Gandhi's political teachings and spiritual guidance for a nation and world sorely in need of both is reflective of the idea intrinsic to the idea that being in the world necessitates an internal love for it.  Gandhi's fundamental premise in achieving the freedom for India was for Indians to accept the idea that a universal love for all humanity prevents the use of violence in any case.  Gandhi's teachings for Indians evident in the techniques ofSatyagrahaand in his civil disobedient stances, in general, were to stress that the love of humanity, one that transcends what is into what should be must guide political action and human ethics.  It is here where his embrace of nonviolence and his demand for others to adhere to it becomes evident.  The notion of love is what underscores his approach to Indian independence, something that the British could not fathom.  Gandhi never approached independence as something of annihilation or negation.  Rather, his transformative teachings sought to recast the idea of independence through nonviolent civil disobedience sought to embody the universal love for humanity that Gandhi's philosophy demanded.  It is through this where the British were lost because they saw, and to an extent many Indians prior to Gandhi, the Indian struggle for independence as a largely political movement.  Gandhi transformed it into an ethical exercise, one in which the moral foundation of what it meant to be human and what it meant to love humanity necessitated the freedom of India from all shackles of bondage.  In this, Gandhi's idea of life being only evident when there is  love becomes a dominant manner in which one can view his political and spiritual teachings.