Mohandas K. Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948) developed, across four decades of political and spiritual practice, a synthesis of Hindu, Jain, and Christian ethical traditions that reframed nonviolence (ahimsa) as a positive political methodology rather than mere abstention from harm. Satyagraha — truth-force, soul-force — was Gandhi's name for the specific practice of nonviolent resistance to structural injustice, a practice that required voluntary simplicity as its material foundation. The principle Næss took most directly from Gandhi — simple means, rich ends — was not merely an aphorism; it was the operational formula for a life in which ethical practice and material conditions reinforce rather than contradict each other.