Mahatma Gandhi and the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama were Sunday listed by Time magazine among the world’s top 25 political icons.
Mohandas K. Gandhi was credited with non-violent protests during the British Raj that helped him become the spiritual heart of the Indian independence struggle.
Released on the 100th birth anniversary of the late US President Ronald Reagan, the TIME list figures names like the great conqueror Alexander the Great and some of history’s most polarising figures like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
Gandhi’s experiments with satyagraha — the genesis of the non-violent methods of protest pioneered by him — and his leadership of India’s freedom movement that has inspired many revolutionaries of later years, led him to the top of the list of the 25 all time greats.
Describing Mohandas Gandhi as a figure “few will ever forget”, Time magazine said his struggle paved the way for other social movements including America’s struggle for civil rights.
‘Gandhi led the country in peaceful protest against foreign domination, exemplified by the 1930 Salt March in protest to a British salt tax. His rise paved the way for India’s independence in 1947.
‘Though the country was later divided (and Gandhi assassinated), his role in the bloodless revolution … paved the way for other social movements including America’s struggle for civil rights,’ it added.
Time’s top 25 political icons are: Mahatma Gandhi, Alexander the Great, Mao Zedong, Winston Churchill, Genghis Khan, Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln, Adolf Hitler, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, Ronald Reagan, Cleopatra, Franklin Roosevelt, the Dalai Lama, Queen Victoria, Benito Mussolini, Akbar the Great, Lenin, Margaret Thatcher, Simon Bolivar, Qin Shi Huang, Kim Il-Sung, Charles de Gaulle, Louis XIV, Haile Selassie, King Richard the Lionheart and Saladin.
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