Until 1906 he was a loyal citizen of the British Empire. He wanted equal rights and equal citizenship, not Independence.

From 1899-1902 he was involved in the Boerr War (Zulus vs. British) in which he was awakened to the brutality of British domination. He begins to reflect on domination and power and how it effects all aspects of life.

In 1906, new laws requried all Indians to be fingerprinted and for women to strip to reveal body marks to British police.

Gandhi has the epiphany of resisting through simple non-cooperation with the law. His speech sparked an historically unprecented act of mass civil disobediance. This was the beginning of the Satyagraha movement. Seeking truth through Non-Violence.

Gandhi describes it as follows:

"Its root meaning is holding onto truth, hence truth-force. I have also called it love-force or soul-force. In the application of satyagraha, I discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one’s opponent but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on oneself."

1913 - Hindu and Muslim marriages declared invalid. Gandhi was able to mobilize a mass strike and the laws were overturned.

Meanwhile, he promoted the idea that men and women were equal, thereby mobilizing women in his movement as well.

1915 - He returns to India as a hero (with tremendous influence). At this time over 300 million Indians were ruled by 100,000 British.



Gandhi was beginning to form a new idea of power. It is not a possession of the empowered, it is something given to the powerful by the masses. If the masses decide the power is invalid and not legitimate, they can stop accepting it.

He also begins to recognize the structural power of the British. He calls for Indians to give up their British textiles, to weave their own cloth, and to go on a massive nation-wide strike - effectively halting the empire.

The response from the British General Dyer was the Armitsar Massacre of 1919, a horrific example of hard power.

The British had very little "Soft Power" though and they were losing it with every act of hard power. They did not control the hearts and minds of Indians. Gandhi had tremendous soft power, and the more the British used their hard power, the more Gandhi's soft power increased (the Jiu-Jitsu effect). Gandhi employed non-violent techniques of "non-cooperation". He recognized that Britain was attempting to set up a pervasive structure of power.

By not participating in the structure (by not purchasing British goods, refusing to pay taxes, and not working for them) he undermined British structural power.



In 1930 (age 61), he decided to fight the British laws against Indians manufacturing salt.

He and 80 followers set out to walk 240 miles to the coast where he would pick up salt and process it.
They walked just 10 miles a day through thousands of villages. By the time he arrived at the beach, hundreds of thousands of people had followed him there along with members of the international press.

Gandhi was imprisoned ("he was delighted" because it increased his soft power and undermined the British)

His followers continued the protest with a march on the salt works.

He was invited to Britain to discuss India's future. It appeared that Independence was imminent, but so was WWII, which delayed progress.



Independence would not come until 1947. Gandhi was saddened to see his country split into Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India. As many as 500,000 people died in the ensuing violence.

Gandhi went on a hunger strike to stop the violence. After one week, violence ceased in New Delhi.

Gandhi was killed by a Hindu extremist in 1948. His assassination stopped the violence as all of India mourned the death of "their father."

As we all know now, that Gandhi was not afraid of going to jail or of any other possible punishment by the British people. One other surprising thing about Gandhi was that whenever he was arrested by the British, he would go on a hunger strike. The British were worried about him and his health (ability to stay alive) because they knew that if something happened to Gandhi in the prison, the whole nation of 300 million would look back to them in blame.. This was one of the reasons that even though British had hard power, they could never shoot Gandhi. This is the power of Soft power.