Gandhi And Non-Violence

If the Indian National Congress had not accepted his basic tenet ofnon-violence in 1920, he would have had nothing to do with its struggle forliberation from British rule. 'I would like to repeat to the world, timeswithout number', Gandhi said in 1931, 'that I will not purchase my country'sfreedom at the cost of non-violence.' Nine years later, in the midst of theSecond World War, when he was asked what he would do if India became independentduring his lifetime, he replied: 'If India became free in my lifetime and I havestill energy left in me ... I would take my due share, though outside theofficial world, in building up the nation strictly on non-violent lines.' Wemust remember that Gandhi applied his method of non-violent resistance not onlyagainst foreign rule, but against social evils such as racial discrimination anduntouchability. Indeed, he claimed that non-violence lay at the root of everyone of his activities, and his mission in life was not merely the freedom ofIndia but the brotherhood of man. His satyagraha was designed not only forIndia, but for the whole world; it could transform relations betweenindividuals, as well as between communities and nations. In the early 1920s,when he had just emerged as the stoutest champion of nationalism in Asia, Gandhiunequivocally subscribed to the ideal of a world federation. 'The better mind ofthe world desires today', he told the Belgaum Congress in 1924, 'not absolutelyindependent states warring against each other but a federation of friendlyinterdependent states.' In the late 1930s, when the forces of violence weregathering momentum in Europe, he reaffirmed his faith in non-violence.Throughthe pages of his weekly paper, Harijan, he expounded his approach topolitical tyranny and military aggression. He advised weaker nations to defendthemselves by offering non-violent resistance to the aggressor. A non-violentAbyssinian, he argued, needed no arms and no succour from the League of Nations;if every Abyssinian man, woman, and child refused cooperation with the Italians,willing or forced, the latter would have to walk to victory over the dead bodiesof their victims and to occupy their country without the people. The motivepower of Nazi and Fascist aggression was the desire to carve out new empires,and behind it all was a ruthless competition to annex new sources of rawmaterials and fresh markets. In Gandhi's opinion, wars were thus rooted in theoverweening greed of men as also in the purblind tribalism that placednationalism above humanity. In the ultimate analysis, to shake off militarism,it was necessary to end the competitive greed and fear and hatred which fed it.

Gandhi's pleas for renunciation of violence and for non-violent resistance toaggressors fell on deaf ears; they were dismissed as the outpourings of avisionary. The Second World War lasted six years and took a heavy toll of humanlives, but the Allied victory did not usher in the era of peace for which theworld had longed. Gandhi was shocked by the use of the atom bomb by the UnitedStates of America against Japan: he described it 'as the most diabolical use ofscience'. When Jawaharlal Nehru came to see him in 1945, Gandhi closelyquestioned him about the atom bomb: its manufacture, its capacity to kill andpoison, and its toll on Japanese cities. Nehru recalled later that Gandhilistened to him silently, and then, 'with deep human compassion loading hisgentle eyes, remarked that this wanton destruction had confirmed his faith inGod and non-violence, and that now he [Gandhi] realized the full significance ofthe holy mission for which God had created him and armed him with the mantra ofnon-violence'. According to Nehru as Gandhi uttered these words he 'had a lookof revelation about his eyes' and he resolved then and there to make it hismission to fight and outlaw the bomb. Gandhi was assassinated in January 1948.The following year, when Nehru visited the United States, he related hisconversation with Gandhi to Albert Einstein. With a twinkle in his eyes, thegreat scientist took a pad and pencil and wrote down a number of dates on oneside, and events on the other, to indicate the parallel evolution of the nuclearbomb and Gandhi's non-violent technique of satyagraha respectively, almost fromdecade to decade since the beginning of the twentieth century. It turned outthat, by a strange coincidence, while Einstein and his fellow scientists wereengaged in researches that made the fission of the atom possible, Gandhi wasembarking on his experiments in peaceful, non-violent resistance in South Africaand India; indeed, the 'Quit India' struggle almost coincided with the Americanproject for the making of the atomic bomb.

Gandhi's great achievement was to evolve and practice a non-violent methodfor conflict-resolution at the beginning of the twentieth century, which provedto be the most violent century in the annals of mankind.In the first half ofthe century, which almost synchronized with Gandhi's entire public life, therewere two devastating world wars with a colossal loss of life. In the second halfwe were spared the catastrophe of a third world war, but the 'cold war' betweentwo rival ideological-cum-military blocs brought the world to the verge of anatomic holocaust: only a 'balance of terror' between them kept the peace.However, of their rivalry led to localized conflicts, instigated or fanned bythe Superpowers, largely in Third World countries. In 1995, the thenSecretary-General of the United Nations estimated that between 1945 and 1994there had been 127 conflicts with 22 million casualties in comparison to 88conflicts during the first half of the century. Gandhi offered a non-violentalternative to this recurring cycle of hatred and violence. Beginning his publiclife in the hostile environment of South Africa, he discovered that in animperfect and changing world, conflicts of interests within and betweencountries were inevitable. His technique of satyagraha sought reconciliationthrough dialogue and compromise, but if justice was denied, it provided for aconfrontation, but it had to be a non-violent confrontation. Websters ThirdNew International Dictionary aptly sums up this technique as one of'achieving social and political reform by means of tolerance and active goodwillcoupled with firmness in one's cause expressed through non-violence, passiveresistance and non-cooperation.'

Gandhi rejected the common belief that force yields only to force. Theprinciple of 'an eye for an eye', he said, 'would end up with the whole worldbecoming blind'. He conceded that in our present state human beings are 'partlymen and partly beasts', but he believed that man's nature is not essentiallyevil. He did not divide mankind into two opposite categories of good and bad;there were only evil acts, and even in the wickedest of men, there was a betterside, a latent spark. Gandhi's critics, however, tended to dismiss his views asthe impractical idealism of a visionary which had no relevance for the modernworld. In February 1938 Frances Gunther, the wife of John Gunther the Americanjournalist, and author of the best-seller Inside Asia Today, wrote toJawaharlal Nehru that she told Lord Linlithgow, the then Viceroy of India, thatGandhi had brought Indians up from the tenth to the nineteenth century but itwas Nehru's task to carry them from the nineteenth to the twentieth. She was notalone in thinking that Gandhi's ideas were antediluvian and suited to apre-industrial, and pre-modern society. Most intellectuals not only in the Westbut in India would have endorsed her verdict. It does not seem to have occurredto them that Gandhi may have been thinking ahead of his time.

It was only in the latter half of the twentieth century that Gandhi's methodscame to be invoked across the globe, in Asia, Africa, America, and Europe. InSouth Africa, the African National Congress carried on non-violent agitation andpassive resistance for nearly forty years. Chief Albert Luthuli, the presidentof the ANC and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, belonged to the Zulu warrior tribe,but was inspired by Gandhi's writings and became a champion of non-violence.TheANC was, however, unable to sustain its non-violent struggle in the face ofruthless oppression by the apartheid regime. After the massacre of Sharpevilleand until the release of Nelson Mandela, the major liberation movement in SouthAfrica took to guerilla warfare. However, the armed struggle would have beenmuch more difficult and prolonged had not students, industrial workers,religious leaders, youth, and women's organizations joined in non-violentresistance to the racist regime on such issues as rent, consumer embargoes, andbus boycotts. Thus the liberators of the blacks in South Africa were not onlythe guerilla fighters, but hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children,shop assistants, and workers living in shanty towns who consciously orunconsciously adopted methods which Gandhi would have approved.

In the United States Gandhi's teachings and example inspired Martin LutherKing Jr., a Baptist minister, who was able, in the words of an American writersto 'meld the image of Gandhi and the image of the Negro preacher, and to usebiblical symbols that bypassed cerebral centres and exploded in the well of theNegro psyche'. King championed the non-violent method as a practical alternativenot only to armed conflicts within a country but between countries. 'Thechoice', he wrote in his Stride Towards Freedom (1958), 'is no longerbetween violence and non-violence. It is either non-violence or non-existence.'

The last two decades of the twentieth century witnessed some spectaculardemonstrations of 'peoples' power' to non-violently resist colonial rule.foreign domination, racial discrimination, and tyrannical regimes. In the CzechRepublic and Poland, the Baltic States, the Philippines, and several othercountries, unarmed men and women collectively dared to defy the might of themodern state. In Poland, Lech Walesa, the leader of the 'Solidarity' movement,acknowledged that he derived his insights from his study of Gandhi's campaigns.He skilfully alternated disciplined and peaceful strikes with negotiations. Hewas one of the first to be clapped into prison from where he sent out earnestappeals to his countrymen to retrain from violence. His struggle had itsvicissitudes, but by 1989 Poland became the first country in eastern Europe tofree itself from Soviet domination.

In Czechoslovakia a massive non-violent protest in 1968 fizzled out, buttwenty one years later, on 17 November 1989, a spontaneous upsurge againstSoviet occupation turned into the largest demonstration in the history of thecountry. Hundreds of demonstrators were injured when the security forces chargedthe crowd. Over a hundred thousand marchers gathered in Wencelas Square inPrague, sat down on the road, and sang nursery rhymes. They held candles andwaved flags. Their leader Vaclav Havel, speaking in virtually the Gandhianidiom, exhorted them to refrain from violence. A 'Civic Forum' emerged, whichincorporated all opposition groups and avowed its commitment to non-violence.Havel paid a tribute to the students of Czechoslovakia who had thrown themselvesinto 'the non-violent struggle for giving this revolution a beautiful, peaceful,dignified, gentle, and I would say, loving face, which is admired by the wholeworld'.This was, he declared, 'a rebellion of truth against lies, of puritiesagainst impurities, of the human heart against violence'. The Praguedemonstration had a chain reaction across the country. Protests and participantsgrew daily. Thousands of strike committees were formed. Peaceful crowds holdingnothing but candles and flowers, were beaten up by truncheon wielding police. Inthe words of Mary E. King, the author of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.(UNESCO, 1999), the people of Czechoslovakia enacted 'the power of Truth, asGandhi had defined it, as Havel interpreted it'. On 7 December the PrimeMinister of the Communist government resigned. On 10 December a government of'national understanding' was announced. By the end ofthe December 1989, theSoviet-dominated regime had surrendered and the Federal Assembly had electedHavel, as the president of Czechoslovakia.

Another striking victory of non-violence was witnessed in Philippines as aresult of which the despotic and corrupt regime of President Ferdinand Marcoswas overthrown. Marcos threw into the prison one of the protagonists ofdemocracy and his chief rival, Senator Beniquo Acquino. In prison Acquino poredover the Bible and the writings of Gandhi and was converted to the creed ofnon-violence. When he returned home after three years of self-exile, he wasassassinated. His death galvanized the country and paved the way for anon-violent struggle. The crisis came in 1986 in the wake of a fraudulentelection conducted by the Ferdinand Marcos's government, which enraged thepeople. On 22 February, two army generals with their troops defected. This wasfollowed by an amazing scene. Three million men, women and children, many ofthem praying, poured into the streets to protect the defecting soldiers from theadvancing tanks and troops sent by Marcos. The atmosphere became so electricthat some of Marcos's soldiers joined the rebellious troops. This confrontationbetween the armed forces and unarmed people lasted for 77 hours till the Marcosregime crumbled.

Gandhi's ideas have quelled not only struggles against foreign domination andtyrannical rule, but also crusades against the piling up of nuclear weapons andthe havoc being wrought by developed countries through wanton and wasteful useof the resources of the planet. Petra Kelly, a leader of the Green Peacemovement in Germany who was influenced by the ideas of Martin Luther King andGandhi, denounced methods of production which depended upon a ceaseless supplyof raw materials and were leading to the exhaustion of natural resources andthreatening ecological devastation. Speaking almost in the Gandhian idiom, shesaid, 'We cannot solve any political problem, without also addressing spiritualones.'

Despite these examples of non-violent struggles over the past two decades,which have highlighted the power potential of the oppressed, it must be admittedthat Gandhi's ideas and methods are still appreciated by only a smallenlightened minority in the world. Gandhi himself had no illusions about theirready acceptance. He did not claim finality for his views, which he regardedwithin a broad ethical framework as aids for bettering the lives of his fellowmen; they could be altered if they did not work. Though he expounded hisphilosophy of life in hundreds of articles and letters, he never tried to buildit into a system. Nevertheless, the truth is that more than fifty years afterhis death, his deepest concerns have become the concerns of thinking men andinstitutions working for a peaceful and humane world.