Non-Violent Resistance

by Mahatma K Gandhi

  "But the danger is still greater. The taste of blood viz. breaking laws, has been so attractive that one finds today this blessed Satyagraha on the lips of every one. As soon as you differ anywhere, be it in a school, in a house, in a group, in a circle of friends, in business, in an office, you find immediately threat of Satyagraha pointed out to you at every time. Between employer and employee, landlord and tenant, parents and children, teachers and pupils, brothers and friends, everywhere this pointed bayonet of Satyagraha seems to be ready for use. To break laws and rules of society or of the State seems to be so easy and handy. If a college professor suggests discipline, if a municipal officer recommends extra tax, if children are requested not to make noise, if hawkers are told to remove obstructions on roads, if changes or transfers are being arranged, if anything is done which does not suit anybody else, there is this dagger of Satyagraha pointed at you. Discrimination where to use and how to use seems to have been entirely lost in the whole nation, and this is a danger-signal for any nation or country. It is exactly like an aeroplane, which is being used generally to fly from one country to another speedily and is also used for throwing bombs. It is exactly like matches, which give light, and are also used for burning a house. One can clearly see this danger-signal in the Satyagraha weapon also. Satyagraha can be used to advantage but it can also be misused to entire destruction. I feel that unless those who proclaim Satyagraha as the best weapon to the wide world, did feel their responsibility in this matter, they would soon find the tables turned not only against themselves but on the whole country. If I can humbly suggest, I feel that some of the rigidly trained leaders, free from hatred, should now do nothing else, but pass some years of their lives in each province and each city and village to make people understand what real Satyagraha or true non-violence means, how it can be brought into operation and when it ought to be brought into operation. I would humbly suggest a regular school of non-violence in every province, where high-minded souls who thoroughly understand this subject scientifically and religiously ought to be teachers to the students of politics who in return should be kept as all-time workers to go round the country, give this message and teach what it is in reality. This can be the only safeguard for saving the country in my opinion."

  Jamshed Mehta, the Lord Mayor of Karachi, is a patriot of the purest type. But for his identification with the Congress to the extent he was capable of and but for his having placed at the disposal of the Reception Committee all the resources of his Municipality, the wonderful Congress city would not have been brought into being in the incredibly short space of twenty-five days. His sympathy for the Satyagrahis when the campaign was going on is well known. Any criticism from one like him must, therefore, arrest attention. The quotation given above is an extract from Sjt. Jamshed Mehta's article in a Karachi Anglo-Gujarati weekly called Parsi Sansar and Lokasevak. The criticism I have copied follows a glowing tribute paid by him to the Satyagrahis who bore sufferings without retaliation. But we have no reason to be puffed up with pride over certificates of merit. In so far as we observed non-violence we only did our duty.

  It is then the warning of this true friend of humanity and his country that we must treasure and profit by. What he has said of Karachi is likely to be true more or less of other places.

  Non-violence to be a potent force must begin with the mind. Non-violence of the mere body without the co-operation of the mind is non-violence of the weak or the cowardly and has therefore no potency. It is, as Jamshedji says truly, a degrading performance. If we bear malice and hatred in our bosoms and pretend not to retaliate, it must recoil upon us and lead to our destruction. For abstention from mere bodily non-violence, i.e., not to be injurious, it is at least necessary not to entertain hatred if we cannot generate active love. All the songs and speeches betokening hatred must be taboo.

  It is equally true to say that indiscriminate resistance to authority must lead to lawlessness, unbridled licence and consequent self-destruction.

  If Jamshedji's criticism was not more than balanced by his appreciation, that is to say, if the sum total of real non-violence had not overbalanced the unreal, India would not have gone forward as it has done. But better even than the Karachi Lord Mayor's appreciation is the undoubted fact that the villagers have instinctively observed nonviolence in a manner never before thought of. It is their non-violence that has conduced to the growth of national consciousness.

  The mysterious effect of non-violence is not to be measured by its visible effect. But we dare not rest content so long as the poison of hatred is allowed to permeate society. This struggle is a stupendous effort at conversion. We aim at nothing less than the conversion of the English. It can never be done by harbouring ill-will and still pretending to follow non-violence. Let those therefore who want to follow the path of non-violence and yet harbour ill-will retrace their steps and repent of the wrong they have done to themselves and the country.

  Young India, 2-4-'31

  124. POWER OF AHIMSA

  A correspondent writes a Gujarati letter of which the following is a translation:

  "For all that one can see, the support that world opinion has given to India in her present struggle has been most halting and feeble. Is it not surprising, in the face of this, to find Gandhiji claiming that we have received the fullest support from world-opinion? An unarmed race struggling to win back its own from a most ruthless imperialistic power on earth armed to the teeth can only be compared to a poor, helpless woman defending herself against a ruffian in the face of heavy odds. Imagine this woman being brutally struck with lathis again and again by the heartless ruffian. Would it not make the blood of any human being boil with indignation? Yet do we find signs of such moral indignation in the world today with regard to what was done to India? And does not the absence of this moral indignation bespeak an indifferently developed sense of humanity in the world? And if we admit that the question arises, can the weapon of ahimsa be at all effective in a world that is so devoid of humanity? Why cannot Gandhiji see that the world has failed to rise at the sight of unarmed India's blood to that pitch of moral indignation which is essential to the success of truth and ahimsa?"

  If I have anywhere referred to India having received the fullest support from world opinion, it should be set down as an unconscious exaggeration. I should like to be shown such a statement of mine if I have made one. For myself I have absolutely no idea of having made any such statement.

  The correspondent, by comparing the condition of unarmed India pitted against the British military power to that of a defenceless woman thrown at the tender mercy of a ruffian, has done an injustice to the strength as well of non-violence as of woman. Had not man in his blind selfishness crushed woman's soul as he has done or had she not succumbed to the 'enjoyments' she would have given the world an exhibition of the infinite strength that is latent in her. What she showed in the last fight was but a broken and imperfect glimpse of it. The world shall see it in all its wonder and glory when woman has secured an equal opportunity for herself with man and fully developed her powers of mutual aid and combination.

  And it is wrong to say that a person is unarmed in the sense of being weak who has ahimsa as his weapon. The correspondent is evidently a stranger to the real use or the immeasurable power of ahimsa. He has used it, if at all, only mechanically and as an expedience for want of a better. Had he been saturated with the spirit of ahimsa, he would have known that it can tame the wildest beast, certainly the wildest man.

  If, therefore, the world's blood did not boil over the brutalities of the past year, it was not because the world was brutal or heartless but because our non-violence, widespread though it was, good enough though it was for the purpose intended, was not the non-violence of the strong and the knowing. It did not spring from a living faith. It was but a policy, a temporary expedient. Though we did not retaliate, we had harboured anger, our speech was not free from violence, our thoughts still less so. We generally refrained from violent action, because
we were under discipline. The world marvelled even at this limited exhibition of non-violence and gave us, without any propaganda, the support and sympathy that we deserved and needed. The rest is a matter of the rule of three. If we had the support that we received for the limited and mechanical non-violence we were able to practise during the recent struggle, how much more support should we command when we have risen to the full height of ahimsa? Then the world's blood will certainly boil. I know we are still far away from that divine event. We realized our weakness at Kanpur, Banaras, Mirzapur. When we are saturated with ahimsa we shall not be non-violent in our fight with the bureaucracy and violent among ourselves. When we have a living faith in non-violence, it will grow from day to day till it fills the whole world. It will be the mightiest propaganda that the world will have witnessed. I live in the belief that we will realize the vital ahimsa.

  Young India, 7-5-'31

  125. GOONDAISM WITHIN THE CONGRESS

  The Congress has become a vast democratic body. It reached a high water-mark during the past twelve months. Without being technically on the register millions took possession of it and added lustre to it. But goondaism also entered the Congress to a much larger extent than hitherto. It was inevitable. The ordinary rules prescribed for the selection of volunteers were practically set aside during the last stages of the struggle. The result has been that in some places goondaism has made itself felt. Some Congressmen have even been threatened with disaster if they will not give the money demanded of them. Of course, professional goondas may also take advantage of the atmosphere and ply their trade.

  The wonder is that the cases I have in mind are so very few compared to what they might have been, regard being had to the great mass awakening. My conviction is that this happy state is due to the Congress creed of non-violence, even though we have but crudely followed it. But there has been sufficient expression of goondaism to warn us to take time by the forelock and adopt preventive and precautionary measures.

  The measures that suggest themselves to me are naturally and certainly a scientific and more intelligent and disciplined application of non-violence. In the first place, if we had a firmer faith in non-violence than we have shown, not one man or woman who did not strictly conform to the rules regarding the admission of volunteers would have been taken. It would be no answer to say that in that case there would have been no volunteers during the final stage and therefore there would have been a perfect failure. My experience teaches me to the contrary. It is possible to fight a non-violent battle even with one Satyagrahi. But it, i.e. a non-violent battle, cannot be fought with a million non-Satyagrahis. And I would welcome even an utter failure with non-violence unimpaired rather than depart from it by a hair's breadth to achieve a doubtful success. Without adopting a non-compromising attitude so far as non-violence is concerned, I can see nothing but disaster in the end. For, at the critical moment we may be found wanting, weighed in the scales of non-violence, and may be found hopelessly unprepared to meet the forces of disorder that might suddenly be arrayed against us.

  But having made the mistake of indiscriminate recruiting how are we to repair the mischief in a non-violent way? Non-violence means courage of the highest order and, therefore, readiness to suffer. There should, therefore, be no yielding to bullying, bluff or worse, even though it may mean the loss of a few precious lives. Writers of threatening letters should be made to realize that their threats will not be listened to. But at the same time their disease must be diagnosed and properly treated. Even the goondas are part of us and therefore they must be handled gently and sympathetically. People generally do not take to goondaism for the love of it. It is a symptom of a deeper-seated disease in the body politic. The same law should govern our relations with internal goondaism that we apply in our relations with the goondaism in the system of Government. And if we have felt that we have the ability to deal with that highly organized goondaism in a non-violent manner how much more should we feel the ability to deal with the internal goondaism by the same method?

  It follows that we may not seek police assistance to deal with the disease although it is open during the truce, to any Congressman to seek it precisely in the same manner as any other citizen. The way I have suggested is the way of reform, conversion, love. Seeking police assistance is the way of punishment, fear, want of affection if not actual disaffection. The two methods therefore cannot run together. The way of reform appears at some stage or other to be difficult but it is in reality the easiest.

  Young India, 7-5-'31

  126. CONQUEST OVER BODY

  It is a fundamental principle of Satyagraha that the tyrant whom the Satyagrahi seeks to resist has power over his body and material possessions but he can have no power over the soul. The soul can remain unconquered and unnconquerable even when the body is imprisoned. The whole science of Satyagraha was born from a knowledge of this fundamental truth. In the purest form of Satyagraha there should be no need for conveyances, carriage fare or even of doing Hijrat. And in case Hijrat has to be performed it will be done by journeying on foot. The Hijratis would have to be satisfied with whatever hard fare falls to their lot and keep smiling when even that fails. When we have developed this 'be careful for nothing' attitude, we shall be saved from many a botheration and trouble and freedom will dance attendance upon us. Nor should one suppose that a 'careful for nothing' person shall have always to be starving. God that provides the little ant its speck of food and to the elephant his daily one maund bolus will not neglect to provide man with his daily meal. Nature's creatures do not worry or fret about tomorrow but simply wait on tomorrow for the daily sustenance. Only man in his overweening pride and egotism imagines himself to be the lord and master of the earth, and goes on piling up for himself goods that perish. Nature tries every day by its rude shocks to wean him from his pride but he refuses to shed it. Satyagraha is a specific for bringing home to one the lesson of humility. We have travelled so much distance during the last year, we have gone through so much suffering and had so many rich experiences that we ought to have sufficient faith in us to be able to feel that if we throw ourselves upon God's mercy untroubled by doubt or fear, it would be well with us.

  Young India, 21-5-'31

  SECTION SEVENTH: INDIAN STATES SATYAGRAHA

  [Rajkot was one of the States of Kathiawad, ruled by a Prince. Its people had, like those in other States of India, demanded Constitutional Reform, but their efforts met with repression buttressed by British authority. Gandhiji, whose childhood was spent in that State, had many personal links with the Ruler. He therefore went to Rajkot to bring about a peaceful settlement, especially to see that the agreement concluded by the Ruler with the people's leaders was kept. Towards this end, Gandhiji undertook a fast in Rajkot in 1939, and then appealed to the Viceroy, who intervened and brought about arbitration. The award was in Gandhiji's favour, but the latter felt that his fast was tainted by an element of coercion, and therefore denied himself the benefits of the award.—Ed.]

  127. SUSPEND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

  In Satyagraha there is no such thing as disappointment or heartburning. The struggle always goes on in some shape or other till the goal is reached. A Satyagrahi is indifferent whether it is civil disobedience or some other phase of the struggle to which he is called. Nor does he mind if, in the middle of the civil disobedience march, he is called upon to halt and do something else. He must have faith that it is all for the best. My own experience hitherto has been that each suspension has found the people better equipped for the fight and for control over forces of violence. Therefore, in advising suspension, I dismiss from my mind the fear that it may lead to desertion and disbelief. If it does, I should not feel sorry, for it would be to me a sign that the deserters did not know what Satyagraha was and the movement was better without those who did not know what they were doing.

  Harijan, 1-4-'39