This idea of “inward freedom” associates swaraj with an internal journey or search for self-knowledge that liberates one from the sort of fear and insecurity that fuels both a desire to dominate or to be dominated. It was the willingness of Indians to cooperate with the British Raj out of fear that troubled Gandhi. The fruit of “internal freedom” is a personal liberation from fear. Raghavan Iyer captures the essence of swaraj in his trenchant analysis of the idea when he says that it involves “a demanding and continuous process of self-cultivation.”19
This relates to Gandhi’s own evolution as a leader and the profound changes of ideas and identity he experienced. “The pilgrimage to Swaraj” he said, “is a painful climb,”20 and his own life can be viewed as an arduous journey. As such it may be compared with others who have suffered from racism and whose response might be seen as a personal struggle for freedom from fear and domination. The last chapter of this book compares Gandhi with Malcolm X. It examines the latter’s autobiography as comparable to Gandhi’s because both suggest a pilgrimage to self-realization. In this sense, Malcolm X personifies a quest for “inward freedom” that is at the heart of swaraj.21
The last point that Gandhi developed in his theory of swaraj was his insistence that social reforms were essential for India’s freedom. When he asserted that “the movement for Swaraj is a movement for self-purification,”22 he meant that individuals must take responsibility for a change of attitude to overcome three major problems in Indian society: Hindu-Muslim religious conflict, the evils of caste and untouchability, and economic inequality. Each of these areas of social corruption was an obstacle to swaraj and must be tackled coterminously with the fight for political independence.23 “The sooner it is recognized” he said, “that many of our social evils impede our march towards Swaraj, the greater will be our progress towards our cherished goal. To postpone social reform till after the attainment of Swaraj is not to know the meaning of Swaraj”24
In relation to Gandhi’s ideas about social reform, the analysis in this book focuses on the problems of caste and untouchability (chapter 2) and Hindu-Muslim conflict (chapter 5). His commitment to attaining social equality is evident in his personal example: he lived a life of simplicity. When he claimed that “The Swaraj of my dream is the poor man’s Swaraj” and stressed his own identification with the poor, his word was accepted as authentic because of his consistency of thought and deed. Moreover, he built a movement that was social and not just political, around the need for self-sacrifice among its leaders: “Without a large, very large, army of self-sacrificing and determined workers, real progress of the masses, I hold to be an impossibility. And without that progress, there is no such thing as Swaraj. Progress towards Swaraj will be in exact proportion to the increase in the number of workers who will dare to sacrifice their all for the cause of the poor.” 25 This economic aspect of swaraj was expressed in his idea of sarvodaya or “welfare of all,” which asserted that “Economic equality is the master-key to non-violent independence.”26
Satyagraha as a Form of Power
William Shirer went to India in 1930 as an American journalist to report on what he then saw as Gandhi’s “peculiar revolution.” Fifty years later he wrote a remarkable memoir about that visit. He described the civil disobedience campaign of that year in compelling terms and then concluded that satyagraha was Gandhi’s “supreme achievement,” which “taught us all that there was a greater power in life than force, which seemed to have ruled the planet since men first sprouted on it. That power lay in the spirit, in Truth and Love, in non-violent action.”27 Whether or not Gandhi in fact “taught us all” this lesson, the phenomenon of the power of satyagraha is there for all to know. And whether or not one accepts that this power derived from “Truth and love,” the Indian independence movement remains one of the largest mobilizations of mass energy in history; it did excercise a form of power dramatically different from that of governments or armies or violent revolutions. This was because its leadership conceived of how to convert the power of nonviolence into political action.
Gandhi defined satyagraha as the power “born of Truth and Love or non-violence.”28 As early as 1909, he presented it as his method for attaining swaraj. He believed, on the basis of his use of civil disobedience in South Africa from 1906 to 1914, that the power of nonviolent action identified with satyagraha was uniquely suited for achieving the “inward” as well as the “outward” freedom of swaraj. The word satyagraha was coined by Gandhi by joining the Sanskrit satya (truth) with agraha (holding firmly)29 and the historical context of this derivation will be traced in the next chapter. He drew a sharp distinction between satyagraha and “passive resistance” because the latter allowed for “internal violence,” the harboring of enmity and anger among resisters even when they commit no physical violence. Gandhi asserted that unlike passive resistance, “Satyagraha is gentle, it never wounds. It must not be the result of anger or malice.”30
Much depends on the intent or motive of the satyagrahi (practitioner of satyagraha). Wrong motives occur when the intent is only to attain victory or satisfaction of a selfish interest. A satyagrahi concentrates on the common interest and strives not for retribution but to transform a conflict situation so that warring parties can come out of a confrontation convinced that it was in their mutual interest to resolve it. This was not unlike the scene in 1947 when without mutual recrimination the British left India after centuries of colonization. The way that the conflict was conducted, evidenced in the salt satyagraha examined in chapter 4, served to produce this result at the time of India’s independence. Another example of the dynamics of satyagraha was the Calcutta fast, the focus of chapter 5. Here Gandhi’s use of the fast transformed a Hindu-Muslim conflict so that the civil strife could end with a renewed commitment to peace.
Gandhi’s conceptions of swaraj and satyagraha were both related to the emphasis that he placed on employing the right means to attain an end. This was another of the key ideas that he had expressed in Hind Swaraj. He argued there that: “the belief that there is no connection between the means and the end is a great mistake. Through that mistake even men who have been considered religious have committed grievous crimes…. The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree; and there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree…. We reap exactly as we sow.”31
Thus Gandhi can say that “Means and ends are convertible terms in my philosophy of life.”32 When it was rumored in late 1924 that he would be invited by the Soviet government to visit the USSR, he replied that he had been courted by Communists before, and reflected unfavorably on the Russian revolution:
I do not believe in short-violent-cuts to success. Those Bolshevik friends who are bestowing their attention on me should realize that however much I may sympathize with and admire worthy motives, I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes. There is, therefore, really no meeting ground between the school of violence and myself.33
Whenever he considered the kind of revolution that India needed, he stressed this emphasis on means as the basis of swaraj and satyagraha. As he planned the mass civil disobedience campaign that would be called the salt satyagraha, he went before the Indian people to argue his case in these terms:
No one will be able to stand in our way when we have developed the strength to win swaraj. Everyone’s freedom is within his grasp. There are two alternatives before us. The one is that of violence, the other of nonviolence; the one of physical strength, the other of soul-force; the one of hatred, the other love…If we want swaraj, we shall have to strive hard and follow one of these two courses. As they are incompatible with each other, the fruit, the swaraj that would be secured by following the one would necessarily be different from that which would be secured by following the other…. We reap as we sow.34
When Gandhi assumed leadership of the nationalist movement in 1919 he described satyagraha in terms of a me
taphor that likened it to “a banyan tree with innumerable branches.” The trunk of the tree, he said, consisted not only of nonviolence (ahimsa) but also of truth (satya).35 So the last component of satyagraha to be introduced here is Gandhi’s concept of truth. He begins with a warning to each of us: we must continually remind ourselves of our fallibility by recognizing our limitations. Human understanding is always imperfect and thus incapable of possessing absolute truth.36 We may believe in truth or in God, or, as Gandhi did, in Truth as God. But we cannot possess complete knowledge of either and “the claim to infallibility would always be a most dangerous claim to make.”37
Nonviolence therefore becomes imperative in any human conflict because there are inevitably partial and contending perceptions of truth. Leaders of nations are notorious for their claims to carry truth as they lead their people into battle. Gandhi offered his method to the world as a corrective: “Satyagraha … excludes the use of violence because man is not capable of knowing the absolute truth and, therefore, not competent to punish.”38 When Gandhi was questioned in 1920 by a Government tribunal about the volatile nature of civil disobedience, a British official asked: “However honestly a man may strive in his search for truth his notions of truth will be different” and would this not produce violent disorder? Gandhi replied that was precisely the reason why “non-violence was the necessary corollary,” because without this India could not gain swaraj.39 This answer hardly satisfied the British government in 1920. But it did underscore the integral relationship that Gandhi drew between truth and nonviolence. These remained the two overriding values that directed his quest for personal and political liberation. He usually spoke of truth in terms of a search: “Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth.”40 The essence of Gandhi’s optimism about each person’s pursuit of truth or of self-realization is here; equally significant is how nonviolence may be interpreted as both a guiding value and a warning, that we have no right to violate others.
When Gandhi compared satyagraha to “a banyan tree with innumerable branches,” he extended the metaphor to include civil disobedience as one main branch; others were fasting for social reform or work in the villages to achieve economic change. In his metaphor, Gandhi saw satyagraha as an inclusive concept that embraced all forms of nonviolent action: social as well as political campaigns, the civil disobedience of the salt march or the fast for Hindu-Muslim harmony. Most of this book analyzes the dynamics of satyagraha and swaraj in specific historical contexts, as expressions of Gandhi’s ideas of freedom and power in action. The next chapter concerns the initial development and application of these ideas as they emerged from Gandhi’s early political leadership in South Africa.
• CHAPTER ONE
Satyagraha Meets Swaraj: The Development of Gandhi’s Ideas, 1896–1917
None of us knew what name to give to our movement. I then used the term “passive resistance” in describing it: I did not quite understand the implications of ‘passive resistance’ as I called it—I only knew that some new principle had come into being. As the struggle advanced, the phrase “passive resistance” gave rise to confusion … I thus began to call the Indian movement “Satyagraha,” that is to say the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence.
—Gandhi, recalling events of
1906–1907 in South Africa1
Origins of Satyagraha in South Africa
At least as early as 1896, one may see in Gandhi’s pamphlet, “Grievances of British Indians in South Africa,” the embryo of the method he later called satyagraha: “Our method in South Africa is to conquer this hatred by love…. We do not attempt to have individuals punished but, as a rule, patiently suffer wrongs at their hands.”2 But the teaching of the past which he invoked at this time is the “precept of the Prophet of Nazareth, ‘resist not evil’;”3 and the example of the present which he repeatedly praises is that of the British suffragettes.4 During this initial period of protest his weekly issues of Indian Opinion recount and extol the lives of Mazzini, Lincoln, Washington, and Lord Nelson as supreme examples of selfless sacrifice in service of their countries.5 When he criticized discriminatory government legislation, his worst charge was that the spirit of the laws seemed “un-British.” Until 1906 the striking feature of his ideology is not merely his reliance upon Western examples and values but his dependence on them to the exclusion of anything Indian. The Mahatma, then, began his public career as a loyalist, totally committed to the values and institutions of the British empire.
But Gandhi is not the only example of a political leader who was radicalized in response to unyielding racist authority. Malcolm X was another and the specific reasons for their respective life changes will be compared in chapter 6. In Gandhi’s case the dramatic shift from emulation to rejection of the oppressor came in late 1906, at age thirty-seven, when, as a lawyer trained in London to respect the imperial system, he suddenly realized the futility of working within it. It was then that the first meeting of swaraj and satyagraha occurred and the long relationship began. A small minority of fewer than 100,000 Indians in South Africa said goodbye to conventional political protest and embraced civil disobedience.
On August 22, 1906, the Transvaal Government Gazette published the Draft Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance. This gave notice of new legislation: all Indians, Arabs, and Turks were required to register with the government. Fingerprints and identification marks on the person’s body were to be recorded in order to obtain a certificate of registration. A fine of 100 pounds or three months’ imprisonment could be imposed on those failing to register before a given date. Among the Indians, the ordinance became known as the “Black Act.” Gandhi complained that the new law was not only discriminatory but also profoundly humiliating because Indians were treated as common criminals. After preparing the community through the press, Gandhi called a mass meeting of approximately 3,000 Transvaal Indians on September 11. The famous fourth resolution, prepared by Gandhi, was passed by the meeting. It called for resistance to the Registration Act through civil disobedience, including imprisonment if necessary. Gandhi made clear in moving the resolution that it was different than any passed by the Indians before: “It is a very grave resolution that we are making, as our existence in South Africa depends upon our fully observing it.” He insisted that the action was so serious that it must be sealed by each individual with an oath before God, an unprecedented demand. “If having taken such an oath we violate our pledge we are guilty before God and man.”6
Later Gandhi would refer to the events surrounding this meeting as the “advent of satyagraha.” Elements appear here for the first time that became classic components of the method. First there is the causa sine que non, Gandhi’s perception of an injustice as humiliating, depriving Indians of their dignity and self-respect. This is associated with fear and loss of individual autonomy. The remedy of achieving swaraj through satyagraha was conceived in 1906 and its essential ingredients are remarkably clear: the conviction that through a political movement each individual might achieve liberation from fear with a new sense of self-esteem and personal strength, autonomy, what is today called “empowerment.”
The new method of action conceived at that September 11 meeting was initially described as “passive resistance.” Within a year, Gandhi found that term objectionable. In a letter to the editor of the Rand’ Daily Mail dated July, 1907, Gandhi wrote: “It may appear ungrateful to have to criticize your moderate and well-meant leaderette on the so-called ‘passive resistance’ to the Asiatic Registration Act. I call the passive resistance to be offered by the Indian community ‘so-called,’ because, in my opinion, it is really not resistance but a policy of communal suffering.”7
By this time, Gandhi had already begun to dislike the term “passive resistance,” since it was a foreign one that implied principles he could not wholly accept. “When in a meeting of Eur
opeans,” he records in Autobiography, “I found that the term ‘passive resistance’ was too narrowly construed, that it was supposed to be a weapon of the weak, that it could be characterized by hatred, and that it could finally manifest itself as violence, I had to demur to all these statements and explain the real nature of the Indian movement.”8 His ideal was active nonviolent resistance to injustice. Hatred and violence were incompatible with the method that he had conceived because his theory rested squarely on the principle of ahimsa, which he variously translated as “nonviolence,” “love,” and “charity.” This idea of ahimsa he had taken from the Indian tradition, and particularly the Jain religion where it meant a strict observance of nonviolence.9 Gandhi fused his own interpretation of this belief with ideas he found in Tolstoy and the Sermon on the Mount; the result was a principle that evoked rich religious symbolism and contributed to a dynamic method of action unique in Indian history.
Any doubts concerning Gandhi’s conscious attempt to establish continuity with the Indian tradition in his search for a method of action may be dispelled by a look at the way in which he coined the term satyagraha, a word which had not heretofore existed.
To respect our own language, speak it well and use in it as few foreign words as possible…this is also a part of patriotism. We have been using some English terms just as they are, since we cannot find exact Gujarati equivalents for them. Some of these terms are given below, which we place before our readers…. The following are the terms in question: Passive Resistance; Passive Resister; Cartoon; Civil Disobedience …. It should be noted that we do not want translations of these English terms, but terms with equivalent connotations.10
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