Gandhi was the extraordinary leader of the world's first successful nonviolent movement for independence from colonial rule. At the same time he was a philosopher who was constantly seeking to live out his own ideas, whether they applied to individual self-improvement or social change: his autobiography was typically subtitled The Story of My Experiments with Truth.
No dictionary imbues “truth” with the depth of meaning Gandhi gave it. His truth emerged from his convictions: it meant not only what was accurate, but what was just and therefore right. Truth could not be obtained by “untruthful” or unjust means, which included inflicting violence upon one's opponent. For Gandhi, the way to truth was not by the infliction of suffering on one's opponent, but on one's self. It was essential to willingly accept punishment in order to demonstrate the strength of one's convictions.
To describe his method, Gandhi coined the expression satyagraha—literally, “holding on to truth” or, as he variously described it, truth force, love force, or soul force. He disliked the English term “passive resistance” because satyagraha required activism, not passivity. If you believed in truth and cared enough to obtain it, Gandhi felt, you could not afford to be passive: you had to be prepared actively to suffer for truth.
It was satyagraha that first bound Nehru to Gandhi, soon after the latter's return to India in 1915 from a long sojourn in South Africa, where his morally charged leadership of the Indian community against racial discrimination had earned him the sobriquet of Mahatma (“Great Soul,” a term he detested). Gandhi's unique method of resistance through civil disobedience, allied to a talent for organization gave the Indian nationalist movement both a saint and a strategist.
Gandhi's singular insight was that self-government would never be achieved by the resolutions passed by a self-regarding and un-elected elite pursuing the politics of the drawing room. To him, self-government had to involve the empowerment of the masses, the toiling multitudes of India in whose name the upper classes were clamoring for Home Rule. This position did not go over well with India's political class, which consisted in those days largely of maharajahs and lawyers, men of means who discoursed in English and demanded the rights of Englishmen. Nor did Gandhi's insistence that the masses be mobilized not by the methods of “princes and potentates” but by moral values derived from ancient tradition and embodied in swadeshi (self-reliance on indigenous products) and satyagraha.
To put his principles into practice, the Mahatma lived a simple life of near-absolute poverty in an ashram and traveled across the land in third-class railway compartments, campaigning against untouchability, poor sanitation, and child marriage, and preaching an eclectic set of virtues from sexual abstinence to the weaving of khadi and the beneficial effects of frequent enemas. That he was an eccentric seemed beyond doubt; that he had touched a chord among the masses was equally apparent; that he was a potent political force soon became clear. He captured the imagination of the nation by publicly breaking English law in the name of a higher law (“the voice of conscience”) and challenging the British to imprison him.
It was when the British passed the Rowlatt Act in March 1919, suspending the rights of defendants in sedition trials, that Jawaharlal Nehru became a serious follower of Gandhi, signing the “satyagraha pledge.” Despite the initial reluctance of his father, the redoubtable lawyer Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal soon followed Gandhi into the streets and into jail. Within a decade Motilal suggested to the Mahatma that “the need of the hour is the head of Gandhi and the voice of Jawahar.”
Gandhi did not need persuading: he pushed and promoted the younger man, winning him the presidency of the Indian National Congress in 1929, two months before his fortieth birthday. Despite differences over both tactics (the younger, more impatient Nehru wanted independence immediately whereas Gandhi believed Indians had to be made ready for their own freedom) and philosophy (the agnostic Nehru had little patience for the Mahatma's spirituality), the two men proved a formidable combination. Gandhi guided Jawaharlal to the political pinnacle; Nehru in turn proved an inspirational campaigner as president of the party, electrifying the nation with his speeches and tireless travel.
Where sporadic terrorism and moderate constitutionalism had both proved ineffective, Gandhi took the issue of freedom to the masses as one of simple right and wrong and gave them a technique to which the British had no response. By abstaining from violence Gandhi wrested the moral advantage. By breaking the law nonviolently he showed up the injustice of the law. By accepting the punishments imposed on him he confronted his captors with their own brutalization. By voluntarily imposing suffering upon himself in his hunger strikes he demonstrated the lengths to which he was prepared to go in defense of what he considered to be right. In the end, his moral rectitude and Nehru's political passion made the perpetuation of British rule an impossibility.
But neither could stave off the demand of the Muslim League for the creation of Pakistan as a Muslim homeland on the subcontinent, and the partition of India amid bloody communal rioting. When independence came amid tragedy, Gandhi felt he had failed.
Of course, there was much more to Gandhism — physical self-denial and discipline, spiritual faith, a belief in humanity and in the human capacity for selfless love, the self-reliance symbolized by the spinning wheel, religious ecumenism, idealistic internationalism, and a passionate commitment to human equality and social justice (no mean conviction in a caste-ridden society). The improvement of his fellow human beings was arguably more important to him than the political goal of ridding India of the British. But it is his central tenet of nonviolence in the pursuit of these ends that represents his most significant original contribution to the world. Though the Mahatma never won the Nobel Peace Prize, several who did — Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States, Adolfo Perez Esquivel in Argentina, Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma — all sought inspiration from his teachings.
Upon the Mahatma's assassination in 1948, Nehru became the keeper of the national flame, the most visible embodiment of India's struggle for freedom. Incorruptible, visionary, ecumenical, a politician above politics, Nehru's stature was so great that the country he led seemed inconceivable without him. Gandhi's death could have led Nehru to assume untrammeled power, but he did not. Instead he spent a political lifetime trying to instill the habits of democracy in his people — a disdain for dictators, a respect for parliamentary procedures, an abiding faith in the constitutional system. He himself was such a convinced democrat, profoundly wary of the risks of autocracy, that, at the crest of his rise, he authored an anonymous article warning Indians of the dangers of giving dictatorial temptations to Jawaharlal Nehru. “He must be checked,” he wrote of himself. “We want no Caesars.” And indeed, his practice when challenged within his own party was to offer his resignation; he usually got his way, but it was hardly the instinct of a Caesar.
As prime minister, Nehru carefully nurtured the country's infant democratic institutions. He paid deference to the country's ceremonial presidency and even to its largely otiose vice presidency; he never let the public forget that these notables outranked him in protocol terms. He wrote regular letters to the chief ministers of the states, explaining his policies and seeking their feedback. He subjected himself and his government to cross-examination in Parliament by the small, fractious but undoubtedly talented opposition, allowing them an importance out of all proportion to their numerical strength, because he was convinced that a strong opposition was essential for a healthy democracy. He took care not to interfere with the judicial system; on the one occasion he publicly criticized a judge, he apologized the next day and wrote an abject letter to the chief justice, regretting having slighted the judiciary. And he never forgot that he derived his authority from the people of India; not only was he astonishingly accessible for a person in his position, but he started the practice of offering a daily darshan at home for an hour each morning to anyone coming in off the street without an appointment, a practice that continued until the dictates of security finally overcame the populism of his successors.