Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand (1869-1948), India's major nationalist leader, often known by the Hindu title mahatma ("great soul"). Gandhi was assassinated in New Delhi on 30 January 1948, six months after India's independence by a Hindu who blamed him for the subcontinent's partition into India and Muslim Pakistan when the British left.

Gandhi's family came from a trader caste in Gujarat, western India. Several relatives had served in the administration of a minor princely state, but the family had no connections with developing continental politics in British India, which was largely dominated by the Indian National Congress. Gandhi's emergence as a major figure in the Congress after World War I was even more unlikely because he was diffident as a young man. Despite reading for the bar in London in 1888-1889, he had no university degree and had failed in legal practice in Bombay; from 1893 he spent two decades in South Africa, then returned permanently to India in 1915, a middle-aged stranger to public life.

South Africa, however, had proved a crucial experience. As a lawyer, gradually drawn in to lead the diverse Indian community in its struggle against white discrimination, he taught himself the political skills of organization, publicity, negotiation, and agitation; gained public repute in Britain and in India; and learned to work with Indians from different religious and regional backgrounds and to involve women in political action. Furthermore, his personal life and values underwent a radical change, symbolized by his vow of celibacy and his experiments with a simple community life, in the manner of a Hindu ashram, for his relatives and close associates.

Drawing on experience, on his reading of Christian and Western religion and philosophy, and on his Hindu inheritance, Gandhi became convinced that all persons have an innate spark of truth or ultimate reality deep within them; to strive for perfection, each must learn to respond to inward truth by listening to what Gandhi called the "inner-voice" and disciplining himself by simplicity and self-denial in preparation for such spiritual receptivity. In later life, Gandhi would say not "God is Truth" but "Truth is God." He believed that none of the world's religions had completely discovered such truth, although all gave sincere believers a path toward it and a partial vision of it. Consequently, in his view there were as many religions as there were individuals. From Gandhi's belief in the spiritual nature and destiny of man, a nature and destiny imperfectly realized by reason of man's faulty apprehension of truth, flowed a passionate dedication to religious tolerance, to nonviolence (ahimsa) in all conflicts as the safeguard of the integrity of all involved, and to a way of life markedly contrasting with Western, industrial civilization, which in his eyes corrupted humanity with false ideals of wealth and competitivess. He castigated British rule in India and Indians who absorbed or aped Western culture, claiming that they destroyed India spiritually, and believed that India's mission in the world was to be true to itself by basing national life on sufficiency and not on endless accumulation, on interdependence and not on competition and exploitation – a way of life possible only in a village setting.

Gandhi's ideas about India's present and future became more definite after 1915. When people accused him of inconsistency, he argued that courage to modify opinions was a hallmark of the truth seeker. He increasingly concentrated on softening communal hostilities; on changing Hindu attitudes that oppressed those at the base of caste society, particularly the Untouchables; and on reviving spinning, by hand, along with other village industries, as part of a total plan of village uplift. Politically, he began to work for the demolition of the British Raj, but for him swaraj ("self-rule") was never just political independence: it meant reconstructing an Indian nation from its spiritual and social roots. His ashrams strove to build this new identity in microcosm and to train people to be spiritually aware and dedicated to the service of mankind.

Gandhi's participation in Indian politics before 1920 was limited to occasions in which he perceived a wrong or grievance that could be righted by the method of nonviolent protest that he had begun to forge in Africa. He called his method satyagraha ("truth-force") and believed it was far more than the passive resistance of the weak known in the West, for it demanded courage of mind and body, and it also purified and turned to a fuller vision of truth those who practiced it and those against whom it was deployed. It could take various forms, from mass nonviolent noncooperation with the government or the breaking of unjust laws to individual demonstrations and fasts. After 1920 Gandhi assumed that full participation in the anti- British struggle was not only his rightful role but also an integral part of his wider-ranging work for true swaraj. He began to make more than brief appearances at Congress sessions, and, in fact, his dramatic rise to leadership in the Indian National Congress began at this time. He called for noncooperation and non-violence, which, he predicted, would result in swaraj in one year. Gandhi's rise in power rested not on large-scale conversion to his views but on politicians' calculations – in terms of all-India and provincial politics – that alliance with Gandhi and a temporary strategy of noncooperation with the government might prove productive, since cooperation and violent resistance offered equally little prospect of political achievement.

Thereafter, Gandhi's career was one of political peaks and troughs: times of apparent retirement, in which he concentrated on the reconstruction of villages and the amelioration of conditions for Untouchables, and phases in which he led all-India satyagrahas, as in 1920- 1922, 1930-1934, and 1940-1942 (the last, the Quit India movement, quickly slipped from direction either by Gandhi or the Congress leadership). Recurring characteristics of these agitations included very loose central control and a tendency to degenerate into violence as they became the focus and channel of myriad local grievances and aspirations. Gandhi and other major leaders were regularly jailed. Congressmen followed Gandhi, not blindly or constantly, but only when his particular technique suited their needs and interests or seemed the only basis for much-needed unity. This support was equally true both of provincial Congressional groups or Congress as an all-India vehicle of nationalism. Even in his apparently fallow phases Gandhi remained a seminal figure in Congressional deliberations, revered and often deferred to, even by those whose views differed from his.

Once World War II had ended and it was clear that the British were intent on departure, the Mahatma played a less significant role in the intricate negotiations for independence. A tired old man, deeply hurt and even demoralized by the horrific evidence of communal violence that he had tried to stem in strife-torn areas, Gandhi called himself "a back number." In many ways partition and the nature of government and politics after independence mad him realize that Indians had neither achieved nor desired the true swaraj of his vision.

Understandably, Gandhi was and is a controversial figure. Despite the awe and devotion that surrounded him, in his lifetime British and Indians alike questioned his priorities, particularly his concentration on social work and his attempt to swing India from the path of industrialization. Many found his religious vision inexplicable or doubted his integrity, judging him a charlatan who manipulated religion for political ends. Muslims increasingly perceived him as the symbol of a future Hindu-dominated India despite his work for communal harmony, a misconception explicable, however, in light of the Hindu style of his leadership and appeal and the growing adherence of the Hindu majority to Congress, of which he was the figurehead. Since his death he has become a living myth and is often called the "father of the Indian nation." Yet his priorities and prescriptions for India are ignored and variants of satyagraha are used in the most un-Gandhian ways.

Later commentators from many disciplines have been similarly intrigued and perplexed by Gandhi's role and significance. Some have delved into the early emotional experiences that produced a man so dedicated to public action yet overscrupulous about his motivation and most private life, a man so highly driven yet so full of self-doubt, a man of immense moral and physical courage who delighted in a maternal role. Others, who have examined the origins and internal coherence of his beliefs, recognize that he was neither trained philosopher nor founder of a philosophical school but a pragmatic seeker after truth who was guided by a few fundamental principles. Among historians, interest has focused on his political role. Earlier, hagiographical studies have given place to more realistic assessments, based on his copious writings and a weight of other primary evidence generated by the political interplay of British and Indian leaders and Indians with one another. Simple assertions about his charismatic appeal and ability to generate and lead mass political campaigns now tend to be replaced by more detailed investigations of precisely who followed him and why, the evidence being illuminated by a deeper awareness of the differing characteristics of politics in the diverse regions of so vast a land.

As an all-India leader with a flexible method and a flair for conciliation, Gandhi was often highly attractive for limited periods in specific political circumstances; his personality undoubtedly brought thousands onto the streets in political demonstrations. Yet this support could ebb as quickly as it had flowed, both among permanently committed political activists and those who were temporarily motivated into agitational campaigns. Furthermore, investigations of the weakness and internal contradictions of the British Raj. And of the declining worth of India to Britain from the 1920s, have lessened the long-term historical significance of Gandhian satyagraha in undermining the imperial edifice.

It is clear nonetheless that Gandhi's campaigns had great importance in educating Indians in political awareness and action and in bonding them across old barriers of region and caste – key factors in India's subsequent stability as a democratic nation. As an inspirer and educator who changed the nation's sense of identity, Gandhi played a highly creative public role. He underlined and confronted some of the critical problems facing the new nation and illuminated the lives of the countless individuals to whom he gave time, affection, and advice, tempering discipline with tenderness and humor. He remains an enigmatic, powerful figure who demands attention and whose life and death ask uncomfortable yet abiding questions about the nature of self and its relationship to the environment and to all humanity.