Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World. Sugar has left a bloody trail through human history. Sugar plantations from Africa to the Caribbean and Louisiana and as far as Hawaii are haunted by stories of brutality, torture, r***, and murder. When slaves rebelled, they often took gruesome revenge on their masters, only to face even more horrific reprisals when the owners and overseers regained control. Indenture was a step better than slavery, but masters did their best to intimidate workers to keep wages low and silence critics. Violence was the very soil from which sugar sprang. The only way to fight sugar masters, it seemed, was for the workers to be harder, tougher, and more willing to accept bloodshed than the owners. Gandhi began to see that there was a way for the indentured Indians to strengthen themselves without having to rely on machetes and guns. Freedom, he realized, did not come only from rising up against oppressors or tyrants. It could also be found in oneself. The mere fact that the sugar masters treated their workers as some form of property did not mean the Indians had to accept that definition. In fact, it was up to them to claim, to assert, their own worth, their own value. A man who had his inner, personal dignity was free—no matter how a boss tried to bully him. Gandhi’s years in South Africa became a laboratory, as he experimented with how to be a truthful, free person. Finally, he was ready to put his ideas into practice.
Which statement best describes the claim the authors make in this passage?
A) Gandhi believed that violence should be used only as a last resort when fighting oppressors.
B) Violent uprisings were common, but Gandhi worked to show that resistance could be nonviolent.
C) Life for indentured workers was difficult, and sugar masters treated them like property.
D) Workers' freedom depended upon the way that plantation owners treated workers.