Mohandas K. Gandhi

Mohandas K. Gandhi was a London-trained barrister who found his vocation in South Africa, organising the Indian community against discrimination and working out satyagraha, the force of truth, nonviolent resistance that accepts suffering to convert the opponent. Hind Swaraj, written in ten days on a ship in 1909 as a dialogue with a revolutionary, rejects not only British rule but modern civilisation, its machines, lawyers and doctors, in favour of the village. He led India to independence and was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist in 1948. Thoreau and Tolstoy shaped him; King and Mandela followed him.