Gandhi, Mohandas K. (1869-1948). Indian political leader

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is best known around the world as the leader of India's independence movement — which led to the establishment of the nations of India and Pakistan in 1948—and for his groundbreaking use of nonviolent civil disobedience to achieve political goals.

Gandhi's significance within environmental history and the environmental movement comes from his questioning and ultimate rejection of the Western models of economic development, technology, and unrestricted exploitation of natural resources.

Gandhi grew up in Porbandar, Gujarat. His father was a minister and judge in the princely state government. His father was also a skilled mediator and his mother a devout Hindu; both parents had an enormous influence on his own values and his involvement in the independence movement.

After earning a law degree in London, Gandhi returned to India and then traveled to South Africa to mediate a legal dispute among Indian Muslims residing there. He then became in involved in defending the rights of the Indian minority in white South Africa.

Appalled and shocked by white treatment of the Zulu, Gandhi decided to devote his life to work for political and social justice, developing satyagraha ("holding on to the truth"), a philosophy and political method espousing nonviolent resistance to unjust laws. He quickly expanded his activities to advocate for Indian independence from British rule and in 1909 wrote the influential Hind swaraj ("Freedom of India").

Gandhi returned to India in 1915 and from then on was actively involved in ending British rule. From the early 1920s on, the Indian National Congress political party was a major mechanism for independence, and although Gandhi held no official position, he was the most influential member. In 1948 independence was finally achieved, although Gandhi had to accept the partition of India into two nations, India and Pakistan.

Although he did not live long enough after independence to put his ideas concerning development and the environment into practice, Gandhi has nonetheless has become an inspirational force in the environmental movement. His opposition to Western-style economic development were first set forth in the Hind swaraj and his simple—some would say austere—lifestyle was adopted also while he was in South Africa.

Gandhi argued that the Western model of economic development, based on massive consumption of resources and acquisition of much material wealth, would destroy the environment and could not be sustained by available natural resources. He labeled the Western model of modernity as Bhasmasux, meaning destructive monster.

He advocated instead an approach more in harmony with nature that distinguished between human needs and human wants and argued that there were adequate resources to meet all human needs, if those resources were allocated fairly.

These ideas are reflected in the "Agenda 21" of the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit. Gandhi also extended his strong belief in nonviolence to the nature-human relationship. He believed that nature was to be revered, and humans should exploit nature only in ways that maintain an ecological balance.

Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 — five months after India achieved independence — by a Hindu nationalist who objected to Gandhi's support of Pakistan. Revered in India and by people around the world, he has become known as the Mahatma, or Great Soul.