How India’s Nonviolent Resistance Became a Shifting Global Movement
From Gandhi to MLK to the Arab Spring, Nonviolence Is Portable, but Can It Still Persuade?
Early in the 20th century, M.K. Gandhi began to experiment with a novel form of political action, which he termed satyagraha. Gandhi first used satyagraha to protect the rights of Indian migrants in colonial South Africa in a series of campaigns over the course of a 20-year struggle. After World War I, Gandhi, now living in India and part of the movement for Indian independence, proposed satyagraha on a truly mass scale: a nationwide campaign of “non-cooperation” with British authorities. He asked Indians to boycott foreign cloth and withdraw from …
