Mahatma Gandhi

Civil-disobedience pioneer Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) is pictured beside his cherished spinning wheel. Each day, Gandhi and his followers spun fiber into thread for an hour, considering it a cure- to all, and a form of the highest poetry. Gandhi was the prominent leader of the Indian independence movement in British-ruled India. The British government officially gained direct administration of India in 1858, but the country had been unofficially governed by the British for around 100 years before that. This photograph was taken in 1946, during the run-up to the 1947 partition that divided India and Pakistan as separate countries and gave them their independence from Great Britain.