ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at Mohandas Gandhi’s choice to stand differently in response to violence. Ironically, Gandhi’s “leadership” may be worth exploring precisely because he was a leader without any officially sanctioned title or position and he did bring an empire to abandon its colonial power in India. In his wilfulness, Gandhi understood that awareness without action is wishful thinking, and action without imagination is reaction. R. A. Heifetz, for example, speaks to the need for leaders to have a “governor” to guide their “tendencies to become arrogant and grandiose in visions” including the temptation “to flee from harsh realities and the dailyness of leadership”. Gandhi’s new approach of non-violence can only be experienced as illogical and puzzling from an old frame of reference. At an individual level, Gandhi refused to view himself as a “recipient” or “victim” of unjust laws and enactments.
