Mahatma Gandhi, also known as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a man who was born in India in 1869 and died in 1948. One of the most important things about Gandhi, and which made him so influential not just in India, but all around the world, was his ideals, particularly, the ideal of achieving the independence of India from Great Britain but through what he himself called civil disobedience. In essence, what Gandhi did was to show the Indian people that it was possible to fight off the British colonists from their lands without raising arms or hurting anyone and he applied these principles in his own life until his death. He also showed the world that sometimes, there is more and more effective opposition to oppression through civil disobedience than through force itself. Although in the end the achievement of an independent India did not come exactly as he expected, Gandhi iniciated a movement not just in this Asian country, but in other parts of the world, that still today affects the way people fight for their rights. Also, even though Gandhi himself did not achieve the independence of India, his movement was crucial for the initiation of a process that DID lead to this desired goal.