Modern Era
Mahatma Gandhi
1869–1948 · Nonviolent resistance
Swaraj: self-rule begins in the self, not in the capital.
In their words
“Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless.”
Gandhi built a mass movement on satyagraha, truth-force, showing that millions could withdraw consent from an empire without taking up its weapons. His economics favored village self-sufficiency and simple tools against industrial centralization, and his critique of the modern state, published in Hind Swaraj, argued that parliamentary machinery answers to no moral standard. He was killed for insisting on pluralism.
Why it matters for freedom
He showed that a state survives on cooperation, and that withdrawn cooperation is a weapon a poor man can still use.
Who they stood against
the British Raj and the law that punished people for making their own salt