The principle and practice of refusing to use violence in pursuit of political or social change, grounded in diverse philosophical and religious traditions and developed as a systematic political strategy in the 20th century through the work of Gandhi and King. Nonviolence is both a moral claim — that violence is wrong, or at least counterproductive — and a strategic claim — that it is an effective method of resistance against entrenched power.
In 1930, Mahatma Gandhi walked 240 miles to the sea to make salt. It was an act of civil disobedience against a British colonial tax — a tax on one of the most basic necessities of life. He did not carry a weapon. He did not threaten anyone. When British police beat the marchers with clubs, they did not fight back. The footage circled the world. The British Empire was not defeated in a battle but in a demonstration: its violence was made visible against the deliberate nonviolence of those it claimed to govern. The march did not immediately end colonial rule, but it changed what both sides believed was possible.