Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi led the movement that freed India from colonial occupation by the British. His leadership was based not only on his political vision but also on his moral, economic, and personal philosophies. Gandhi's beliefs have influenced many political movements throughout the world, including the civil rights movement in the United States, but their relevance to the modern environmental movement has not been widely recognized or understood until recently.

In developing the principles that would enable the Indian people to form a united independence movement, one of Gandhi's chief concerns was preparing the groundwork for an economy that would allow India to be both self-sustaining and egalitarian. He did not believe that an independent economy in India could be based on the Western model; he considered a consumer economy of unlimited growth impossible in his...