Mohandas Gandhi led India’s independence movement through non-violence. His method, often called satyagraha, combined peaceful resistance, civil disobedience, boycotts, marches, fasting, and refusal to cooperate with unjust authority.
Gandhi first developed these tactics while challenging racial discrimination against Indians in South Africa. After returning to India in 1915, he adapted them to the struggle against British rule. Major campaigns included the Non-Cooperation Movement, the 1930 Salt March against the British salt tax, and the 1942 Quit India Movement. These actions mobilized millions of ordinary Indians and made colonial rule increasingly difficult to maintain.
Non-violence did not mean passivity. Gandhi encouraged people to break unjust laws openly, accept arrest, reject imported British goods, and endure punishment without retaliating. His philosophy drew partly on the Indian concept of ahimsa, or avoidance of harm, but he applied it on an unprecedented mass political scale.
India became independent in August 1947, although independence also brought Partition and terrible communal violence. Gandhi’s approach was central to the nationalist campaign, but he was not India’s only independence leader, and British withdrawal also reflected World War II, economic strain, and pressure from many other movements.