James W Michaels, Journalist India: Something about him touched hearts all over the world. People didn’t know where India was, didn’t know what the issues were. There was something about him that touched their lives.

Narrator: He was a man of many faces.

Lady Pamela Hicks, Daughter of Last Viceroy of India: He had this tremendously wacky sense of humour and very mischievous and could be very, it sounds awful and disrespectful to say, naughty or wicked.

Narrator: Leader of one fifth of world’s people.

Dr Phillips Talbot, Journalist, India: He had extraordinary capacity to talk to this massive crowd on a one to one basis. I think everybody sitting there thought that G. was talking to him.

Narrator: Playful father and friend.

Arun Gandhi, Grandson: In some of the cases they made him look like a monkey, and Grandfather used to laugh at that, and sometimes joke and say here’s your monkey, I’m coming in now.

Narrator: Inspiration to future generations.

His Holiness, The 4th Dalai Lama of Tibet: feel is difficult to carry, unless you have some full conviction.

Narrator: Rebel for a just cause.

Dennis Dalton, Author, “Mahatma Gandhi”: He says yes we will go to prison. We will take a vow to God that we will go to prison and we will stay there until this law was withdrawn.

Narrator: A willing martyr for his country.

Bhikhu Parekh, Prof. of Political Theory, University of Hull, England: And he even said to one of his associates that I shall die at the hand of an assassin and when I do, please remember that if I accept that bullet courageously, with the name of God on my lips, only then believe that I was a true Mahatma.

Mahatma Gandhi - Pilgrim of Peace

Gandhi Historical Reading: There is an unalterable law governing everything and every being that exists or lives. I may not rely on the law or the law giver because I know so little it or him. God, to be God, must rule the heart and transform it. It is proved in the transformed conduct and character of those who have felt the real presence of God within.

Narrator: Born into an ancient and mystical land Mohandas K. Gandhi saw his life as a search for ultimate truths, constantly evolving, seeking alternate ways of thinking and living. He called his autobiography, ‘The story of my experiments with truth’. His long journey of self-transformation began in 1869 from this middle class house in the Indian port city of Porbandar. From his earliest days, Gandhi was stirred by a role model of extraordinary discipline and devotion. Deeply religious his mother was given to frequent and extended episodes of . Once in the rainy season, she vowed not to eat until the sun shone.

Bhikhu Parekh, Prof. of Political Theory, University of Hull, England: Poor Gandhi and the other members of the family would constantly be looking out of the window, because they wanted their mother to eat because she was starving. And she said don’t worry about me. I am perfectly fine. If God doesn’t want me to eat today, I shan’t eat.

Narrator: Gandhi revered his mother for her saintliness but was not yet ready to follow her example. The youngest of four children, he indulged in childish past times, stealing change to buy cigarettes. Fearful of his stern father, a prominent local politician, he nervously confessed to the petty theft.

Arun Gandhi, Grandson, Founder/Dir. of the M. Gandhi Institute For Nonviolence: Instead of punishing his son, he embraced him for having the courage to say the truth and to confess and both of them cried and Grandfather writes in his biography that it was like washing away the impurities, the tears that both of them shed. But when you have this kind of discipline, so love it builds the humanity within you. And I think that’s what happened with Gandhi.

Narrator: In keeping with Hindu tradition, at age 13 Gandhi was married to a young girl of the same age. Initially he was a jealous and possessive husband. At age 16 he faced his first great conflict between duty and desire. One night while nursing his sick father he slipped upstairs and to share his wife’s bed.

Dennis Dalton, Author, “Mahatma Gandhi”: At this moment his father died. The servant comes to him and says your father is gone. Gandhi says his first impulse was ‘my God what have I done’. For all of his life, he says, he refers back to that incident when he deserted his father; when he did not fulfil his duty, his responsibility to his parent, and that becomes the basis of much of his sense of duty and responsibly. That he must be the son of all society; he must be the diligent and dutiful person serving humankind.

Narrator: At age 17 Gandhi left his wife and family behind to attend law school in London. Immensely shy and naïve he found the bustle of the big city thoroughly intimating.

Dennis Dalton, Author, “Mahatma Gandhi”: He was unaware of things like elevators. So he walks into what he thinks is a room in the hotel and suddenly the room is moving and he’s frightened of it going up. Here he is in an elevator, the doors open and he can’t conceive it.

Narrator: For a time his highest ambition was to become an English gentleman. He sported a top hat and silver tip cane, took lessons in dancing, violin and French but no superficial skill could hide his inexperience and insecurity. Even after obtaining a law degree he doubted his ability to practice, later writing, ‘there was no end to my helplessness and fear’.

Bhikhu Parekh, Prof. of Political Theory, University of Hull, England: He goes to India, takes up his first case and finds that when in the court of law he simply is not able to open his mouth before the judge. He froze and he was deeply distressed by it.

Narrator: Humiliated he began searching for an escape. Salvation came in the form of a job offer from South Africa.

Bhikhu Parekh, Prof. of Political Theory, University of Hull, England: As he said, ‘it was in that God forsaken country that I found my God’.

Narrator: Just days after arriving in his new country, Gandhi experienced an epiphany. Unaware of discrimination against Indians in British run South Africa he innocently booked first class passage on a train to Pretoria.

Bhikhu Parekh, Prof. of Political Theory, University of Hull, England: A white passenger spots him, complains to the conductor, and insists that he be placed in a third class compartment even though he has a first class ticket. Gandhi resists. At the first major stop, , he is thrown off the train and I mean of thrown brutally off the train by the conductor.

Arun Gandhi, Grandson: That humiliation was severely what sparked off his desire for change and he spent the whole night sitting on the platform wondering how to get justice.

Narrator: Gandhi later described that long shivering winter night as the most creative experience of his life. He considered returning to India and rejected it as an act of cowardice. He considered accepting the discrimination but everything in him rebelled against submitting. He considered physically attacking his oppressors and gave that up as impractical. There was only one choice left, to stay and resist. The very next day he boarded another train, the next week he organised a meeting of Indian immigrants. In his 24th year, Gandhi’s concerns had grown beyond himself to encompass a greater cause.

Bhikhu Parekh, Prof. of Political Theory, University of Hull, England: This made him feel that he had a destiny; that he had to stay; he had to fight for the rights of his people and eventually for the rights of all black people. Now that I think was really the beginning of the Mahatma the Mohandas Gandhi really begins to emerge as a Mahatma, a great soul.

Narrator: In the South Africa of the 1890s, Africans and Indians alike endured the whims of their white masters, living under laws denying them the right to vote, own property or even walk the streets after dark. Dedicated to righting those wrongs, Gandhi was at first woefully naïve of the ways of power politics.

Dennis Dalton, Author, “Mahatma Gandhi”: As a lawyer he believes that we change the laws, we change human behaviour and so from 1893 to 1906 he is bound and determined in the law courts to do something. Now the problem is that the British are smarter than he is during this time and every time he changes one law another law is put into place in order to make the discrimination work in another manner.

Narrator: Victimised by white South Africans, Gandhi resolved to act as a unifying force. He began developing communities of people from different races and religions all brought together to live as equals. He insisted on treating his own family, which soon included four young sons, no differently to than anyone else. Despite his abhorrence of British oppression, until 1906 Gandhi considered himself a faithful member of the Empire even singing ‘God Save the Queen’ and teaching it to his children. So loyal, in fact, that he served as a stretcher bearer alongside British troops in the Boer War and the Zulu uprising of 1906.

Dennis Dalton, Author, “Mahatma Gandhi”: It was actually the experiences in the Zulu War which really brought him very close to inhuman violence. Because that was when he realised that this war was not just a war between two people but it was a real massacre.

Narrator: He recoiled as British Gatling guns slaughtered Zulus armed with spears. He saw the pleasure the soldiers took in killing and he collected the shattered bodies of wounded left to die in agony.

Dennis Dalton, Author, “Mahatma Gandhi”: He begins to think that the Zulus are being dominated by the British in this way. What does domination mean? And he thinks about his own domination in his family and particularly of his wife. He’s been married, age 13, and he has been at times what he calls a cruel, a jealous, a dominating husband and it’s this fascinating mode then of thinking, triggered by the Zulu rebellion, seeing how the British dominating the Zulus, and he takes it within himself. How am I guilty of this dominating kind of behaviour? And he says, ‘I am guilty of it in my own marriage, in my relationship with Kasturba.’

Narrator: Within the Hindu tradition is the ideal of a man who has so conquered his sexuality that he achieves a childlike innocence. Only by mastering his own desires, Gandhi decided, could he best serve humanity. At age 37 he took the Hindu vow of brahmacharya - permanent celibacy.

Bhikhu Parekh, Prof. of Political Theory, University of Hull, England: So if he was totally pure than there will be no impurity, no violence, no aggression around him.

Narrator: In 1906 he immediately followed his personal transformation with a stunning political insight. New laws decreed that all Indians must be registered and fingerprinted; the provisions included having Indian women stripped for white police so body marks could be noted on the registration form. Incensed, 3,000 Indians met in Johannesburg to plan a course of action.

Dennis Dalton, Author, “Mahatma Gandhi”: Suddenly a Muslim merchant stands up and shakes his fist and he says ‘By God I will go to prison before I obey this law’. And Gandhi hadn’t thought of this before, had not thought of going to prison, but he knew indistinctively that this was the right way to go and he gets up and he says, ‘we will take a vow to God that we will go to prison and we will stay there until this law is withdrawn. ‘

Narrator: Gandhi’s speech sparked off an historically unprecedented act of mass . Following his lead, protestors endured repeated police beatings bravely accepting their suffering without retaliation.

Bhikhu Parekh, Prof. of Political Theory, University of Hull, England: He realised for the first time in his life that when human heart is closed, you can’t touch the human head. There is no use reasoning with the person whose heart is full of prejudices. If reason is not enough, violence is not good, what do you do? And he discovers in South Africa for the first time, a method of . You stand up against your opponent, tell him that you will not give in but you also reassure him that you will do him no harm. Narrator: Gandhi coined the term , a combination of two Sanskrit words meaning ‘truth’ and ‘the pursuit of’, to describe his revolutionary concept. The goal of nonviolence was as old as human philosophy. Gandhi’s insight was to apply the ideal to practical, political situations.

His Holiness, the of Tibet: Mahatma Gandhi feels, in order to implement genuine nonviolence, the first in your own mind, the peace or the spirit of reconciliation must develop because without that, how can you implement genuine non violence?

Narrator: In 1913 General Jan Smuts the English Puppet chief in South Africa passed laws decreeing Hindu and Muslim marriages invalid. Gandhi jumped on the blunder to inspire a wider revolt.

Arun Gandhi, Grandson: Grandfather typically came home one day and told my grandmother that you are no longer my wife, you are my concubine. And she flared up and said what are you talking about, so he explained that this is the law, so our marriage is no longer recognised and we are living together illegally.

Narrator: Traditionally Indian women were restricted to the home. Gandhi attacked such customs as another form of oppression and called on women to shoulder public responsibilities. In one crafty stroke, he had helped to emancipate millions and added a powerful new tool to his arsenal. The marriage laws touched off a national strike. Fifty thousand indentured labourers took up the cause and walked off their jobs. General Smuts relented rescinding the marriage laws. Gandhi had proved that will power could overcome brute force. Eager to challenge England on his home ground, in 1915 at age 45, he returned to an India strangling under the yoke of imperialism. For two centuries the British had systemically plundered India’s national resources. Deprived of raw material, native industries withered away. India was the largest, most populous, and most profitable outpost in the Empire.

Arun Gandhi, Grandson: And they brought India down to such a point where we couldn’t even manufacture a little safety pin. We didn’t have the capacity to make a little safety pin. That was the state at which they had reduced us over the years of exploitation.

Narrator: By 1915 300,000,000 Indians bowed before just 100,000 English invaders. Never in history had so few ruled so many from so far away. Despairing of ever regaining their freedom, Indians collaborated in their own enslavement providing soldiers and police to enforce the will of their white masters. Gandhi challenged his countrymen to resist, telling them that those who behave like worms should expect to be trampled on.

Bhikhu Parekh, Prof. of Political Theory, University of Hull, England: And that’s when Gandhi said when shall we learn to rebel against ourselves? We have become so dependant that we must learn to rebel against ourselves, get rid of our psychology of dependency of getting things by bribery rather than bravery. We can’t rebel against the government unless we first learn to rebel against ourselves.

Narrator: Time and again British authorities unwittingly played into Gandhi’s hands by inflaming public opinion. In 1919 he protested oppressive new laws by inciting a national strike. While he coordinated the rebellion from Bombay, hundreds of miles to the north, two thousand Indians crowded into the enclosed village square of Amritsar. Unknown to them two days earlier, General Reginald Dyer had decreed a ban on mass meetings. Without warning Dyer marched fifty Indian troops into the square and ordered them to open fire with rifles and Gatling guns. For ten minutes the soldiers cut down the trapped and terrified crowd, killing 379 people and wounding over 1,000.

Arun Gandhi, Grandson: The only reason they stopped firing was they ran out of ammunition. He said if he had more ammunition they would have still gone on firing into the crowd; firing to kill the people. His ambition was to teach the Indians a lesson that they cannot defy the British and get away with it.

Narrator: Dyer followed the massacre by issuing an infamous ‘crawling decree’. Local Indians had two choices: get down on their bellies and wriggle like worms or be flogged to death. Enraged Indians screamed for vengeance with a population advantage of 4,000:1 they could have executed the white foreigners in a matter of days. The massacre at Amritsar in 1919 threatened to touch off a blood bath between Britains and Indians demanding revenge.

Arun Gandhi, Grandson: Gandhi stepped in and he said no, we cannot be to the British what General Dyer has been to us. We have to show them that we can rise beyond that kind of hate. He never allowed anybody to consider the British to be enemies. He said, they are not our enemies, they are our friends and they need to be liberated as much as we need to be liberated.

Narrator: Over the next three years, Gandhi transformed the Indian nationalist cause into a mass movement. He built upon the outrage generated by Amritsar to unify Hindu and Muslim, labourer and merchant, and he won the enduring affection of ordinary Indians by becoming one of them, embracing the same simple clothes, scant food and meagre comforts as the poorest of the poor. To promote self-reliance he exhorted Indians to wear their traditional simple white cloth and to spin it themselves. Western made clothes were cast off into giant bonfires.

Bhikhu Parekh, Prof. of Political Theory, University of Hull, England: As he says, foreign cloth signified our cultural dependency on the west and it also implied that we were indirectly accomplices in our own enslavement. Now, burning foreign cloth was a way of purging ourselves.

Narrator: Gandhi insisted on spending one hour each day personally spinning yarn. Other Indian leaders ridiculed the practise. In the midst of a national crisis, Gandhi might be found at his spinning wheel. But he saw the fundamental importance of connecting with the masses. His unique stature as the champion of all Indians kept him the unquestioned leader of India for a quarter century. While inciting open revolt with one hand, with the other he had to prevent his followers from succumbing to the allure of bloodshed. Many times he called off campaigns when they threatened to become violent, angering friends and colleagues.

Dennis Dalton, Author, “Mahatma Gandhi”: Gandhi’s unique because he, as a political leader, showed that this nonviolent attitude could work politically. Each time he proved that, once he seized the moral high ground, he must not lose it and it could be lost through an act of violence on the part of his community, the Indians. He knew the political effectiveness of that moral high ground.

Narrator: But his public duties carried a high personal price. His four sons often felt neglected and resented him for his long absences in prison. The oldest, Harilal, rebelled in ways seemingly designed to inflict pain on his parents, becoming an alcoholic and a prostitute. Dennis Dalton, Author, “Mahatma Gandhi”: From Gandhi’s point of view he lost his son and there were times towards the end of his life he said, ‘Harilal is no longer my son’. It’s an awful comment for a father dedicated to nonviolence to make. But the personal cost was tremendous.

Narrator: Gandhi grieved for his son but no personal concern could deter him from the mission of freeing 300 million Indians. In 1930, at age 61, he unveiled a bold new plan to rebel against a tax many found unjust - the British levy on salt. It was illegal for Indians to make or sell salt. That lucrative franchise was reserved for foreigners. To dramatise the revolt he planned to march 240 miles to the Arabian Sea and there make salt. His colleagues in the begged him to reconsider, convinced that his scheme would fail. The governing British were equally confident that their old nemesis was courting ridicule. On March 12th he set off with 80 followers on a journey that would capture the conscience of the world and change the course of history. Gandhi’s 1930 covered just ten miles a day allowing interest to build and giving foreign reporters time to come to India and cover the spectacle first hand.

Bhikhu Parekh, Prof. of Political Theory, University of Hull, England: So, for twenty four days passing through thousands of villages, creating an enormous political theatre and as soon as the news spread, not only the whole of India was emotionally and intellectually engaged, but the whole world. A large number of American news reporters saying, ‘this is incredible’.

Dennis Dalton, Author, “Mahatma Gandhi”: By the time he gets to the sea shore on April 6th there are hundreds and thousands of Indians with him and when he reaches down and picks up that handful of salt and says, ‘with this salt I resist the might of the British Empire. Join me in this struggle of right against might.’

Narrator: The response was electric. Across the country merchants, farmers and housewives openly made and sold salt. Thousands were jailed including Gandhi. Police brutally clubbed protestors, further enraging and unifying the Indian people. Gandhi knew that nonviolent resistance requires its followers to show their courage, thus appealing to the best in human nature. He had taught Indians to rebel against their oppressors and against themselves. Under intense international pressure, the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, released Gandhi and invited him to negotiate. Gandhi went directly from prison to the Viceroy’s palace, an honoured guest of sorts.

Bhikhu Parekh, Prof. of Political Theory, University of Hull, England: So they gave him a glass of warm water which is what he had asked for and he put it down on the table and quietly took out something from his loin cloth. The curious Viceroy said, ‘what is it? He said, ‘Your Excellency, don’t tell this to anybody. It is the salt that I have illegally manufactured’. He quietly put it in water, stirred it and drank it.

Narrator: The next year Gandhi journeyed to London for a conference on India’s future. As always he travelled third class and performed his daily disciplines. In London he created a public relations bonanza staying in the poor in East End, winning affection wherever he went. Children followed him shouting, ‘Gandhi where’s your trousers’. Invited to Buckingham Palace for royal tea, he was criticised for appearing before the King in a loin cloth. The King replied. ‘Gandhi was wearing enough for both of us’. Back home in India he spread his message through daily prayer meetings. Lady Pamela Hicks, Daughter of Earl Mountbatten, last Viceroy of India: An ordinary prayer meeting could have these hundreds and thousands of people. You would look, sort of, just out the corner of your eyes; not one person was not gazing at him. Absolutely, the attention rapt.

Narrator: Gandhi admitted to the flaw of ego and at times found mass adoration exhilarating. More often, however, the constant crush of disciples was simply overbearing.

Arun Gandhi, Grandson: I recall on many occasions when I was travelling with him at every station and there would be thousands of people in the middle of the night shouting, ‘long live Gandhi, long live Gandhi’ and they would go on shouting until the train passed. The result of all that din was that he could never sleep.

Narrator: He was surrounded by a loyal entourage who lived according to his dictates. At times he required celibacy from his married disciples. And in the last years of his life, he engaged in tests of willpower that shocked his greatest admirers, sleeping naked with young Hindu girls. The idea, he explained, was to challenge his discipline and thereby heighten his commitment. For Indians he was a near deity; for imperial Britain the enemy. In August 1942, he demanded immediate independence declaring, ‘here is a mantra, a short one that I give you it is: do or die. We shall either free India or die in the attempt’. The night of Gandhi’s 1942 ‘Quit India’ speech, he and the entire Congress were arrested. At 73 and in failing health, for the next two years he would lead the rebellion from prison. In 1944 his wife Kasturba, his life companion of 62 years, died in his arms. Gandhi was devastated. A year later an exhausted Britain admitted it no longer had the resources to rule India. But the prospect of independence brought old divisions to the fore. Hindus and Muslims, long suspicious rivals, turned to open hatred. The Muslim minority insisted on a separate country, what became Pakistan. After a lifetime spent unifying people, Gandhi saw his beloved homeland sliced in two.

Lady Pamela Hicks, Daughter of Earl Mountbatten, last Viceroy of India: I think it really did break Gandhi G’s heart, the idea that India would be divided. He would sometimes find impossible solutions because his heart wanted what was right but the world won’t allow what is right to happen very often.

Narrator: He kept faith with his principles and urged others to do the same. Even when it slowed negotiations with the Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, he maintained his long time discipline of silence, one day each week.

Lady Pamela Hicks, Daughter of Earl Mountbatten, last Viceroy of India: My father came really to look upon him at a saint. But he could be most exasperating to deal with. If it was a crisis point my father asked to him to come and have discussions and it was all desperate. I remember my father’s expression when Gandhi comes into the room with his finger to his lips. My father says, ‘oh no, it’s not a day of silence is it?’

Narrator: On August 14th 1947, Indians celebrated their independence. Gandhi seeing the growing rift between Hindu and Muslim asked a friend ‘why do they rejoice? I see only rivers of blood’. Partition immediately brought mass migrations. Hindus fleeing to India; Muslims escaping to Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of refugees marched desperately without food, without water. Devastated by privation, torn by ancient animosities two great religions erupted into mutual massacre.

James W Micheals, Editor Forbes Magazine: Both sides were acting as much out of fear as of anger. And I remember standing on the platform as it pulled into station and there was no one stirring on the train but there was blood oozing from the doors and when they opened the doors, well, it looked like a butcher shop except the meat had pieces of clothing on them.

Narrator: Eventually a half million people would perish. Gandhi’s horror at the carnage was heightened by searing guilt. He personally had failed to convert his people to nonviolence.

Dr Phillips Talbot, Pres Emeritus, The Asia Society: The last time I talked to him I found him really depressed, and he said, ‘I can’t see anything around me, there is darkness everywhere. Men are behaving like beasts’, he said, ‘no, worse than beasts because beasts don’t kill their own’.

James W Micheals, Editor Forbes Magazine: And he said, ‘I am going to go on a hunger strike until this stops, until Hindus and Muslims become brothers again’. There was so much anger amongst the refugees that there were large demonstrations saying ‘to hell with Gandhi, let Gandhi die, let Gandhi die, to hell with him’. The second day there was a very timid counter demonstration, the third day the counter demonstration got bigger and the anti-Gandhi demonstration got smaller and on the fourth day the same trend continued until finally the streets were thronged with people cheering for Gandhi and after a week Muslims could walk the streets of Delhi in perfect safety.

Narrator: Gandhi’s hunger strike rescued New Delhi but at the India-Pakistan border civil war raged on. He embarked upon a pilgrimage of peace across his hate torn land, walking barefoot from village to ravaged village, enduring angry mobs, thorns thrown in his path, rising at four each morning to struggle against the tide of fear and bloodshed.

James W Micheals, Editor Forbes Magazine: And I think there is not one single Indian whom had not felt ashamed and proud. Ashamed that he had been so deeply let down by many of them and proud that from amongst them in these days of darkest brutally sprang a figure who made them proud to be an Indian. Who had turned for them, almost a Christ-like figure. And that’s when Gandhi says, ‘there nothing but violence in life. My entire life has been defeated and my death must achieve what my life failed to achieve’. And he deliberately went about unprotected into most trying situations, and he even said to one of his associates that I should die at the hands of an assassin, and when I do, please remember that if I accept that bullet courageously, with the name of God on my lips, only then believe that I was a true Mahatma.

Narrator: On January 30th 1948, the 78 year old Gandhi walked to his daily prayer meeting in the garden of Birla House in New Delhi. From among the crowd a young Hindu man emerged, bowed to Gandhi and shot him three times. In the instant before death took him Gandhi murmured ‘Rama’, the Indian word for God.

Lady Pamela Hicks, Daughter of Earl Mountbatten, last Viceroy of India: The shock was so appalling that I remember the tears streaming down my face. I had only met him half a dozen times. But the impact, the magnetism of the person, was so enormous that one really felt accurate personal bereavement as though one’s own father had died and everybody in India felt the same.

James W Micheals, Editor Forbes Magazine: There was a sea of people around the house and one of my strongest memories was seeing Pandit Nehru standing on the little stone wall with tears coming down his eyes saying, ‘the father of our country is dead’ and breaking down in tears.

Narrator: The sorrow and shock of his murder wrenched India from the grip of madness. Violence ceased. Overnight one million people poured into Delhi for darshan the ‘blessing of being near him’.

Lady Pamela Hicks, Daughter of Earl Mountbatten, last Viceroy of India: All through that night people came up on foot, in bullock carts, and bicycles, and broken down cars, and buses, and hanging on to trains and the sea of humanity followed the pyre of that little old man. And all this mass of people, a sea of people arrives at the cremation ground and then when the actual flame was lit, I think three quarters of a million throats cried out, ‘Gandhi is immortal’.

James W Micheals, Editor Forbes Magazine: The greatest legacy of a man is the kind of life he lived; a life which was designed to incarnate one single passion, one single principle, the principle of nonviolence.

Narrator: Nonviolent revolution had freed India. In the fifty years since, it has transformed the world. As Martin Luther King later said, ‘Christ gave me the message, Gandhi gave me the method’. His ashes were taken by a special third class train to the ocean, there to be spread upon the waves. Home for the soul who never lost his faith in God or man.

Gandhi historical recording: In the midst of death, life persists. In the midst of untruth, truth persists. In the midst of darkness, light persist. Hence I gather that God is life, truth light. He is love. He is the supreme good.