Mahatma Gandhi 1869-1948 (Real footage of Gandhi)

In 1930, India was still the jewel in Britain's imperial crown, but a small man in a loincloth was proving to be a very rough diamond indeed. Mohandas Gandhi, rebel and holy man, was organizing the vast masses of India in an unprecedented resistance movement. There was no hint of it early on when, after a privileged life in India, Gandhi had studied law in Victorian London. Serving as a correspondent in the Boer War would help change his life. He gave up a wealthy law practice to work in South Africa for one pound a week, fighting discrimination against Asians. Here he developed the tactic of passive resistance that, 20 years later, he would exploit so brilliantly in India. For back in his homeland, he soon became a national figure of almost mythic authority. He abandoned European dress and identified himself with India's poor. He also took on the British Raj itself, demanding freedom for India's teeming masses. But now, in 1930, those masses were being mobilized. Gandhi had called for remarks to the sea to protest assault attacks, and his people responded. They set out from every corner of India, simple peasants and fierce tribesmen, from the river plains and from the towering mountain country. When rioting broke out, troops had to be called in, and the British had to appeal to Gandhi to help restore order. It was a pattern that would repeat itself throughout the 1930s. Gandhi would be arrested, riots would blaze all over India, and eventually Gandhi would be released to act as peacemaker. It was in 1946, with a new British government in power, that Gandhi was summoned to the Governor General's palace in Simla. Here, Lord and Lady Wavell put a brave face on a humiliating truth. The British were being forced out of India. But there were huge obstacles in the way of independence, and one of them was Muhammad Jinnah, who wanted a separate state for Muslims. Gandhi, always the idealist, ever the conciliator, tried to persuade his fellow Hindus to grant generous concessions to the Muslim minority. He was given eloquent support by his admirer and great friend Pandit Nehru, the man who would eventually become India's first Prime Minister. The talks dragged on for nearly two years, and still they kept coming. The diplomats and negotiators, the party chiefs and tribal leaders, the appointed spokesmen for India's great cauldron of different cultures and different religions. There were ministers from Britain's new Labour government, trying to unravel a mess that was not of their making. But for all the handshakes, there would be no real meeting of minds. Split would remain. When Gandhi learned that his beloved India was to be divided, he was heartbroken. When Hindu and Muslim groups attacked one another in a rage of disappointment, Gandhi began a fast in protest. The fast was the weapon he'd used against the British, and now he'd trained it on his own countrymen. As he neared death, emotional crowds implored him to stop, and in the end he did, but only when the fighting had ended. It would be the last heroic act in the life of the man they called Mahatma, the great soul. In January 1948, even as India was being reborn as an independent nation, he was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic who blamed him for the country's partition. Now the Mahatma's countrymen and their grieving millions, Hindus and Muslims, Sikhs and Parsis, were bound together by the enormity of their common loss. A great spirit had moved on. They took the ashes from his funeral pyre and scattered them on the holy river Mother Ganges. It was, Indians believe, both an end and a beginning. Whatever justice and compassion were to be found, the spirit of the Mahatma would live on.