Thich Quang Duc publicly set himself on fire in Vietnam in 1963 Reading through the excellent parallel biographies of Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi, one can imagine what went through his mind when Gandhi proposed 'passive resistance' as a mean for Swaraj (self rule). Devoid of artillery superiority, reliance to economic and financial and skewing of Indian thinking from society to own self (individual rights), leaders of that era could only manipulate their subjects' mind through past glory of ancient civilization and nature! They said that Indian civilization had a much longer past than their invaders. So, the event of the intrusion of foreigners like the Mughals and the British were just but a drop in the ocean of India's very long civilization. Having able to boost their own self image, the next step was not go on head long collision with the invaders but to win psychologically - by gaining sympathy through pity through self torture or passive resist...
It is all Mimesis