Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand (1869–1948)

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi described as the man who shook the mighty British Empire with a pinch of salt, provokes political controversy, ambivalence, and opposing judgments. He is revered as a political saint and reviled as a mascot of the bourgeoisie, hailed as a critical anti-imperialist and rejected as a betrayer of the peasants, celebrated as an apostle of nonviolence and castigated as creating the Hindu–Muslim divide. Gandhi led and was considered to be the chief architect of one of the most effective anti-imperialist movements in the world – the movement to gain independence for India from the British Empire. On 14 and 15 August 1947, British India was partitioned into two countries – Pakistan and India. While he was completely determined to overthrow the British Empire, he himself argued that the goal was to attain perfect self-control (swaraj) rather than national control (swatantra) over the government of India. Thus his anti-imperial ideas were based on a sense of...