About 20,000 unarmed people gathered in the town square to protest newly adopted, politically repressive legislation by the British government and the arrest of Gandhi and several other prominent Indian leaders. When I heard that they were coming and collecting I did not at first believe that they were coming, but if they were coming to defy my authority and really to meet. . If I had delayed longer, I was liable for court martial. Against this highly charged scene worked Mahatma Gandhi. Twenty years earlier, while living among the hundreds of thousands of Indians imported into South Africa to work as coolies, Gandhi had begun to develop a political philosophy and reform plan he would eventually call satyagraha.
Passive resistance is the determination to meet force with non-force.
They refused to do so and publicized their unwillingness to cooperate. When faced with arrest, they went peaceably. Later, Gandhi would add personal fasting as another passive resistance tactic. In the more than 40 years of activity, Gandhi fasted numerous times while in British jails. On each occasion, he was released from jail before he died.