Mahatma Gandhi

by Dennis Dalton

  Gandhi sought to distinguish satyagraha from other terms like “passive resistance,” “civil disobedience,” and “non-cooperation.” The latter two terms are components of satyagraha but passive resistance is not. As noted in the Introduction, passive resistance, like violent action, is diametrically opposed to satyagraha because passive resistance allows the resister to harbor feelings of hatred, anger, or fear toward the opponent. As such, Gandhi associated passive resistance with internal violence, or what he called duragraha (holding on to one’s selfish, narrow interest rather than to truth and the common interest). Thus, passive resistance or duragraha unleashes forces of prejudice and exclusiveness, rather than attitudes of compassion and inclusiveness. Gandhi was sensitive to the common confusion between satyagraha and passive resistance. He distinguished them at length:

  Satyagraha, then, is literally holding on to Truth and it means, therefore, Truth-force. Truth is soul or spirit. It is, therefore, known as soul-force. It excludes the use of violence because man is not capable of knowing the absolute truth and, therefore, not competent to punish. The word was coined in South Africa to distinguish the nonviolent resistance of the Indians of South Africa from the contemporary “passive resistance” of the suffragettes and others. It is not conceived as a weapon of the weak.

  Passive resistance is used in the orthodox English sense and covers the suffragette movement as well as the resistance of the nonconformists. Passive resistance has been conceived and is regarded as a weapon of the weak. Whilst it avoids violence, being not open to the weak, it does not exclude its use if, in the opinion of a passive resister, the occasion demands it.27

  For the past thirty years I have been preaching and practicing Satyagraha. The principles of Satyagraha, as I know it today, constitute a gradual evolution. Satyagraha differs from Passive Resistance as the North Pole from the South. The latter has been conceived as a weapon of the weak and does not exclude the use of physical force or violence for the purpose of gaining one’s end, whereas the former has been conceived as a weapon of the strongest and excludes the use of violence in any shape or form …. In the application of Satyagraha I discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one’s opponent but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of truth not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but on one’s self.28

  Gandhi’s clear attempt here to distinguish satyagraha from passive resistance signals his effort to distance himself not only from Tilak but also from Aurobindo Ghose. As early as 1907, two years before Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj, Ghose, a leading theorist of the Congress Extremist faction, developed an original ideology for his group that influenced subsequent thinking about the Indian nationalist movement. Ghose called his theory “the doctrine of passive resistance.” He borrowed from the Irish Sinn Fein movement the word “boycott,” and applied it to India, arguing that British rule “can be rendered impossible by successfully organized refusal of assistance.”29 This boycott of the British was urged in sweeping terms: not only of all British goods and services but also of the courts and administration, and especially tax resistance.30 Ghose acknowledged the influence of the American colonists, but contended that passive resistance goes beyond “no representation, no taxation,” to demand “no control, no assistance.”31 It insisted not only on the absolute duty of breaking unjust laws but also on “social excommunication” or ostracism of all Indians who obeyed the government.32

  In his call for ostracism of Indian loyalists, Ghose marked a significant difference in his doctrine of passive resistance from Gandhi’s theory of satyagraha. Ghose stated further the limits of passive resistance in a manner that conclusively separated his concept from Gandhi’s:

  There is a limit however to passive resistance. So long as the action of the executive is peaceful and within the rule of the fight, the passive resister scrupulously maintains his attitude of passivity, but he is not bound to do so a moment beyond. To submit to illegal or violent methods of coercion, to accept outrage and hooliganism as part of the legal procedure of the country is to be guilty of cowardice, and, by dwarfing national manhood, to sin against the divinity within ourselves and the divinity in our motherland. The moment coercion of this kind is attempted, passive resistance ceases and active [violent] resistance becomes a duty. If the instruments of the executive choose to disperse our meeting by breaking the heads of those present, the right of self-defence entitles us not merely to defend our heads but to retaliate on those of the head-breakers…. The new politics, therefore, while it favors passive resistance, does not include meek submission to illegal outrage under the term; it has no intention of overstressing the passivity at the expense of the resistance….

  The new politics is a serious doctrine and not, like the old, a thing of shows and political theatricals; it demands real sufferings from its adherents, imprisonment, worldly ruin, death itself, before it can allow him to assume the rank of a martyr for his country. Passive resistance cannot build up a strong and great nation unless it is masculine, bold and ardent in its spirit and ready at any moment and at the slightest notice to supplement itself with active resistance. We do not want to develop a nation of women who know only how to suffer and not how to strike.

  Moreover, the new politics must recognize the fact that beyond a certain point passive resistance puts a strain on human endurance which our natures cannot endure. This may come in particular instances where an outrage is too great or the stress of tyranny too unendurable for anyone to stand purely on the defensive; to hit back, to assail and crush the assailant, to vindicate one’s manhood becomes an imperious necessity to outraged humanity. Or it may come in the mass when the strain of oppression a whole nation has to meet in its unarmed struggle for liberty, overpasses its powers of endurance. It then becomes the sole choice either to break under the strain and go under or to throw it off with violence.33

  There is no evidence that Gandhi had read Aurobindo Ghose’s writing on passive resistance when he wrote Hind Swaraj seven months later. However, some of Ghose’s arguments were surely known by the Indian extremists in London with whom Gandhi debated issues of the nationalist movement during the summer of 1909. The key argument that he developed emphasized the active power of nonviolence as against Ghose’s characterization of nonviolence as weak when faced with the force of violence.

  Satyagraha vs. Duragraha: Power and Its Abuses

  The idea of nonviolence as superior moral power is the key point that Gandhi sought to demonstrate in theory and practice after 1909, in South Africa and then in India. He countered Ghose’s assertion that “we do not want to develop a nation of women” in gender terms, arguing that it was precisely the “feminine” nature of nonviolence that proved superior to the “brute force” associated with the “male aggression” of the British Raj.34 He identified Ghose’s idea of passive resistance with duragraha and argued an essential difference between duragraha and satyagraha. In 1917, two years before the first non-cooperation campaign began, Gandhi set the theoretical foundations for the coming movement in these terms:

  There are two methods of attaining one’s goal. Satyagraha and duragraha. In our scriptures they have been described, respectively, as divine and devilish modes of action. In satyagraha, there is always unflinching adherence to truth. It is never to be forsaken on any account. Even for the sake of one’s country, it does not permit resort to falsehood. It proceeds on the assumption of the ultimate triumph of truth. A satyagrahi does not abandon his path, even though at times it seems impenetrable and beset with difficulties and dangers,… Even an inveterate enemy he conquers by the force of the soul, which is love. We can cultivate such an attitude even towards the Government and, doing so, we shall be able to appreciate their beneficial activities and, as for their errors, rather than feel bitter on their account, poi
nt them out in love and so get them rectified. Love does not act through fear. Weakness there certainly cannot be. A coward is incapable of bearing love, it is the prerogative of the brave. Looking at everything with love, we shall not regard the Government with suspicion, nor believe that all their actions are inspired with bad motives. And our examination of their actions, being directed by love, will be unerring and is bound, therefore, to carry conviction with them. Love can fight; often, it is obliged to. In the intoxication of power, man fails to see his error. When that happens, a satyagrahi does not sit still. He suffers. He disobeys the ruler’s orders and his laws in a civil manner, and willingly submits to the penalties of such disobedience, for instance, imprisonment and gallows. Thus is the soul disciplined.

  In the event, no bitterness develops between the satyagrahi and those in power; the latter, on the contrary, willingly yield to him. They discover that they cannot command the satyagrahi s obedience. They cannot make him do anything against his will. And this is the consummation of swaraj) because it means complete independence. It need not be assumed that such resistance is possible only against civilized rulers. Even a heart of flint will melt in the fire kindled by the power of the soul. But duragraha is a force with the opposite attributes….

  Swaraj is useless at the sacrifice of truth. Such swaraj will ultimately ruin the people. The man who follows the path of duragraha becomes impatient and wants to kill the so-called enemy. There can be but one result of this. Hatred increases. The defeated party vows vengeance and simply bides its time. The spirit of revenge thus descends from father to son. It is much to be wished that India never gives predominance to this spirit of duragraha…. The duragrahi, like the oilman’s ox, moves in a circle. His movement is only motion but it is not progress. The satyagrahi is ever moving forward. The satyagrahi and the duragrahi are both warriors. The latter, bereft of his arms, acknowledges defeat, the former never. He does not depend upon the perishable body and its weapons, but he fights on with the strength of the unconquerable and immortal atma.35

  This, then, is the major flaw in duragraha or passive resistance: lacking concern for either truth or compassion, seeking its goal by any means necessary. It may for tactical reasons refrain from physical violence but it permits the sin of hubris: violence of the spirit—anger, contempt, malice, or arrogance. Unlike satyagraha it has no creedal commitment to ahimsa or a belief in the integral relationship between means and ends. Gandhi gave further development in 1925 to these principles in his book, Satyagraha in South Africa. There he recalled his reasons for conceiving the term satyagraha as distinct from passive resistance and argued at length the “great and fundamental difference between the two.” He contended that satyagraha possesses a “strength” that passive resistance cannot approach because “there is no scope for love” in the latter: “… not only has hatred no place in satyagraha, but it is a positive breach of its ruling principle.” While passive resistance may use harassment, or feel enmity, “in satyagraha there is not the remotest idea of injuring the opponent. Satyagraha postulates the conquest of the adversary by suffering in one’s own person.”36

  After 1925 and until his death in 1948, Gandhi persistently returned to the basic differences between satyagraha and passive resistance. He did this not only to define more closely his concept of satyagraha but also because he feared that both the Indian National Congress and the Indian people had often misunderstood satyagraha. In July 1947, six months before his death, Gandhi addressed at length “the fundamental difference” between the Congress and himself:

  And what are the differences that matter? If you analyze them you would find only one fundamental difference to which all the others could be traced. Nonviolence is my creed. It never was of the Congress. With the Congress it has always been a policy. A policy takes the shape of a creed whilst it lasts, no longer. The Congress had every right to change it when it found it necessary. A creed can never admit of any change…. Let me make one thing clear. I have frankly and fully admitted that what we practiced during the past thirty years was not nonviolent resistance but passive resistance which only the weak offer because they are unable, not unwilling, to offer armed resistance.37

  In sum, then, Gandhi believed that satyagraha was distinguished by a creedal commitment to nonviolence as opposed to an attitude of passive resistance or duragraha that advocated the use of nonviolent tactics because of an apparent pragmatic advantage. Gandhi came to believe toward the end of his life that India’s civil war was a result of her failure to accept nonviolence as a creed rather than as a mere policy. He held Congress leaders responsible because they often lacked a creedal commitment to nonviolence. He warned that unless the Indian community scrupulously observed the integral relationship between means and ends, satyagraha “would be corrupted into duragraha.”38

  In the last months of his life, after India had achieved independence, Gandhi worried about this corruption of satyagraha and how the coming of independence had seemed to introduce a “virulent poison” into India’s political affairs. This poison induced her leaders to be concerned only with the “question of seizing power” whereby “every opportunity for attaining their object was seized by those who did not stop to consider that means and ends were convertible terms.” “Whatever is done with a selfish motive cannot be called satyagraha,”39

  The theory and practice of satyagraha as advanced by Gandhi represents a radically different process from duragraha. The former is not based on a zero-sum calculation of how much loss can be inflicted on the opponent. There is instead a scrupulous concern for the humanity of the adversary and its chief purpose is to elevate the conflict to a point where resolution will elicit the best from all parties and not reduce anyone to disgrace or humiliation. In an analysis of the difference between satyagraha and duragraha, Joan Bondurant writes: “Duragraha in its most common forms amounts to the intensification of pressure or the shifting of points of attack until a settlement is reached through capitulation or compromise …. Duragraha seeks concessions; Satyagraha sets out to develop alternatives which will satisfy antagonists on all sides.”40

  Bondurant emphasizes a key feature of satyagraha as against duragraha which distinguishes it: the attempt of the satyagrahi to develop a mutual psychologically supportive interaction through which real conflict resolution might be achieved. Bondurant observes: “Over against the harassment and distress commonly effected in Duragraha is set the fundamentally supportive nature of Satyagraha. As the Satyagrahi moves to bring about change in the situation through persuading his opponent to modify or alter the position under attack, he seeks to strengthen interpersonal relationships and interpersonal satisfactions through acts of support and service to the opponent.”41

  The theory of satyagraha, therefore, rests fundamentally on a certain view about “the capacity of man to change” by effecting a “context of reassurance” rather than of hostility, of mutual support rather than of alienation and anger. The ultimate goal is not to attain a decisive triumph, but “to achieve the transformation of relationships” that will genuinely resolve the conflict rather than simply postpone it to a later time.42

  While the methods of both duragraha and satyagraha aim at the reconciliation of differences, the first approaches the conflict with no particular concern for inquiring into the truth of the issues, but only with imposing a solution short of violence. Satyagraha, conversely, presents itself as a way of bringing both parties to a realization of a common truth, and believes that political issues or positions must be relegated to this primary concern for arriving at the truth. Gandhi believed that the approach used by the satyagrahi must not assert the possession of an absolute or final truth, but rather willingly concede that he has not yet found it, for this will leave the whole process of conflict resolution open to inquiry. “I am but a seeker after truth,” Gandhi liked to say. “I claim to be making a ceaseless effort to find it. But I admit I have not yet found it. To find truth completely is to realize one’s self and one’s dest
iny, that is, to become perfect. I am painfully conscious of my imperfections.”43

  A concept foreign to the theory of duragraha but intrinsic in the method of satyagraha is the relationship of the personal to the political, or of the individual’s self-realization to the political program of change. The emphasis in satyagraha on the importance of swaraj or individual self-awareness means that in satyagraha there must be a strengthening of the individual’s self-esteem and sense of moral worth. There is an individual moral energy directed at the problem of conflict that allows the process to be humanizing rather than dehumanizing. Gandhi recognized this relationship between satyagraha and swaraj when he wrote that the power of any political advance “lies in us. If we reform ourselves, the rulers will automatically do so.”44

  The point of achieving individual self-realization as a vital component of the political method of satyagraha is related to Gandhi’s vision of the ultimate source of conflict resolution. He contended that the seeming diversity of individual interests could be ultimately reconciled in terms of a higher unity or consensus. This unity was expressed in a religious ethic of spiritual oneness. Raghavan Iyer has written that “Gandhi held to the Buddhist and Jain view that all sins are modifications of himsa, that the basic sin, the only sin in the ultimate analysis, is the sin of separateness.”45 Satyagraha, in contrast to duragraha, sought to invoke the universal element of love or truth within every individual. It was an elevating and creative force that could not effectively work in the absence of a creedal, life encompassing commitment. The concluding passage of Gandhi h Autobiography linked religion to politics in a way that also explains the relationship between swaraj and satyagraha: