R. P. Mishra
During the year 2006-07, India is
reminding itself of the epochal contribution Mahatma Gandhi made a
century ago in 1906 to give in the hands of the weak, whether
individuals, or groups or nations, a new weapon to fight oppression
and injustice. The weapon was Passive Resistance later renamed
as Satyagraha. In recognition of this gift of Gandhi to
humanity, the United Nations has declared October 2, the birth
anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, as the Day of Nonviolence. Gandhi's mission was not without
obstacles. It was difficult to convince people that soul force
could subdue brute force not by defeating it but by melting it into
a love force. That apart, a number of men and women in public
life, including some of Gandhi's own colleagues argued against it.
Even today there are people who think that Satyagraha might have
been good to fight a colonial government but it has no relevance in
a democratic set up, irrespective of cause. When Gandhi pitched his soul force
against the brute force of the British Imperialism, he had no
bitterness against the British people; he rather loved them as he
loved his own countrymen. But he was against the British Raj for it
was imposed on India against its will and it brought untold miseries
to the people. His offensive, even if nonviolent, began in
South Africa in 1906 and ceased in India in 1948 not because his
goal was achieved but because he was assassinated by the very people
he loved so enormously and for whose transformation he worked
incessantly.
How It All Began? It was June 7, 1893 and the place was
Pietermaritzberg in South Africa, a small railway station on the way
from Durban to Johannesburg. Barrister Mohandas Karamchand
Gandhi was thrown out of a train unjustly and illegally. His fault:
he dared to travel in an upper class compartment reserved only for
the 'whites'. He spent the cold night musing over the fate of
millions of people who were treated worst for the only fault that
their skin was 'coloured'. Gandhi experienced a deep spiritual
awakening within him and decided not to rest until the
discriminatory treatment against Indian settlers by the then South
African government was ended. Gandhi decided to fight against the
injustice done to him and to masses of people in the name of
'civilization'. He launched a movement designed to oppose the
wrongdoings of the whites of South Africa against the Asians and
Africans. He called for joint action without the use of
violence. Since violence breeds violence; the fight must be
cooperative and nonviolent. And the fight must be against the
injustice, not against those who perpetrated injustice. It was
decided to oppose all discriminatory laws and rules. But the
movement must remain nonviolent. The movement came to be known
as non-cooperation movement. By 1911 it was renamed as
Satyagraha and made more comprehensive and philosophically sound. Satyagraha demanded complete
dedication to truth and nonviolence and this was possible only if
the life of the person practicing it was pure and simple. In
order that he is not afraid of losing anything, he should not be
attached to anything but truth and nonviolence. It was
September 11, 1906, when he put his concept of Satyagraha in
practice on a scale he had not done before and opened the path of
nonviolent mass movement. I prefer to call Satyagraha as 'a
weapon of war' because Gandhi unleashed love towards his opponents
with such a great fury that they, being human beings, had no choice
but to give in. Satyagraha has been criticized as an
impractical exercise. Questions were and are being raised
about the relevance of Satyagraha in a fast changing world. No one
could have stopped India from gaining independence by resorting to
violence. But if what is happening in our neighbouring
countries, which gained independence by fighting a violent war, one
doubts if India would have remained united and democratic had it not
got its freedom the Gandhian way.
Satyagraha After Gandhi After Mahatma's death many of his
followers tried to mould satyagraha to solve the problems of
democratic India. Vinoba Bhave laid down four principles of
satyagraha in 1958 to make it consistent with democratic India: 1. It must be positive; 2. It should proceed from
gently, to gentler and finally gentlest; 3. The very word Satyagraha
should arouse happiness; and< 4. There should be no insistence
on the part of the satyagrahi; insistence should come from truth
itself. Jay Prakash Narayan had spent most of
his life as a major actor on the political stage. He joined Vinoba, and dedicated
the rest of his life to Bhoodan and Sarvodaya. After sometime
he launched a satyagraha called Sampoorna Kranti but he removed from
it the otherworldly underpinnings. He tried to become
Gandhi-the-politician minus Gandhi-the-saint. Besides these two
there were others who took up causes ranging from the Chipko
Movement which was launched by Chandi Prasad Bhatt and popularized
by Sunderlal Bahuguna to protect the forests, Medha Patkar's
movement for the rehabilitation of Sardar Sarovar Dam oustees in
Gujarat, to Mamta Banerjee's movement against SEZ in Nandigram in
West Bengal. All these constitute a form of Satyagraha
chiseled to specific social political and economic contexts. Not only in India, civil society all
over the world on many occasions organized peaceful sit-ins and
demonstrations to impress upon various international agencies and
national governments to save the earth from getting barren and to
change their ways in favour of the poor and deprived masses.
Critiques Of Satyagraha Despite global recognition of
satyagraha as the ultimate way of conflict resolution, its critics
have not been scarce. There are people who reject it on the
ground that violence has a cleansing effect when the oppressed rise
against their oppressors. Plenty feel that Gandhi's methods could only work because the
British were liberal. It would not have worked, they think, in
Nazi Germany or Stalin's USSR. Mahatma Gandhi's Rules For Social
Activism:
-
Refrain from violence and
hostility
-
Attempt to obtain your opponents
trust by being truthful, being open about your intentions, using
chivalry and making behaviour inoffensive without compromising
the issue at hand.
-
Refrain from humiliating an
opponent.
-
Make visible sacrifices for one's
cause. Here it is best if the suffering of the aggrieved
is made visible.
-
Carry on constructive work.
Address parts of the problem you can address. Make
improvements where you can. Participate in activities that
all people see as contributing to everyone's common welfare.
-
Maintain contact with the
opponent. This is absolutely necessary if conversion is to
succeed.
-
Demonstrate trust in the opponent.
- Develop empathy, good will, and
patience toward the opponent. This the best you can do
from your end. If you fail to convert an opponent, it may
be due to external factors beyond your control.
Gandhi's vision went beyond throwing
the oppressors out by hook or by crook. He considered
the oppressors part of the society and so long as they are not
transformed into a new human being, the oppression would continue in
some other garb. For Gandhi the fight against the
British was a radical experiment which would give rise to a new
India and he wanted to use the new India to create a peaceful and
just global society. Who could be more courageous than Gandhi?
Satyagraha could never be conceived as the weapon of the weak. Tagore equated Satyagraha to a
thunderbolt. He felt that "Passive Resistance is a force,
which is not necessarily moral in itself; it can be used against
truth as well as for it." He was troubled by the negative
impulses non-cooperation could generate.
Is Satyagraha Relevant In A Democratic Set Up?
To answer this question, let us look
at satyagraha as conceived and practiced by Gandhi. Satyagraha
is a relentless search for truth; and is an effective substitute for
violence. Truth is the destination; satyagraha is the way, a
nonviolent way. Only those who are strong willed can tread on
it. It teaches us the art of living as well as dying for a
cause gracefully yet without adding to the violence that already
fills this world. Satyagraha needs no outside help; it
derives all its strength from within. The method of Satyagraha
required that the Satyagrahi should never lose hope. Nor
should he harbour ill will and enmity towards the opponent.
Satyagraha being a method of conversion and conviction, it prohibits
the use of coercion. Much depends on where and in what
situation it is used. Violence in any visible form is barred,
no matter what the social context. Satyagraha not only involves
direct action but also the education of the people involved in it as
participants or recipients. Two hundred years ago, the French
philosopher Rousseau said: "The less government, the better off its
citizenry." Adam Smith in his work 'The Wealth Of Nations' set forth
three legitimate functions of any government: The judiciary;
protection of the country against foreign enemies; and the
infrastructure, such as highways, power, etc. To these
functions can be added the 'safety net'. This being the nature of the
government, there is always need for movements to contain it and
bring it on the right course. People as individuals and groups
would do the needful. What satyagraha of Gandhi aimed at was
to bring the government on the righteous path and at the same time
train the people to be more righteous. He wanted to change the
course of the government and the people in the hope that a day will
come when good people and good government would coincide. Good
people would emerge only if individuals feel themselves bound in a
common bond of life; in the unity of the existence in the long run
and that of humanity in the immediate run. "People are related
to each other in a way that is transcendental in nature and conflict
should be seen as a gift providing a rich opportunity, potentially
to the benefit of all, to realize a higher self. A desired
outcome of conflict, in this line of argument, is nothing short of
the creation on a new social structure and a "higher level of
self-purification in both actors." Gandhi considered
satyagraha as a means to change the nature of the government, and
the satyagrahi as an embodiment of an ideal.
Conclusion
As time flows, generations of men and
women come and go to merge in infinity, leaving behind a legacy of
memories and traditions that shape the future. Each generation
has contributed to the making of the world we live in today.
The twists and turns in human history determine the content and
shape of the world in making. The world we live in today is a world
of violence: violence against nature; violence against fellow human
beings; and violence against oneself. To bring peace in the conflict-torn
world, we have to educate ourselves to be at peace with ourselves.
We must move forward from our animal ancestry, which Gandhi called
brute force. We must learn to respect the dignity of man and
nature and find social and political solutions to conflicts so that
they do not reach the flash point of violence. The time has come to pause and think.
Should we continue to advance materially at the cost of our
survival, use science and technology for our own annihilation, lead
a life style that makes us sick? Should we not use the growing
pool of knowledge that we have accumulated to make this world a
better place to live in? These and many other questions
aroused a response in Gandhi, which he called Truth and Nonviolence.
When translated into action, they together, gave rise to Satyagraha. While violence and nonviolence are
contradictory, they are marked with commonalities in many ways.
Both are conflict resolution vehicles; both need bravery, courage
and will power. Only the goals are different. Violence
aims at subduing or finishing the opponent by brute force;
nonviolence aims at winning over the opponent without hurting him by
soul force. "I have said time and again that Satyagraha
(nonviolent struggle) is not the same as making peace. It is
still a fight that has to be fought bravely as a soldier in war ―just
the weapon is different."
Anasakti Darshan
Vol. 3, No. 2, July-December 2007 |