Aldo Capitini - Italian GandhiA life devoted to Non-Violence |
- Ram Ponnu*"Non-violence is opening to the existence, freedom and development of every being." 
Aldo Capitini Aldo Capitini, a philosopher, poet, political activist, antifascist and educator was one of the first Italians to take up and develop Mahatma Gandhi's theories of Non-violence and was known as the Italian Gandhi. He was probably the most influential advocate of Non-violence in 20th century Italy. He interpreted Non-violence as a new perspective, starting from the person as an open centre able to make actions of adjunction in society. The adoption of Non-violence by religions create what Capitini called an "open religion", which is a unity of thought and action that prepares openness in individuals. It entails the interpretation of religion as persuaded action that is based on faith (a rejection of necessity and cruelty), as well as compresence (a connection with everybody via acts of value).1 Early LifeAldo Capitini was born as the second son in modest circumstances in Perugia on 23rd December 1899. His mother was a tailor, and his father the custodian of the old tower of the Municipality. From an early age, Aldo Capitini became interested in philosophy and literature. From 1918–1919 he abandoned modernism and nationalism for humanitarian, pacifist and socialist causes. After studying at the technical school and as a bookkeeper, between 19 and 21 years old, he read classic Latin and Greek literature, self-studying even for a length of twelve hours a day. Thus he started uninterrupted philosophical work. Capitini was physically fragile and fell ill, discovering solidarity with those who suffered "the last". A long illness in his youth led to his religious conversion and the radical change of his political views. He understood the limitations of his activist culture in the fibres of his being. It gave paramount value to action, to violence, and enjoyment, and he felt a deep interest in, and solidarity with, the problems of those who suffer those who cannot act, and those who are overwhelmed. He would need to envisage a reality where suffering people were perfectly well, and not thrown on the edge of civilization waiting for death and nothingness. This was how his religious search started.2 In 1919, as a self-made scholar, he acquired the Technical Institute license. In 1924, he enrolled in the famous Higher Normal School of Pisa and completed his Master Degree in Philosophy in 1928. Through philosophy, he was best able to express his opposition to fascism and the traditional Church. He judged it as a "goods exchange", as it aimed at obtaining soft regard from the Pope Pio XII the ecclesiastics towards the fascists. In one of his books, he affirmed that “the one thing we own to the fascist regime is that it has cleared once and for all that religion is distinct from the institution". His encounter with Gandhi's Non-violence in the late 1920s defined his style and methods of action. He became a follower of Gandhi's Non-violence and a vegetarian. In those years the Non-violence choice took shape for Capitini as a natural reaction to the fascist regime's violence, following his reading of Gandhi's autobiography, My Experiments with Truth published in 1929 in Italy Capitini learned of the existence of the "Mahatma" and his message of Non-violence when Italy reached its darkest time of oppression and dictatorship. He feels how it is essential to reply to that violence with strong and effective Non-violence. In 1930, he began working as a Secretary at the Higher Normal School in Pisa. He became close to antifascist students as a professor being a conscientious objector. In 1932 Giovanni Gentile asked Capitini to join the Fascist Party. Being inspired by Gandhi, Capitini refused. So, he had summarily dismissed from his post. His action was considered by him and his friends exactly a nonviolent one. It marks the birth of active Non-violence in Europe. 3 He then applied himself to nonviolent non-cooperation with an unjust and authoritarian power. To survive, he returned to his family in Perugia, where he undertook private lessons until the end of World War II in 1945. Capitini adopted the propagation of anti-fascism as an essential personal commitment from 1933 to 1943. To achieve this, he met with groups of young people, especially in central Italy. It had facilitated by the publication of three books on philosophy and religion. The books were able to pass Fascist censorship because of the ambiguity of their titles, which addressed religious themes. Their publication was supported by the liberal philosopher Benedetto Croce4, who, even though in disagreement with the Fascist regime, enjoyed a certain degree of freedom because of his international reputation. Capitini was imprisoned twice for five months for his antifascist activities from 1942 to 1943.5 Religious MovementIn August 1943, the Action Party was founded, with leaders coming straight from the liberal socialist movement. Capitini refused to adhere to any political party. In his view, "the regeneration should go beyond politics, and the contemporary crisis reflects politics and economics absolutism".6 Due to his refusing to place himself within a political party, Capitini was left out from the National Liberalization Committee and the Constituting Committee. However, his work in the areas of culture, politics, philosophy, religion, and moral opposition to the fascist party had deeply marked the Italian Republic's birth. From the end of World War II, he promoted Social Guidance Centres, the Movement of Religion, the Italian Vegetarian Society, and the Association for the Protection and Development of Public Schools. Additionally, he became the most important exponent of Non-violence in Italy. In particular, he organized the creation of associations, groups, magazines, national events, public meetings, seminars, and conferences. In 1946, he arranged the first meeting on religious problems at that time. Representatives of different currents of religious, political, social, religious scholars, and free researchers took an active part in them. However, his work in the areas of culture, politics, philosophy, religion, and moral opposition to the fascist party had deeply marked the Italian Republic's birth.7 Social Orientation CentresIn 1944 Capitini tried an experiment of direct and localized democracy by opening the first Social Orientation Centre (COS) in Perugia. This project was a space open to its citizens' free participation, a "nonviolent, no-lies area, based on reasoning", according to Capitini's definition. At the COS's meetings, the members freely discussed issues concerning the management of government resources. Capitini invited the local administrators to take part in the discussionsto report over their work and to absorb the committees' propositions, in view to make "all administrators and all accountable".8 From Perugia, the COSs spread out to other Italian towns, such as Ferara, Florence, Bologna, Lucca, Arezzo, Ancona, Assisi, Gubbio, Foligno, Teramo, Naples and many others. The COSs spreading met an indifferent left-wing and an openly hostile Cristian Democratic Party, which opposed the national affirmation of self-government and localized ruling power. However, they had been successfully tested with the COSs. After the World War, Capitini became governor at the Overseas University of Perugia, a post which he will have to resign from under pressure from the local Catholic Church. He then went to Pisa, where he taught moral philosophy at Study's University. With his teaching, political and pedagogic activities, Capitini carried on his spiritual and religious research; he launched "Religion's Movement" together with Ferdinando Tartaglia, a former catholic priest from Florence.9 During the years 1946 to 1948 Religion's Movement organized quarterly meetings, which lead to the "first congress for religious reform" in Rome, from 13th to 15th October 1948. In 1948, a young Pietro Pinna, after having listened to Capitini's talking in Ferrara at a Religion's Movement meeting, chose to object to the military service. He was the first to do so after the war. Pinna was tried by the military tribunal in Turin, on the 30th August 1949, and Aldo Capitini's testimony in his favour didn't yield any results. A few times, Pinna was tried, convicted, and imprisoned. Eventually, he was released, allegedly suffering from a "cardiac neurosis" after that, Pinna became a faithful partner of Capitini's. Following Pinna's imprisonment, Capitini promoted several campaigns to gain accreditation for objecting to the compulsory military service.10 The first national meeting was held in Rome in 1950. Centre for Non-violenceIn 1952, on the fourth anniversary of Gandhi's assassination, Capitini organized an international meeting and founded the first Centre for Non-violence. During the same year, Capitini also set up a Centre for Religious Orientation (COR), in Perugia, helped by Emma Thomas (an eighty-year-old English Quacker). COR is an open space, where people's religious feelings and beliefs can be expressed, especially those that don't find their place in the Catholicism of before the reform. COR aims to enable knowledge about non-catholic religions and to encourage Catholics to develop a critic and committed view of religious issues. Open ReligionThe local Church forbade people's attendance of the COR, and in 1955 the newly published Open Religion, by Capitini, made it straight for the "Index of the forbidden books". Despite the opposition of the ecclesiastics, Capitini was able to cultivate efficient working relationships with some Catholics such as Don Lorenzo Milani and Don Primo Mazzolari. The polemic between Capitini and the Catholic Church went on after the Concilio Vaticano II when the book Religious Strictness for the Council was published.11 Walk for Peace and BrotherhoodAldo Capitini' became a professor of pedagogy at the University of Cagliari in 1956. In 1965 he was granted transfer to the University of Perugia with the same chair. On Sunday 24th September 1961, Capitini organized a 24 km Walk for Peace and brotherhood of all people.12 It was a nonviolent demonstration that flowed down the streets of Perugia, towards Assisi. The event was a successful one and attended by thousands of people. This kind of protest still takes place once in two years, the most recent in 2011, 50 years after the first one. Capitini writes about the manifestation in his book Opposition and Freedom: 'one of the Walk's great statements is that it shows that pacifism and Non-violence aren't passive acceptance of existing sufferings, but are active, following their own ways, and don't rest in promoting solidarity, in non-collaborating, in protesting, in accusing'. Capitini's Non-violenceIn the history of Non-violence in Italy, Capitini was the main protagonist, and defined as 'the Italian Gandhi'. He approached Non-violence in the late twenties. Gandhi's autobiography and his visit to Europe, including Italy in December 1931 had an impact on him. First of all, through the idea of nonviolent non-cooperation, he found the strength to refuse the card for entry to the fascist party, losing his job at the University. Capitini drew many lessons from Gandhian philosophy and developed an overarching perspective where Non-violence became the source of inspiration for many of his activities and achievements. To Capitini, ‘Non-violence is a choice of a way of thinking and acting which is not oppression or destruction of any living being, especially human beings’. The concept of persuasion and openness also inspired his work. For Capitini, the term persuasion, in the sense of complete conviction, indicated faith, and the deep belief in specific values and commitments. He believed that individual acts, according to the criteria of its profound consciousness, can create value and find something that is worth more than material existence and traditional spirituality. The opening is the opposite of the conservative and authoritarian vision of fascism; it is the elevation of the soul toward God. For Capitini, individuals have to open to 'all human beings, to all people, even to things' In some way, he wished that society, the Church and, traditions were opened up to a dimension of freedom and a gift to all.13 Altieri writes: "Non-violence seems the highest spiritual teaching, a religious idea of absolute purity, to love for its own sake, the only power able to defeat fascism. If Mussolini to assert himself resorted to sinister means – deceit, lies, murder – Capitini counterposes the highest values of truth, non-mendacity, nonkilling".14 Capitini was opposed and condemned by the traditional Catholic Church. He was regarded as a utopian dreamer for his idea of Non-violence and for his insight to tackle conflicts through Non-violence. Of him Bobbio said, '" that was a Gandhian in the land of Machiavelli, a religious heretic in the land of the Counter-Reformation (and the associated indifference), a pacifist, spiritual, and moreover, in a country where a tradition of thought and action pacifist has never existed, "even to the point that the " great slaughter "of first Italy in World War II caused "feelings of nonviolent tremors' comparable to occurring in the European context'. In 1964 he founded the magazine Nonviolent Action, which became the official organ of the Nonviolent Movement. At the 12th Congress of War Resisters' International in Rome in 1966, Capitini gave a paper on International Non-violence and permanent revolution. He tried to prove that a nonviolent revolution is much more effective and lasting, partly because it avoids the risks and distortions of the authoritarian practices related to violence. In 1967 Capitini published The Non-violence Techniques, a book in which Gandhi's Non-violence proposition, enriched with Capitini's original contributions, officially enters our Country's culture.15 The Power of AllDuring his last years, Capitini founded a monthly magazine of national circulation, entitled The Power of All based on citizen participation in power and the means and methods available to citizens for the control of institutions from below. In The Power of All which he developed the principles of "omnicracy", the political management spread and decentred, which Capitini counter matched to the traditional political parties. The magazine was based on citizens’ participation in power and the means and methods available to citizens for the control of institutions from below.16 During these years Capitini founded the "Nonviolent movement for Peace", which still operates today, and he was the editor for the movement's magazine "Nonviolent Action", which is even now published in Verona. Italian Vegetarian AssociationSince the beginning of the 19th century, vegetarianism was practised in Italy by a lot of people for ethical and health reasons. Aldo Capitini believed that Non-violence should embrace all creation and consequently became a vegetarian. During the time spent in Pisa, Capitini became vegetarian, following his choice of not killing, so each meal he consumed at Normale's canteen became a quiet yet efficient conference. In September 1952 Capitini organized a conference over "Non-violence applied to the animals and plants." Under the impulse of Aldo Capitini, teacher of Moral Philosophy at the University of Perugia, he also founded the "Italian Vegetarian Society. Moving from the belief that human nourishment cannot be based on the death of other living beings, Aldo Capitini started to reflect upon vegetarianism as a choice consequential to his nonviolent engagement. In 1963 Aldo Capitini wrote: "Yet there are isolated persons and groups, for zoophilia or ideology (Gandhian and nonviolent, theosophic, pithagoric, naturistic, etc.). We're not able yet to give a precise picture. To get to this, to spread the ideal and the good practice of vegetarianism, to strengthen the relationship between vegetarians and beginners, in 1952 we started, also under the impulse of Emma Thomas, the Italian Vegetarian Society, constituted in September in Perugia, at the end of a congress held by the Center for Non-violence and dedicated to the study and practice of Non-violence towards the animal and vegetable world. The secretary of the London based International Vegetarian Union was present and greeted the Italian group in a great international family."17 After the death of Capitini, in 1968, the Italian Vegetarian Society moved its headquarters from Perugia to Milan, and in 1970.Ferdinando Delor changed its name in Italian Vegetarian Association, continuing on the ideal line traced by Capitini. Together with some collaborators, he constituted a more widespread organization. He started the quarterly publication of The Vegetarian Idea, and he assiduously attended international meetings popularising articles and volumes about vegetarianism as an ethical choice, about food properties and scientific considerations. Since then, the Vegetarian Association has had a continuous evolution, getting in every respect in the European and worldwide vegetarian movement.18 DeathOn the 19th October 1968, Aldo Capitini died, following an operation that burned his last energy. On the 21st October Pietro Nenni, socialist leader wrote in his diary about Capitini: An exceptional researcher. Forerunner of Non-violence, he was available for matters that concerned freedom and Justice Pietro Longo tells me that in Perugia he was isolated and thought of as an eccentric. There is always a bit of eccentricity in going against the flow, and Aldo Capitini went against the flow during the time of fascism and again after it. Maybe a lot for a single human life, but beautiful". A few days before his death in 1968 he wrote: "… Today's utopia can be tomorrow's reality".19 He recommended a green and nonviolent society with a rejection of consumerism. He admired the Community of the Ark which was set up by Lanza del Vasto in France after he met Gandhi in India.20 To conclude, the most striking demonstration of the validity of his significant commitment is demonstrated by the legacy he left. The Non-violent Movement is still in existence, the Nonviolent Action magazine and his meaningful insights are still valid today, being able to draw the attention of scholars and intellectuals who have the expertise to assess Capitini's legacy thoroughly. Also, there has been widespread of Non-violence and its methods. In Italy, the first degree-oriented peace research was established by the University of Pisa and Florence in the academic year 2001-2002. On the other hand, it must be said that Italian civil society still has to acknowledge the idea of Non-violence as an operational tool for conflict transformation, to become an overwhelming majority, and the route of religious change remains very long and challenging. On the whole, Capitini has made a significant, and a real contribution to the development of Non-violence, starting from its condition of 'free religious' and this commitment has not disappeared.21 As Bobbio says, he was a Gandhian in the land of Machiavelli, a religious heretic in the land of the Counter-Reformation (and the associated indifference), a pacifist, religious, and moreover, in a country where a tradition of thought and action pacifist has never existed, even to the point that the great slaughter of first Italy in World War II caused “feelings of nonviolent tremors” comparable to occurring in the European context. References
* Principal (Retd.), Kamarajar Govts. Arts College, Surandai, Tirunelveli Dist., Tamil Nadu. Email: eraponnu@gmail.com |