Who according to you was the greatest leader amongst Lincoln, Gandhi and Mandela?

Lincoln. Duh.

Only one among the three who really had any idea what was going on.

Gandhi was a luddite imbecile who'd read a couple of translations of the Shastras, piled it together with whatever New Testament gibberish he'd swallowed in South Africa, and went about masquerading in India as some sort of neo-saint. His advice to Hindus being slaughtered by the thousands by a few handfuls of Angrej was to stand and take bullets in the chest; his advice to Hindu women being raped by Peacefuls was to keep still and not disturb their rapists so much.

And let's not start on the nonsense between 1946 and 1948, or we will be here all day.

Best case scenario: Gandhi was INSANE. Worst case- and something that George Orwell himself pondered on- Gandhi was a British agent being used as a Safety Valve for post-Tilak Hindu unrest, the soft velvet glove to the iron fist of the Raj Armies.

BTW- I didn't conflate Gandhi to a Raj Army. Mountbatten did. Read your FoM.

As for Mandela- well, where to begin?

Unlike Gandhi, we can be pretty certain that Mandela possessed that most vital of requirements for a public leader- Blood lust. He knew where he stood, he knew who his foes were, and he knew exactly what'd happen if he lost. Liberals and White Nationalists alike accuse him of being a Terrorist. Absurd! For any South African Black during Mandela's youth, to take up arms against the Angrej and Vilayat oppressors would've been virtue.

Gandhi's sins lay in the Act. Mandela's lay in the Achievement.

Wisdom says that on vanquishing an enemy, they must be annihilated root and stem if they're Mleccha but preserved and taught Dharma if they desire to renounce Mlecchas. Ergo, unless there are inviolable ideological differences, enemies are better off and more easily co-opted than wiped out.

If Mandela was aware of this- and yet took no real steps to ensure long term White-Black unity in South Africa, he was no better than the average Somali pirate. But that's not the disturbing thing.

What if Mandela was aware of this- no way he wasn't, given how smart he was- and didn't do what was necessary, do what the likes of LKY or Lincoln did- purely to preserve his legacy of “Peace and Goodwill” for future generations? For the sake of sanctimonious personal legacy, he doomed his nation to racial strife, public unrest, economic collapse, and rule by dimwits. Now South Africa is on the road to be Zimbabwe 2.0. and Mandela's Achievements have become his failures.

Consider Lincoln though.

He chose War when War was needed. He chose Tyranny when Tyranny was needed. He chose Reconstruction when Reconstruction was needed.

A Gandhi would've rolled over and allowed the Confederates to get away and gifted them Sumter, Philadelphia, and Washington itself. Mandela wouldn't have had the balls of integrity to order something like Sherman's March. Neither would've recognised the importance of Industrial Might- the lifeblood of States.

Neither did Lincoln enjoy several advantages that the other two did. Mandela worked in the equivalent of North Korea, and only the two-faced hypocrisy of Western leaders kept the Apartheid State from collapsing sooner than it did. Gandhi- yeah, right. Without Kaiser Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler doing the heavy lifting, I'm prepared to bet every rupee I have that the Age of Colonialism would've never ended.

Lincoln had several advantages- his White skin that accorded him the status of human in the eyes of the Firang powers, the American Constitution and the views of their Founding Fathers (which is more than can be said for most countries), and a relatively large educated population. Even so, the threat of Angrej and Firang intervention onto the American Civil War was a clear and present danger- notwithstanding the nonsense about not condoning Slavery that Firangs use during such discussions. Lincoln's great shield in the Firangistans was Bismarck but his skill in forcing War upon his enemies ensured that his country remained free and intact.

It's not even a contest.