Sublime

India's political news after World War I was driven largely by Gandhi, whom the poet Rabindranath Tagore had christened "Mahatma," the Great One. Since leaving South Africa, Gandhi had become, through his various campaigns for swaraj, or self-rule—independence from Britain—a household name in India. Gujaratis took inordinate pride in seei

Seeds of this organizing had been planted on Grey Street, where a shopkeeper had hired, in 1893, a young lawyer from his hometown in Gujarat. Upon arrival, the Oxford-educated lawyer was kicked off trains, insulted in courts, and beaten in the streets for his color—and soon realized the pervasive injustices facing Indians in South Africa. "I t

Gandhi opposed, but he also embraced.

In one dramatic moment in 1906, Gandhi had gathered hundreds of Indians who together vowed, before God, to resist draconian regulations that required all Indians to be registered and fingerprinted like criminals and that allowed police officers to search houses and demand domicile certificates at any time, on punishment of deportation. They burned

"What student is he who will continue to study at such a time?" Gandhi asked a crowd on March 17, two weeks before the march passed by Narotam's hometown. "Today I ask them to leave schools and come out on the battlefield and become mendicants for the sake of the country ... The final battle has to be waged."

As Gandhi had hoped, the salt campaign was a turning point in swaying international opinion in favor of the Indian cause.

On October 2, 2000, the 131st anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's birth, Gandhi's family gave this Canadian farmer the prestigious Mahatma Gandhi award. An enormous crowd of 300,000 Indian farmers gathered to listen to and support Percy Schmeiser.