There is a distinction between those who employ non-violent methods of opposition on the basis of expediency and those who refuse to use violence on the basis of principle. In the minds of many pacifists the movement for Indian independence under the leadership of Mohandas K. Gandhi stands out as the supreme example of a political revolt which has insisted on this principle, and hence as a model to be followed in any pacifist movement of social, economic, or political reform. Gandhi's Satyagraha, therefore, deserves careful analysis in the light of pacifist principles.

Western critics of Gandhi's methods are prone to insist that they may be applicable in the Orient, but that they can never be applied in the same way within our western culture. We have already seen that there have been many non-violent movements of reform within our western society, but those that we have examined have been based on expediency. Undoubtedly the widespread Hindu acceptance of the principle of ahimsa, or non-killing, even in the case of animals, prepared the way for Gandhi more completely than would have been the case in western society.