Thoreau and Gandhi

In his essay for the New England Quarterly, George Hendrick describes the rest of the pieces to the Thoreau – Gandhi relationship. Universally referenced as the source of Gandhi’s Satyagraha, Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience essay on the virtues of nonviolent resistance has obvious parallels to the definitions Gandhi laid out of his brand. Hendrick’s essay, however, points out that the intellectual draw of Thoreau’s thought into Gandhi’s philosophy neither started or ended with Disobedience – Gandhi read Walden first, and then Disobedience, the latter coming at a critical point in Gandhi’s Indian work.