Gandhi Tapa blanda - 2001

Few individuals have made so great a mark upon their times, and yet Gandhi never held high political office, commanded no armies and was not even a compelling orator. How then can his power be explained? How and why did the shy student and affluent lawyer come to challenge a Western empire?

David Arnold's fascinating profile tracks ?Mahatma? Gandhi's influence and image over more than forty years of public life:

• the struggle for the rights of Indians in South Africa which pitched him against white racism

• Gandhi's techniques of non-cooperation and civil disobedience to drive out the British and wrest India's freedom

• his ascendancy over the British, the Salt March of 1930, his unique appeal as both Hindu saint and ordinary colonial subject

• why India's independence in 1947, and violent partition, was not the freedom for which Gandhi had struggled

• Gandhi's bitter disillusionment before his assassination in January 1948

In leading India to independence, Gandhi also contributed uniquely to British political life and to the eventual dissolution of a worldwide Empire. This is a vivid introduction to his life and times.

DAVID ARNOLD is Professor of South Asian History at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London.