life and legacy.

Mahatma Gandhi’s early life

Born Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in Gujarat, India in 1869, he was part of an elite family. After a period of teenage rebellion, he left India to study law in London. Before going, he promised his mother he’d abstain from sex, meat, and alcohol in an attempt to re-adopt strict Hindu morals.

In 1893, at the age of 24, the new attorney moved to the British colony of Natal in South Africa to practice law. Natal was home to thousands of Indians whose labor had helped build its wealth.

But the colony fostered both formal and informal discrimination against people of Indian descent. Gandhi was shocked when he was thrown out of train cars, roughed up for using public walkways, and segregated from European passengers on a stagecoach.

In 1894, Natal stripped all Indians of their ability to vote. Gandhi organized Indian resistance, fought anti-Indian legislation in the courts and led large protests against the colonial government.

Along the way, he developed a public persona and a philosophy of truth-focused, nonviolent non-cooperation he called Satyagraha.

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Social and political activism

After his years in South Africa, Gandhi brought Satyagraha to India in 1915 and was soon elected to the Indian National Congress political party.

He began to push for independence from the United Kingdom, and organized resistance to a 1919 law known as the Rowlatt Act, which gave British authorities carte blanche to imprison suspected revolutionaries without trial.

The British government responded brutally to the resistance, mowing down 400 unarmed, nonviolent protesters in the Amritsar Massacre.

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Now Gandhi pushed even harder for home rule, encouraging boycotts of British goods and organizing mass protests. In 1930, he began a massive satyagraha campaign against an 1882 British law that forced Indians to purchase British salt instead of producing it locally.

Gandhi organized the Salt March, a 241-mile-long protest march to the west coast of Gujarat, where he and his acolytes harvested salt on the shores of the Arabian Sea. In response, Britain imprisoned over 60,000 peaceful protesters and inadvertently generated even more support for home rule.

By then, Gandhi had become a national icon, and was widely referred to as Mahatma, Sanskrit for great soul or saint. Imprisoned for a year because of the Salt March, he became more influential than ever.

He protested discrimination against the “untouchables,” India’s lowest caste, and negotiated unsuccessfully for Indian home rule.

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Undeterred, he began the Quit India movement, a campaign to get Britain to voluntarily withdraw from India during World War II. Britain refused and arrested him yet again.

Huge demonstrations ensued, and despite the arrests of 100,000 home rule advocates by British authorities, the balance finally tipped toward Indian independence.

A frail Gandhi was released from prison in 1944, and Britain at last began to make plans to withdraw from the Indian subcontinent. It was bittersweet for Gandhi, who opposed the partition of India and Pakistan, and attempted to quell Hindu-Muslim animosity and deadly riots in 1947.

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Death and legacy

India finally gained its independence in August 1947. But Gandhi only saw it for a few months; a Hindu extremist assassinated Gandhi on January 30, 1948. Over 1.5 million people marched in his massive funeral procession.

Ascetic and unflinching, Gandhi changed the face of civil disobedience around the world. Martin Luther King Jr. drew on his tactics during the Civil Rights Movement, and the Dalai Lama was inspired by Gandhi’s teachings, which are still heralded by those who seek to inspire change without inciting violence.

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But though his legacy resonates, others wonder whether Gandhi should be revered. Among some Indian Hindus, he remains controversial for his embrace of Muslims. Others question whether he did enough to challenge the Indian caste system.

He has also been criticized for supporting racial segregation between black and white South Africans and making derogatory remarks about black people. And though he supported women’s rights in some regards, he also opposed contraception and he conducted “celibacy tests” for himself by inviting young women to sleep in his bed naked.

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Mohandas Gandhi the man was complex and flawed. However, Mahatma Gandhi, the public figure, left an indelible mark on the history of India and on the exercise of civil disobedience worldwide.