Mohandas K. Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

"My purpose, " Mahatma Gandhi writes of this book, "is to describe experiments in the science of Satyagraha, not to say how good I am." Satyagraha, Gandhi's nonviolent protest movement (satya = true, agraha = firmness), came to stand, like its creator, as a moral principle and a rallying cry; the principle was truth and the cry freedom. The life of Gandhi has given fire and fiber to freedom fighters and to the untouchables of the world; hagiographers and patriots have capitalized on Mahatma myths. Yet Gandi wrote: "Often the title has deeply pained me...But I should certainly like to narrate my experiments in the spiritual field which are known only to myself, and from which I have derived such power as I possess for working in the political field."