Colonialism might just as well exist today like it did in the 1800s. UK amongst others specifically stopped it.
Nearly every successful peaceful revolution had a lurking threat of a less peaceful version nearby. Which isn't a bad thing and it doesn't discredit peaceful change, it just discredits the idea that people acquiesce to peaceful protests (exclusively) out of the goodness of their hearts.
It's nothing like the European version.
There was no way India could have been properly ruled by the English crown. The understanding of monarchy is so different and also explains why so many kings happily agreed to become British vassals.
Benevolent empires don’t let millions of people die because they are too busy extracting resources from their colonies to care about them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
A few tens of thousands of British troops - Over 200 years of the British Raj on average there were 60,000 to 70,000 British troops stationed in India - would have been absolutely slaughtered by the hundreds of millions of Indians (1857 population estimated at 250-300 million).
By the time Gandhi came into the picture, the British empire was overextended - any half decent uprising would have been successful..... unless you convinced the natives to give up on any physical form of dissent and sit down, protest and get beaten up as a virtuous slave.
Truly one of the greatest psyops ever.
> A few tens of thousands of British troops
A lot of Indians happily joined British army because of the (relatively) better pay and better treatment.
> slaughtered by the hundreds of millions of Indians
But those were all divided into hundreds of kingdoms. In fact, a lot of Indian kings and princes preferred being a vassal of the English crown because the alternative was much worse (being imprisoned or killed by Indian rivals). Read about almost any major Indian wars/battles in the 18th century involving English and you will find a lot of neutral Indian parties, or the ones actively fighting on England's behalf.
> any half decent uprising would have been successful
Indian subcontinent suffered from a "coordination problem". Gandhi is admired because he played the biggest role in bringing a lot of them together. Of course, he couldn't bring everyone along (eg. Jinnah and Muslims), and there were a lot of other great leaders who also contributed (Patel, Tilak, Bose etc) towards uniting all the Indians, but none could attain Gandhi's stature.
Whoopsie daisy. What stage of civilization have we reached?