A leader announces himself

Mahatma Gandhi spent twenty years in South Africa. As the historian Chandran Devanesan put it, South Africa was 'the making of the Mahatma'. There he first used the non-violent method of protest called satyagraha, promoted harmony between religions, and alerted upper-caste Indians to their discrimination against low castes and women.

He returned to India in January 1915. The India he came back to was different from the one he had left in 1893: the Swadeshi movement (1905-07) had stirred the middle classes. On the advice of his political mentor, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, he spent a year travelling around British India, getting to know the land and its people.

His first major public appearance was at the opening of the Banaras Hindu University in February 1916. There he criticised the Indian elite for their lack of concern for the poor, and said that India's salvation would come through the farmer, not through lawyers, doctors or landlords.

He then took up local struggles:

• Champaran (1917), in Bihar: securing better conditions for indigo peasants;
• Ahmedabad (1918): better working conditions for textile mill workers;
• Kheda (1918), in Gujarat: asking the state to remit taxes for peasants after a failed harvest.

These struggles marked him as a nationalist with a deep sympathy for the poor. Nationalism must include the farmer.