Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was the most prominent leader of the Indian Independence Movement against the British Raj, for which he practiced nonviolent civil disobedience, as well as pacifist, politician, thinker and Indian Hindu lawyer. He received from Rabindranath Tagoreel the honorary name of Mahatma.
From 1919 he belonged openly to the front of the Indian nationalist movement. He established novel methods of social struggle such as the hunger strike and in his programs he rejected the armed struggle and carried out a preaching of the ahimsa (nonviolence) as a means to resist British rule. He defended and promoted widely the total fidelity to the dictates of the conscience, even reaching civil disobedience if necessary; In addition, he fought for the return to the old Hindu traditions. He corresponded with León Tolstoy, who influenced his concept of nonviolent resistance. He was the inspiration for the march of the salt, a demonstration across the country against the taxes to which this product was subject.
