4 ideas
In 1893, days after arriving in South Africa as a young lawyer, Gandhi was ordered out of a first-class compartment because he was not white. He refused to move, was pushed off the train at Pietermaritzburg station, and spent the night in the cold waiting room. He records that he chose that night to stay and fight the prejudice instead of going back to India, and he treats it as the start of his public resistance.
Gandhi treats each moral commitment, such as vegetarianism, fasting, celibacy or giving up possessions, as a hypothesis to test on his own body and household. This makes ethics something empirical and correctable, not a fixed code, and it binds him to report his failures as honestly as his successes.
As a teenager Gandhi stole a bit of gold from his brother's armlet. He then wrote a full confession, handed it to his sick father and asked to be punished. His father cried silently and did not punish him, and Gandhi says this wordless forgiveness taught him more nonviolence than a beating could have. He argues that a complete confession, offered freely and met with love rather than anger, purifies the wrongdoer and removes the urge to repeat the wrong.
Satyagraha is resisting injustice by refusing to obey it while openly accepting the penalty, with no violence toward the opponent. The resister's visible, willing suffering is meant to change the opponent's conscience and expose the injustice to onlookers, not to force a win. Because the method depends on moral credibility, the resister must first practice strict self-discipline and truthfulness in private life.