According to this philosophy, satyagrahis—practitioners of satyagraha—achieve correct insight into the real nature of an evil situation by observing a nonviolence of the mind, by seeking truth in a spirit of peace and love, and by undergoing a rigorous process of self-scrutiny. In so doing, the satyagrahi encounters truth in the absolute. By his refusal to submit to the wrong or to cooperate with it in any way, the satyagrahi asserts this truth. Throughout his confrontation with the evil, he must adhere to nonviolence, for to employ violence would be to lose correct insight. A satyagrahi always warns his opponents of his intentions; satyagraha forbids any tactic suggesting the use of secrecy to one's advantage. Satyagraha includes more than civil disobedience; its full range of application extends from the details of correct daily living to the construction of alternative political and economic institutions. Satyagraha seeks to conquer through conversion; in the end, there is neither defeat nor victory but rather a new harmony.

Satyagraha draws from the ancient Indian ideal of ahimsa (“noninjury”), which is pursued with particular rigour by Jains (Jainism). In developing ahimsa into a modern concept with broad political consequences, as satyagraha, Gandhi also drew from the writings of Leo Tolstoy (Tolstoy, Leo) and Henry David Thoreau (Thoreau, Henry David), from the Bible, and from the Bhagavadgita, the great Sanskrit epic. Gandhi first conceived satyagraha in 1906 in response to a law discriminating against Asians that was passed by the British colonial government of the Transvaal in South Africa. In 1917 the first satyagraha campaign in India was mounted in the indigo-growing district of Champaran. During the following years, fasting and economic boycotts were employed as methods of satyagraha, until the British left India in 1947.

Critics of satyagraha, both in Gandhi's time and subsequently, have argued that it is unrealistic and incapable of universal success, since it relies upon a high standard of ethical conduct in the opponent, the representative of “evil,” and demands an unrealistically strong level of commitment from those struggling for social amelioration. Nonetheless, satyagraha played a significant role in the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr. (King, Martin Luther, Jr.), in the United States and has spawned a continuing legacy in South Asia itself.