89 CHAPTER 4 Empire and Activism: Gandhi, Imperialism, and the Global Career of Satyagraha Sean Scalmer Although a child of the nineteenth century, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was unquestionably a ‘global activist.’ The leader of campaigns for Indian rights in South Africa and later for Indian Home Rule, he pressured leaders and cultivated alliances in the metropole as much as the periphery. 1 His actions won the attention of the Western media: 2 © The Author(s) 2018 S. Berger and S. Scalmer (eds.), The Transnational Activist, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66206-0_4 S. Scalmer (*) University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: sscalmer@unimelb.edu.au 1 For example, the early petitions drafted in support of Indians in South Africa were despatched to the Colonial Secretary in London. See Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi Before India, London: Allen Lane, 2013, p. 75. The Indian Home Rule movement was supported by a large network of Britons and of organisations such as the ‘Indian Conciliation Group.’ See Sean Scalmer, Gandhi in the West: The Mahatma and the Rise of Radical Protest, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 95. 2 On Gandhi and the metropolitan news: C. Seshachari, Gandhi and the American Scene: An Intellectual History and Inquiry, Bombay: Nachiketa Publications, 1969, p. 58. He was the Time magazine ‘Man of the Year’ in 1930. See Dennis Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, p.108.