What Qualities Made Gandhi a Good Leader?
Qualities that made Gandhi a good leader included his charisma, deliberateness, patience and commitment to non-violence. Gandhi was critical of the injustice of the caste system, and he worked to eliminate the concept of the “untouchable” caste. He promoted non-violent measures, such as fasting, as a tool for civil disobedience to affect political change.
Gandhi was married when he was 13, but he left his wife at home in India while he traveled to England during his late teens and early 20s to study law. After leaving England, he spent 21 years in South Africa where he suffered a number of racial indignities, and formed two ideas that were crucial to his later work. The first was the idea of independence for India, and the second was about the importance of truth, love and non-violence. In addition to forming his philosophies, he also learned how to organize people in order to get political results while he was in South Africa.
Although Gandhi never used the phrase “human rights,” he was a champion of Indian rights and social justice, and he inspired leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela. Gandhi was considered to be such a great leader that he is frequently referred to as Mahatma, a word that means “great soul.”
