How Mahatma Gandhi Walked Britain Out of India
British Pathé newsreel traces Mahatma Gandhi from London law student to the frail, fasting man who helped lead India to independence.
Watch For
This short biography comes from British Pathé, the newsreel company whose cameras followed Gandhi for decades, so much of the footage is the real man, not a re-enactment. Watch for the Salt March: in 1930 he set out with 78 volunteers and walked 240 miles in 24 days to the sea at Dandi, where he picked up a handful of salt and broke the British salt law. By the end, tens of thousands were walking with him.
Listen closely near the end, too: the narrator gives the date of his death as January 19, but Gandhi was shot on January 30, 1948. He had ended his final fast in Delhi just 12 days earlier and was still frail from it when Nathuram Godse fired three shots on his way to evening prayers. His nonviolent resistance later helped shape Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights movement.
