Gandhi's Century

Despite the numerous people's movements that preceded him, Gandhi's approach to satyagraha systematized the theory, study, and practice of non-violence in unprecedented ways. Gandhi's experiments with truth inspired a century of mass nonviolent resistance movements, largely through the diffusion of Gandhi's ideas throughout pacifist communities, anticolonial movements, and later through various movements for racial, economic, and social justice. Indeed, some argue that the global diffusion of nonviolent resistance as a strategy throughout the twentieth century can only truly be understood as a function of Gandhi's innovation of a new resistance tradition.