Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, justly venerated as a Mahatma, dismantled the mightiest empire in world history through the inspirational power of three pivotal mass campaigns across two decades. Measured by time, they were brief. Non-cooperation and the Salt Satyagraha lasted barely two years each. Gandhi was arrested on the day the Quit Movement was launched in August 1942, but it ended the British Raj centerpiece of the far-flung British empire.
Gandhi destroyed the myth of British invincibility and triggered a global wave that ended the age of European colonialism. In 1920 Gandhi liberated Indians from fear. In 1930 he turned a pinch of salt into a metaphor for the punitive colonial exploitation of the impoverished.
The call to Quit India in 1942 sent a final unambiguous message to foreign overlords Indians would prefer death to life in foreign fetters. Once Gandhi had unchained India, history could no longer remain dormant.
