As the British Prime Minister visits India just after Gandhi’s birthday, history feels like it has turned a quiet circle. The lawyer from Porbandar, trained in London, taught the empire that fairness was not a courtesy but a duty. He took Britain’s finest value – fair play – and held it up to Britain itself.
Gandhi was not born in the shadow of violence. He was born in the light of conscience. His education in London taught him the power of argument over anger, principle over pride. He returned to India not to destroy the empire but to redeem its promise – that all people are equal before justice.
Too often we speak of him only as the prophet of non-violence. But Gandhi’s non-violence was not silence. It was resistance without hate. It was courage without cruelty. He stood unarmed before power and reminded it that the weak, too, could possess moral strength.
That lesson is not Indian alone. It is deeply British. The idea that power must answer to principle, that fairness is the measure of civilisation – these are values Britain once gave to the world. Gandhi merely showed what happens when those values are lived without hypocrisy.
I speak as a British Indian. I grew up believing that fair play, decency, and the rule of law are not Western or Eastern. They are human. They are what make us civil. They are what made Britain admired, and India unbreakable.
In our time, new empires rise – not of kings but of power, money, and might. Presidents and strongmen who mistake fear for respect should remember Gandhi. True power does not crush the defenceless. It protects them.
And to those who defaced his statue in London and scrawled “Hindustani” on it – Gandhi himself was the greatest Hindustani of all. He refused to bow. He took the blows, and stood straighter. Every person who stands for what is right, without hate in their heart, is Gandhian. Every person who refuses to kneel before injustice is Hindustani.
So as the Prime Minister lands in India, I hope he does not see merely a trade partner. I hope he sees the shared inheritance of conscience that binds our nations. Gandhi was not against Britain. He was the best of Britain and India joined in one spirit.
A lawyer who reminded the world that justice without courage is cowardice, and power without fairness is tyranny.
That was Gandhi’s truth. It was also Britain’s.
And it can be ours again — if we choose it.