Explain how nonviolent resistance led to Indian independence and Partition, and describe Africa's wave of independence movements through the contrasting examples of Ghana and Algeria.
Mohandas Gandhi led India's independence movement through satyagraha, a philosophy of organized nonviolent civil resistance -- most famously demonstrated in the 1930 Salt March, in which Gandhi and his followers walked some 240 miles to the sea to make salt themselves, defying a British law that made salt production a government monopoly. Decades of this patient, disciplined pressure, combined with Britain's exhausted finances and political will after World War II, finally forced independence on August 15, 1947. But independence arrived alongside Partition, the simultaneous division of British India into a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan -- triggering one of history's largest mass migrations, as an estimated 10 to 15 million people crossed the new borders in each direction, accompanied by horrific communal violence that killed an estimated one million people or more. Gandhi himself, who had worked to ease Hindu-Muslim tension even amid the chaos, was assassinated in January 1948 by a Hindu nationalist who opposed his tolerance toward Muslims -- extremism turning violently against a man who had spent his life rejecting it.
Africa's independence wave followed a similarly uneven pattern. In 1957, Ghana, led by Kwame Nkrumah, became the first sub-Saharan African colony to win independence, largely peacefully, inspiring a continent-wide wave that peaked in 1960's "Year of Africa," when seventeen African nations gained independence. Algeria's path looked nothing like Ghana's: France considered Algeria not simply a colony but part of France itself, and Algerian independence came only after a brutal war (1954-1962) marked by widespread violence and torture on both sides before French withdrawal. Comparing Ghana and Algeria side by side makes clear that decolonization's outcome -- peaceful or violent, quick or prolonged -- depended enormously on each specific colonizing power's willingness to actually let go.
Mastery looks like: They can explain satyagraha with a specific example, describe Partition's scale and violence, and contrast Ghana's and Algeria's paths to independence with specific evidence for each.
Common stumbles: Treating Indian independence as a purely peaceful triumph without acknowledging Partition's violence, or assuming all African nations gained independence the same way Ghana did.