Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi (1869–1948) was the Indian lawyer-turned-ascetic who led India to independence from Britain through satyagraha — nonviolent mass resistance — proving that disciplined moral force, wielded through boycotts, marches and fasts, could defeat an empire without firing a shot.
The Salt March of 1930, the Quit India movement of 1942, and decades of boycotts, fasts and imprisonments made him the most famous anti-colonial figure on earth. He was assassinated in 1948 by a Hindu nationalist, months after the independence — and Partition — he had fought both for and against.
