The Indian lawyer and independence leader who developed satyagraha — nonviolent resistance — into the most influential political method of the 20th century, led India's independence movement against British rule, and shaped every subsequent movement for civil rights and liberation from King to Mandela.
Gandhi invented a form of political power that had never existed before: the organized, disciplined refusal to cooperate with injustice, combined with the willingness to accept the consequences. He used it to defeat an empire. Every subsequent liberation movement — King in Alabama, Mandela in South Africa, Solidarity in Poland — drew directly on what he built.