Within the next few years, Gandhi reshaped the existing Indian National Congress into a mass movement promoting Indian self-rule through a boycott of British goods and institutions, and leading to the arrests of thousands of satyagrahis. He suspended the campaign of nonviolent resistance a few days later because protestors had responded violently to the police. In response, Gandhi called for a day of national fasting, meetings, and suspension of work on 6 April 1919, as an act of satyagraha (literally, truth-force or love-force), a form of nonviolent resistance.
In 1919, British authorities issued the Rowlatt Acts, policies that permitted the incarceration without trial of Indians suspected of sedition. It was in South Africa that Gandhi was first exposed to official racial prejudice, and where he developed his philosophy of nonviolent direct action by organizing the Indian community there to oppose race-based laws and socioeconomic repression. In 1893, he accepted a one-year contract to do legal work for an Indian firm in South Africa, but remained for 21 years. After completing his barrister’s degree he returned to India in 1891, but was unable to find well-paid work. At the age of 18, Gandhi began training as a lawyer in England. Gandhi was born 2 October 1869, in Porbandar, in the western part of India, to Karamchand Gandhi, chief minister of Porbandar, and his wife Putlibai, a devout Hindu. He later remarked that he considered Gandhi to be “the greatest Christian of the modern world ” (King, 23 June 1962). King situated Gandhi’s ideas of nonviolent direct action in the larger framework of Christianity, declaring that “Christ showed us the way and Gandhi in India showed it could work ” (Rowland, “2,500 Here Hail Boycott Leader ”). In 1950, King heard Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University, speak of his recent trip to India and Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance techniques. In a talk prepared for George Davis’ class, Christian Theology for Today, King included Gandhi among “individuals who greatly reveal the working of the Spirit of God ” ( Papers 1:249). King first encountered Gandhian ideas during his studies at Crozer Theological Seminary. A testament to the revolutionary power of nonviolence, Gandhi’s approach directly influenced Martin Luther King, Jr., who argued that the Gandhian philosophy was “the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom ” ( Papers 4:478).
Gandhi protested against racism in South Africa and colonial rule in India using nonviolent resistance. Gandhi was hailed by the London Times as “the most influential figure India has produced for generations” (“Mr. Bob Fitch photography archive, © Stanford University Libraries
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