This is not an attempt to convert Pakistanis who have been brought up in a particular origin-myth. It does seem necessary, though, to expand on
@HalwaBrigade 's brief paragraph above, to remind those on this thread what Gandhi achieved, in socio-political terms.
His major achievement was to mobilise the Indian masses. All - almost every one except the revolutionaries, mainly from Bengal and the Punjab, some theoreticians from Maharashtra (then called Bombay) - Indian leader before his advent in the early 20s had taken the high road, of meeting the British on their own terms, and of addressing them in ways and manners that would - might - impress them. There was progress, but it was painfully slow. Effectively the British knew that with their superior military might, the suppression of Hindustan in 1857 was permanent.
Gandhi shook that self-confidence to the core.
How did he do that?
Tactically, by non-violence. Even though there were imperialists like Dyer who could bring themselves to kill unarmed men, women and children, the majority could not. Using the lathi to disperse, assault, at times, seriously injure or even kill people was the most that they could bring themselves to do.
How did this succeed, although there had been earlier efforts at using boycott of British textiles, especially during the Partition of Bengal in 1905?
It succeeded because of mass mobilisation. Gandhi effectively got a significant percentage of the Indian population out on the street. The strategy that he used to get these tactics, these formations adopted by the entire struggle, and the use he made of the rather ineffective Congress as a command structure, often an exasperating one, was outstanding.
His strategy was to position himself as a leader who shared an enormous amount of behavioural characteristics with the masses. It needs to be remembered that at that time, and until much, much later than independence, the vast bulk of India lived in the villages. In 1947, the village population in partitioned India, better endowed with urban centres than partitioned Pakistan, was about 80%. It is easy to see that between twenty to thirty years before that, with the ravages of the suppression of 1857 still to be absorbed, the percentage may have been even higher.
These people were NOT the English-speaking elite working in medicine, in law and in trade and commerce. These were peasants, comfortable only in the vernacular, firmly grounded in their traditional ways and habits of religious practice, dressed quite differently from the urban elite, who ate different food, and who had a lifestyle distinctly their own.
If Gandhi had not positioned himself as a bhajan-singing, fasting, cow venerating individual dressed rather like a peasant himself, sharing their food and their lifestyle, even though his wife was visibly uncomfortable with some of the aspects of this deliberate projection, he would never have got the attention of the masses. If he had not got their attention, he could not have put across his message, his formula for victory to them.
It is worth noting that he first grabbed power within the Congress, and then converted that rather amorphous body to his own command and control structure, although one that worked patchily at best. In these aspects, in his propositions to the Empire, he showed that he was not a saintly figure unaware of the realities of political life. He was a hard politician and imposed a discipline on his followers, specifically imposing his will on them - for that was the only way to drive the entire ramshackle, creaking, groaning three-ring circus forward.
That brings us to the question of the Muslims, the Dalit and the Christians, the Sikhs, the tribals of central India, the tribals of north-eastern India. Why did he not address their specific interests, and why did he, until the very bitter end, try to compel these different interest- and identity-groups under one leadership? It seems that in his analysis of the problem, the burnished, well-fortified ramparts of empire could only be stormed by one set of unified people, united in their purpose, and joined together irrespective of those religious and social differences that abounded. This led to massive opposition, from, for instance, the Muslim League, headed from the mid-30s by Jinnah, the Dalit, whose spokesman, Ambedkar, had to be brought to his knees in order to keep the movement unified, the Sikhs under Tara Singh, all, united in trying to stand away from the unified command structure that Gandhi envisioned and sought to enforce.
We can only imagine, in terms of alternative history, what might have been the outcome if these genuinely conscientious leaders had suppressed their own misgivings, and united with the core movement (not ignoring the many unexpected and abrupt stops and turns that Gandhi himself imposed). Right through the 30s and the 40s, the British, having done it successfully earlier during the 1905-1911 period, used the divided communities card to mount a stubborn resistance that kept them in power for 17 years, from the time of the First Round Table Conference, in 1930, to the premature 1947 date set by an impatient Mountbatten for independence and for his own return to the Royal Navy and his personal quest for the position of First Sea Lord, that his father had been hunted out of holding.
If Gandhi had not behaved in the strange and very specifically rooted way that he did, he would not have gripped the attention of the masses, he would not have brought them out in protest, and the British would not have found themselves swamped by opposition everywhere they looked and worked.
What about Bose, Ambedkar, Jinnah, the formation of the INA, the Indian Naval Mutiny, the battle against Hitler and the Japanese Empire, and Churchill's crashing defeat after the war ended? Did they have no role to play?
That is a question that we can only speculate about. It is what it is. The events of history are real, and cannot be wished away. All of them existed, all of them had roles to play woven into the tapestry in an inextricable binding, and what each of them caused to happen is a happy hunting ground for the imaginative.
Disclaimer: I am not a Gandhian.
