Its also quite close to engineering and analysis in some ways, there were very custom solutions to a problem he faced.
TLDR - Gandhi found a way to neutralize massive weaknesses which would stop typical revolutionary movements by flipping them on their head.
1) India was incredibly divided, and the divisions were a core pillar of how India was run. This was a major challenge that had multiple attempts to deal with the Brits futile.
2) Indians were impoverished, not something you would consider dry tinder ready to throw their lives down in battle.
The techniques used are very interesting because they either negated these challenges, or converted them into strengths.
Gandhi outright challenged untouchability, whether people approved of his choice or didn’t. Given his upper class roots and the way he chose to live his life, it meant that many accusations to discredit him simply didn’t hold.
That credibility was one section of the foundation.
The other foundations were the effectiveness of non violence.
You have a massive divided population, which had lost its dignity and self determination, and would require massive resources to arm and coordinate them.
Non cooperation and non violence flipped those constraints and broke many assumptions of how power operated.
Non cooperation meant that choice was immediately returned to everyone in India. You regained agency to choose.
Non violence returned agency and dignity to people. It meant that you didn’t need a weapon to stand up for yourself. It means that you recognized the weakness of your position, and you still could choose to stand for yourself without having to become what the attacker wanted you to become.
Getting beaten and not retaliating is hard, it means not responding to many base instincts carved into our biology. Standing there and taking it removed the accusation of cowardice and weakness. It’s the difficult choice that makes you human.
But on their own these are moral stands, not effective politics. Gandhi’s tactics targeted the economic machine which is what mattered to the British empire.
He was also very active with the press, during the salt march there were talks with Press every night when they rested.
Non violent communication was born from these techniques. Mandela and MLK both found him inspiring - and both said that there was a limit to the efficacy of Gandhian techniques in their respective scenarios.
In the end it’s the pragmatism and the uplifting nature of these techniques and ideas that I find fascinating.