Mohandas Gandhi

Indian nationalist leader Mohandas Gandhi spent his life campaigning for human rights in India. His strategy was to use a combination of passive resistance to and noncooperation with the British, who ruled India. Gandhi said his techniques were inspired by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, by American writer Henry David Thoreau, and by the teachings of Jesus Christ. In 1947 Gandhi’s pacifist efforts brought an end to British rule in India.