Nonviolence and the Case of the Extremely Ruthless Opponent Pacifica Review
Thomas Weber, TFF Acquaintance
July 12, 2007
Showtime published in Gandhi Marg 2006, vol.28, no.3, pp.269-283.
Gandhi and the Gandhian vision of nonviolence accept had many critics. Some criticised the very idea of civil disobedience and irenic struggle, peculiarly in a democracy – later on all what if everyone did it, where would it exit united states? Chaos would reign and society as we know it would collapse. Nosotros have the dominion of police force to make certain that in that location is fairness in society and we have republic so that we can change the mode our club works without taking to the streets and without potentially forcing the views of a vocal minority onto a silent majority.
Almost any text on civil disobedience will give numerous convincing counter-arguments: credence of the penalty means that the system is upheld, individual censor (not preference) takes precedence over unjust laws, commonwealth generally means only a choice between 2 parties, both of which may accept the same position on the issue beingness protested confronting, government do non ever uphold their part of the social contract, etc.
Others have gone so far as to diminish the value of nonviolence by praising the cleansing effect of violence when the oppressed rise up against their oppressors. (one) However, this will by and large only atomic number 82 to a greater breakthrough of violence and suffering. And farther, as peace activist and writer Barbara Deming has remarked, with a genuine understanding of Gandhian nonviolence whenever the likes of Frantz Fanon employ the give-and-take "violence" in this context, ane could read "nonviolence" and the meaning would remain the aforementioned.(2)
Criticisms of Gandhi'due south approach fifty-fifty come from nonviolence practitioners and sometimes, although generally implicitly, from Gandhians themselves. Some of the Mahatma'southward followers in India thought that after independence, because the state was autonomous, there was no longer any crusade to resort to satyagraha, Gandhi's method of nonviolence. In fact the postal service-Gandhi Gandhian movement separate over this issue in the 1970s.(3)
Further, some leading practitioners of nonviolence, such as Factor Sharp, criticise Gandhi's principled version as being less than productive, other-worldly and confusing. They fence for a far more businesslike use of nonviolence, i that does not aim at very hard to come up by conversion or is seen as a search for Truth with a uppercase "T", but aims for victory over an opponent, admitting without physical violence. Other criticisms include those that merits Gandhi only employed nonviolence because his forces were weak and he did non have other more productive weapons. He did what he could with what was available.
Or in a more accusing tone, Marxists often argue that Gandhi was a reactionary who prevented real revolution, that could have made a divergence to the downtrodden, from taking place. His limiting of violence prevented justice, it ensured that structures of violence stayed in place. Further, some feminists accept stiff issue with Gandhi'due south conventionalities that principled self-suffering would bring about a conversion on the function of an opponent. They signal out that women have suffering throughout history without the hearts of oppressive patriarchs being melted. The patriarchal system merely seems to be quietly thankful for non beingness challenged. Still others have claimed that Gandhi could practise what he did because the British were fair, simply that his tactics would have seen him killed in minutes if he had tried to exercise what he did in India in, say, Nazi Germany or Stalin's Soviet Matrimony.
Criticisms from within the Gandhian camp
When Gandhi was no longer on the scene, information technology was left to others to refine his vision of satyagraha in a newly unfolding political reality. Even his closest followers were split on the issue of the legitimate place for nonviolence in a democracy. For case Gandhi's spiritual heir, Vinoba Bhave, subsequently famous for his Bhoodan land gift move, laid downward what he saw every bit the 4 principles of satyagraha ten years after Gandhi'southward death. They were that satyagraha is positive not negative, it should go along from gentle to gentler to gentlest, there should be happiness on the mere hearing of the give-and-take "satyagraha", and, finally, that there should exist no insistence on the part of the satyagrahi, insistence should come up from truth itself.(4)
Here he was existence completely consequent with Gandhi'southward view of ideal satyagraha. Like his mentor, Vinoba placed high importance on "swaraj", or "cocky-rule", a concept both of them defined in terms that encompassed far more than than the mere political. Vinoba remarked that the term meant ruling the self, and that was impossible if ane was under some other person'southward command: "It is one mark of swaraj not to let any exterior power in the globe to exercise control over oneself. And the second mark of swaraj is non to exercise ability over any other. These ii things together make swaraj – no submission and no exploitation."(v)
For the maintenance of consistency, this meant that satyagraha had to remain non-coercive and had to respect the sovereignty of the opponent by relying solely on conversion. In order to attain this, satyagraha had to be spiritualized by befitting to the precepts laid down by Vinoba. In his time, Gandhi had to practice the "science of satyagraha" in an atmosphere of foreign domination, while in an temper of democracy Vinoba was under much less pressure to compromise on the ideals.(six) Vinoba was also manifestly of the belief that until the Gandhian movement had gained the strength and public acceptance to launch effective "pure" satyagraha campaigns it should refrain from employing satyagraha.(vii)
At that place was likewise another cistron co-ordinate to Vinoba. He explained that with the progress of science and the cosmos of nuclear weapons, humanity faced ultimate destruction. In order to neutralize this force of violence and to arouse the world'southward conscience, Gandhi'south nonviolence had to take on "more subtle and finer forms." Satyagraha could no longer beget to "create agitation or tension in the minds of the opponent," it had to avert a "collision of minds and seek harmony in thought."(8) Until change was brought about through understanding and acceptance, rather than through imposition, "the seeds of violence, imperialism and world wars would non exist rooted out."(9)
Satyagraha had to progress as the political situation progressed (from imperialist domination to "commonwealth" in India) and every bit scientific discipline progressed. Consequently, Vinoba declared that Jesus' concept of "resist non evil" and Gandhi'southward "nonviolent resistance" were no longer adequate and what now had to take their place was "nonviolent assistance" in right thinking.(x) Without this all that could be achieved was legislative reform, and that could never atomic number 82 to total revolution. Vinoba was determined not to end upward where the Mahatma had plant himself at several points in his life. Unlike his mentor, he would never have to admit to the mistake of placing civil defiance earlier the slower, surer path to more lasting and real reform through constructive work. In other words, for Vinoba at times Gandhi did not alive upwardly to his ain ideals. But so, almost people are not as spiritual every bit the saintly Vinoba and this raises the question of how practical his totally non-coercive method is.
Of course not all in the Gandhian movement followed Vinoba's approach to satyagraha. Before coming to national and earth prominence with the inauguration of the Bhoodan motility, Vinoba had spent much of his life as a semi-recluse in the quest of spiritual fulfillment and the study of sacred texts. By way of dissimilarity, Jayaprakash Narayan had spent most of his life equally a major thespian on the political stage. In the 1920s, JP undertook 7 years of higher pedagogy in the United states of america where he studied Marx and completed a highly praised M.A. dissertation analyzing societal changes from a Marxist perspective. On his return to India he worked closely with Nehru and became a spokesman for the socialist members of the Indian National Congress. During the war years JP was imprisoned, escaped and spent a twelvemonth "underground" equally a progressively more notorious (and in pop circles, historic) revolutionary. Post-obit independence, JP became one of the founders of the Socialist Party and severe critic of the ruling Congress Party. Soon, however, he began to take doubts about the efficacy of power politics. Increasingly he looked to Gandhi'due south praxis as a way of bringing about the social revolution he had and then long struggled to attain. He took office in Vinoba's Bhoodan motility, retired from party politics and, in 1954, took a vow of "jivandan" ("life-souvenir") – a pledge to devote the residuum of his life to Sarvodaya and Bhoodan work. For many years he remained in Vinoba'south shadow and his speeches reflected Vinoba's globe-view. However, eventually their paths were to diverge and JP went back to a more interventionist political satyagraha, like the one Gandhi had undertaken against the British but without the otherworldly underpinnings. Different Vinoba, he embraced the position of Gandhi the political leader over Gandhi the saint.
Criticisms by Gene Sharp and the Pragmatists Of course not everyone believes that democracy works in a way that should exclude nonviolent activism, and probably most practise not. For many, conscience plays a large part in their very beingness and a narrow view of democracy cannot overcome this, and for many others the answers to the world's ills are not institute in organised power politics that centre effectually political parties. They take to come up from grass-roots activism – and this oftentimes calls for nonviolent protest. Yet, this does not mean that they necessarily agree with Gandhi's ideas of satyagraha.
Gene Precipitous, the main contemporary theorist of pragmatic nonviolence, claims that Gandhi's approach to nonviolence is unrealistic and can be confusing.(11) Those who take this line point out, quite rightly, that while Gandhi may have chosen nonviolence for moral reasons most who accept employed it against repressive opponents have done and so for far more than prosaic ones. They did so merely because military or physical force was not a feasible pick for them and that nonviolence was the only perceived grade of struggle bachelor to them. Generally they did not do it to make peace, to catechumen opponents or to self-endure. They did information technology to win.
Sharp was worried most Gandhi'due south eccentricities and religious symbolism and linguistic communication which "more often confuses than clarifies."(12) He saw that for Westerners generally, and Americans in item, this may cause a problem in adequately evaluating the Mahatma's political significance. He tried to make Gandhi palatable by a process of "secularisation." At kickoff he "secularised" Gandhi and his message so that both could be taken seriously. Eventually, because ultimately Sharp's life work became one of promoting his ain make of nonviolence not Gandhi or Gandhi's satyagraha, Sharp more or less abased the Mahatma. For him the most important job became one of discovering a nonviolent alternative to war, one that is realistic and pragmatic – and in the finish, for him too, in this task Gandhi seems to have become a liability rather than an asset.
When he was specifically asked to address the links betwixt Gandhi and nonviolence, Sharp noted that the Mahatma "tried to convince people who did not believe in ahimsa [nonviolence] on ethical grounds to adopt nonviolent methods every bit a practical expedient, a technique that works."(13) In his foreword to a later on edition of War Without Violence, Krishnalal Shridharani's 1939 classic study of Gandhi's satyagraha, Precipitous makes it clear that he is much less interested in the extreme religious pacifist and moral arguments approach to nonviolence, which emphasises conversion (that is, arguably, Gandhi's approach), preferring instead a "technique arroyo."(14) In a more recent interview Abrupt, in the words of the reviewer, sees nonviolent action as "a strategy for imperfect people in an imperfect earth."(fifteen) Sharp notes that many people understand that nonviolent action has the best chance of achieving their objectives and that nonviolence is not there to resolve the disharmonize or eliminate the conflict but as a way of conducting conflict. This, of course, does not mean that Sharp now believes it to be wrong to be a "moral pacifist," merely that one must operate in a context that "enables the rest of the population to adopt nonviolent means without that commitment."(xvi)
Precipitous's best known work is his three book magnum opus, The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Here he writes at length about the notion of power, historical examples of irenic struggle, catalogues 198 different methods of nonviolent activeness, and examines the dynamics of irenic action, including action against violent and repressive opponents. He states that irenic activity "consists of acts of protestation and persuasion, noncooperation and irenic intervention designed to undermine the sources of power of the opponent in order to bring about change."All the Gandhian references aside, this is a work without the "feel" of Gandhi every bit presented past those that tin exist called exponents of "ideological," "principled," "conscientious," or "positive" nonviolence. For Sharp, the key feature is power rather than upstanding principle: "nonviolent action is a technique by which people who reject passivity and submission, and who see struggle as essential, can wage their conflict without violence. Nonviolent action is not an attempt to avoid or ignore conflict. It is i response to the problem, of how to human action effectively in politics, particularly how to wield power effectively."(17) He often refers to nonviolence as an "culling weapons arrangement"(xviii) and even describes it as a "ways of gainsay, equally is state of war. It involves the matching of forces and the waging of 'battles', it requires wise strategy and tactics, employs numerous 'weapons' and demands of it's 'soldiers' backbone, discipline, and sacrifice."(nineteen) The cardinal dynamic is i of "political jiu-jitsu" rather than the "moral jiu-jitsu" of Gandhi and the offset analyst of his satyagraha, Richard Gregg.(20)
This, to Gandhi and those who see nonviolence in a Gandhian vein, is "negative" or "pragmatic" nonviolence where nonviolent action is used because it is believed to be the most constructive method available in the circumstances. Disharmonize is viewed as a human relationship between antagonists with incompatible interests, and the goal is to defeat the opponent.(21) The stream which adheres more closely to Gandhian values, relies on a religious or upstanding objection to violence. It is concerned with reestablishing communication and, through cocky-suffering if necessary, attempts to convince the opponent of the error of their means, of converting rather than coercing them. Or, co-ordinate to nonviolent activist and scholar Robert Burrowes, those with a principled arroyo "choose [nonviolent activity] for ethical reasons and believe in the unity of means and ends. They view the opponent as a partner in the struggle to satisfy the needs of all; if anyone suffers, it is the practitioner of nonviolence. More fundamentally, this practitioner may view nonviolence as a mode of life."(22)
Sharp notes that this may exist fine "if information technology occurs," just the uncomplicated exclamation that nonviolence must be adopted as an ethical principle "ignores the social reality in which we must operate." As long as violent sanctions are accepted, violence cannot be removed from political societies by "witnessing confronting it or denouncing it on moral grounds" (this is what he seems to have reduced Gandhian principled nonviolence to). He states that, offset, nonviolence must reach the position where it is seen as an culling course of sanction, and "one time that major changeover has been completed," or at least "well under way," then people can "consider and bargain with the finer ethical bug which arise in the application of irenic sanctions."(23) In short, be realistic, outset with what is most easily achievable. Afterward he was able to say of his early on Gandhian principled pacifist period that "I inverse a lot of ideas; sometimes I reversed them. I found that people didn't need to believe right to appoint in nonviolent struggle," and of himself he could observe that " I (at present) don't concord with myself then."(24)
However, for the Mahatma the process was about the achievement of cocky-realization, nothing less. For Gandhi the fundamental principle was that of the unity of existence (or in the more than firsthand, the unity of humanity). People are related to each other in a way that is transcendental in nature and disharmonize should exist seen as a gift providing a rich opportunity, potentially to the do good of all, to realize a higher cocky. A desired effect of conflict, in this line of argument, is zero short of the cosmos of a new social structure and a "college level of cocky-purification in both actors."(25)
Co-ordinate to Gandhian practice, conflict stems from unmet needs and in social club for needs to exist met they must first be understood, and this requires true self-awareness. For Gandhi the discovery of Self was the main job of life. In short, conducting conflict in what can be termed a Gandhian, equally opposed to a Sharpian, context may non only exist instrumentally valuable but may be intrinsically important in an existential sense. In Gandhi's vision, satyagraha was not only a useful technique for the resolution of conflicts, and the satyagrahi was far more than than a mere practitioner of a certain skill. The satyagrahi was the embodiment of an ideal and the satyagrahi lifestyle was the lifestyle worth living. Sharp does not emphasise the potential positively transformative outcome of nonviolent action (for example in terms of empowerment, openness, participation, gaining of skills) on either the activists themselves or on others, more or less limiting its apply to a tool for achieving extrinsic goals.(26)
When writing about the significant of "success" in nonviolent activity Sharp takes a far more than "objective" view than would many other irenic activists. The important questions for him are: were the opponent's objectives frustrated, what factors in the social or political situation allowed the opponent to be defeated? or whether the stated goals of the nonviolent group were achieved because of the struggle.(27) The subjective, and we could say existential, payoffs that are and then important to Gandhi are not considered. While Sharp is concerned with social and political freedom, Gandhi's focus is on a search for Truth.(28) And, co-ordinate to Hayes, this means that in "a theoretical-practical sense, Gandhi's ideals can be seen to be directly aimed at addressing many of the existential effects of being dominated, and of beingness a dominator," and "what nonviolent actors might be or become as a issue of their struggle."(29)
Nevertheless, a friend of Sharp has pointed out that this debate must be seen in context. Ralph Summy notes that Sharp is trying to promote nonviolence in a highly acquisitive capitalist club and adds that Gandhi would exist the first to proclaim that "a satyagraha that discounted the views and passions rife in its society and proceeded blindly on its own purist path was tantamount to pursuing merely personal redemption and non societal modify."(30) In short, the reasons for a Gandhian or more businesslike arroyo to nonviolence, and hence the way that it is conducted, need to be adamant by each individual practitioner of nonviolence.
Marxist and Feminist Critiques
Those who are fervent proponents of nonviolence oftentimes run into it as the cure for all the world's ills while its detractors say that it is futile in bringing well-nigh real change which is about exercising existent power and that it tin do zero about structural relations which are the fundamental problem.(31) Some get and then far as to come across nonviolence mostly, non just the Gandhian version, as reactionary.(32)
Members of an oppressed group could be excused for being suspicious of practise-gooders telling them to be irenic. In Marxist terminology, it could be akin to the dictum that religion is the opiate of the masses keeping them in their identify, stopping them from challenging the status quo. In other words, for these critics, nonviolence is reactionary. In the Indian context, they would argue that Gandhi with his pious nonviolence prevented a revolution which could have reordered society, that with his preaching of satyagraha he ensured that the powerful remained in their positions of ability. The capitalists bankrolled him and he, in effect, rewarded them and they took over every bit another repressive grade when the British left. Gandhi, in short, was a lackey of the bourgeoisie. Gandhi's dream of ane big family in India and his philosophy of satyagraha, the argument goes, suited his backers, the Indian capitalists downwards to the basis. They wanted to win concessions and ultimately independence but did not want to see spontaneous revolutionary mobilisation by the masses. And Gandhi was great at ensuring that things did not become out of hand for the capitalists.(33) The perceived sins of the founder are visited on the technique of satyagraha. George Orwell takes this line of argument fifty-fifty further. He claims that the British imperialists themselves saw Gandhi as their right-paw man. He made it easier for them to rule because he used his influence to brand sure that no action was taken which would make a real departure. The British e'er treated Gandhi well in prison because they did not desire him to die and perhaps exist replaced by someone who believed less in "soul forcefulness" and more than in bombs. They may accept hated him for what he did – raising the masses, but at present they needed him for what he was doing – keeping those masses in control.(34)
Those who believe in form struggle at times compare irenic movements with violent ones, suggesting that the latter are well-nigh "defending life" and the quondam nearly "sacrificing life" and when they talk most defence they talk near it equally a synonym for armed uprising. They characterise nonviolence as a method of social alter based on suffering implying that nonviolence is a desire for suffering where the nonviolent activists are just offered "an opportunity to be browbeaten, arrested, or tortured". (35)
The reluctance to finish off an opponent when they are down is characterised as naive, self-defeating, or worse. This line of argument goes that a rejection of violence, especially in self-defence, is to accept the morality of fascism, that the weak must accept the dominion of the strong or the well-nigh ruthless in their methods of controlling others. This is because these critics see Gandhi as a politician operating within the confines of a narrow vision of power politics. Gandhi'due south larger spiritual vision is irrelevant or incomprehensible to this form of analysis. In the terminate it depends on whether the object is seen every bit winning (but Gene Abrupt argues that nonviolence is the best way of achieving even this), or changing the situation itself.
Feminist critiques comprehend similar ground. Nonviolence looks a lot similar passivity, and women have been expected to be passive in the face of violence. Nonviolence talks almost accepting suffering rather than inflicting it on others and this looks very much like what women have been doing throughout the ages. (36) They point out that while Gandhi asks for cocky-suffering to melt the middle of the opponent, in the case of women information technology has but left them in a second-form position. In this argument it is noted that power is not given abroad it has to exist taken. Some radical feminists have suggested that fifty-fifty women's only peace campaigns, such as the one at Greenham Mutual in England in the early 1980s, are too easily co-opted. They claim that the public face up of these campaigns shows women as sacrificing martyrs – just what they have always been expected to be. They claim that nuclear weapons and militarism are after all symptoms of a male person supremacist culture and enquire why the women peace demonstrators are putting then much energy into attacking the symptoms that they tin come across instead of the fundamental cause – something which is perhaps besides dangerous to confront, and that is the human next door.
This argument is extended further, stating that there is something inherently problematic with the very theory of power on which Gandhi and other nonviolent theorists (such every bit Gene Sharp) constitute their activism. The claim is that the withdrawal of consent is non equally easy as is unsaid past these theorists because in our society power is patriarchal and information technology excludes women. (37) As women accept never consented to the status quo, they have no consent to withdraw. While a more than acceptable theory of power may be needed, the ane used past nonviolent activists even so seems to be acceptable for most less subtle forms of oppression. (38)
Others of course argue that women's liberation and world peace are complexly linked. Some state quite plainly that women must move from a negative assay of women's oppression to a more positive time to come-building perspective and this means whole-hearted engagement in peace work. Some go even further, arguing that the rise consciousness of women is critically important in trying to conceptualise an understanding of the causes of peacelessness. They claim that women's own actions and reflections tin provide an understanding of violence and a fashion of bringing about social transformation with a vision of a different future – and this gives women a detail office in working for a peaceful future – in other words peace and non trigger-happy activism are clearly feminist issues. (39)
Other Criticisms The influential American social activist Saul Alinsky believed that nonviolence is fine if no other avenue is available, noting that "If Gandhi had had the weapons and the people to use them, this means would not have been so unreservedly rejected equally the world would like to think". (40) He goes on to claim that Gandhi'south campaigns "were a striking example of the option of means", adding that perhaps Gandhi'south passive resistance (note the employ of linguistic communication) was
Further, not simply was "passive resistance" possible but information technology was also "the nigh constructive means that could have been selected for the end of ridding India of British control". Considering Gandhi could not "expect violent action from this large torpid mass, Gandhi organised the inertia". (42) Alinsky also tells us that the of import question is not whether the end justifies the means but ever has been "Does this particular end justify this particular means?" In other words, nonviolence does not piece of work against violent opponents, Gandhi would have used violence if information technology was bachelor to him because information technology works ameliorate, nonviolence is a 2nd best weapon of the weak when no meliorate weapons are bachelor, and the ends and ways debate is irrelevant in the abstruse – each case must be looked at individually and regardless of what passive non-doers (as Alinsky seems to categorise Gandhi) may say, if violence helps you to win then it is justified.
The ends Gandhi sought were far more ambitious than the ones Alinsky credits him with. Gandhi's involvement was not equally narrow as simply ridding India of British control, of potentially exchanging white exploiters for ethnic ones. His aim was to bring about a peaceful and just society, a new Republic of india and a new Indian. Gandhi'southward time-frame was but longer than Alinsky's. And of course there is zero passive about satyagraha. The Gandhian respond to the ends/means argue (how in advance can one know if these envisaged ends in the long-run volition be seen every bit having justified these particular means?) is best formulated by Aldous Huxley when he noted that "Good ends ... can just be accomplished by the employment of appropriate ways", and that "The end cannot justify the means, for the simple reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced." (43)
At that place is of class i other obvious criticism of Gandhi and nonviolence that was hinted at past Alinsky. The argument is spelled out well by Orwell. He that notes that "It is difficult to see how Gandhi's methods could exist practical in a state where opponents of the regime disappear in the heart of the night and are never heard of over again. Without a free press and the right of associates, it is incommunicable non merely to appeal to exterior opinion, but to bring a mass motion into beingness, or even to make your intentions known to your antagonist." (44) Recent important literature demonstrates that the issue is far more complex than this and that indeed nonviolence has often been very successful against even the almost brutal of opponents. (45) Of course it will not ever be successful, but then again neither will any culling. The well-nigh contempo literature investigates the circumstances that seem to increase or decrease the likelihood of success for irenic activeness at a political level.
It is not only Orwell and those of the Left who have raised these types of questions. Some other popular writers accept besides had doubts or worse almost nonviolence. Interestingly some of these arguments seem to repeat the Marxist ones nonetheless come from conservative capitalists. They besides arraign Gandhi for preventing alter in the human relationship between feudal lords and peasants, between the rich and the poor in Republic of india. In their analysis, Gandhi stifled growth and a modern outlook with his quaint village-centred vision of social organisation, leaving India astern. They see Gandhi and his nonviolence as socially reactionary rather than politically reactionary. In this vein, fiction and travel writer, the Trinidad Indian Five.Due south.Naipaul sees India as a wounded civilization, trapped in an uncritical and dysfunctional glorification of the past, noting that "The past must be seen to be dead; or the past will kill." (46)
Looking at the recent revival of the more destructive elements of Hindu nationalism his thesis may acquit closer examination, but his assessment of the complicity of Gandhi and Gandhism in this is grossly overplayed. While Gandhi did preach simplicity (and in the xxx years since Naipaul wrote, the adage that we must "live simply so that others may simply live" has – in theory if not yet in practice – taken on the graphic symbol of a truism) he never glorified enforced poverty. As we move into a new century, Naipaul's faith in development and the technological fix seems more quaint than the attitudes (he brackets with Gandhism) that he dismisses as primitivist. Of form saving labour is not what Gandhi was striving for at all – but it seems that much of the masses are and therefore he was cast as an idealist trying to keep people in ignorance in some form of idealised cultural museum. Any one thinks about the validity of Gandhi's vision of a proficient gild, the arguments surrounding this issue do not invalidate satyagraha, Gandhi'southward manner of activism.
Determination
My aim hither, evidently, was not to prove that satyagraha is unworkable or reactionary. It is neither. I have attempted to bear witness from were some of the major criticisms of satyagraha have come, criticisms that in many cases need to be taken seriously if the, as Gandhi called it, "science of satyagraha" is to develop. Committed advocates of any position or form of activity must have thought through the arguments of opponents, or predictable genuine questions of those who accept not all the same made upwards their minds, in social club to convincingly exist able to clear their own position. Satyagraha is i of the Mahatma'south great gifts to the future and it deserves to be articulated effectively, and this in turn means seriously because valuable criticisms and being able to respond less valuable ones.
NOTES and REFERENCES
First published in Gandhi Marg 2006, vol.28, no.3, pp.269-283.
1. Run into Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, and specially Jean Paul Sartre'south frontward to the book.
2. Barbara Deming, Revolution and Equilibrium, New York: Grossman, 1971, pp.194-221, especially pp.197 and 219.
3. Come across Thomas Weber, "The Lesson from the Disciples: Is At that place a Contradiction in Gandhi's Philosophy of Action?" Modern Asian Studies (1994), vol.28, no.1, pp.195-214.
4. Quoted in Vishwanath Tandon, "Vinoba and Satyagraha" Gandhi Marg 1980, vol.ii, no.7, pp.385-394 at p.387.
5. Vinoba Bhave, Autonomous Values, Varanasi: Sarva Seva Sangh, 1962, pp.13-xiv.
six. Vinoba remarked that "It is ... mistaken to imagine that the negative Satyagraha of pre-independence days will notice much scope ... in a popular democratic prepare-up." Quoted in Vishwanath Tandon (ed.), Selections from Vinoba, Varanasi: Sarva Seva Sangh, 1981, p.279); and that "in a democracy Satyagraha can never accept the course of the exercise of pressure" but must rely on "the change of heart." Quoted in Tandon (ed.), Selections from Vinoba, p.280. For Vinoba's views on satyagraha in a commonwealth run across generally Bhave, Democratic Values, pp.152-59.
seven. See Tandon (ed.), Selections from Vinoba, p.392.
8. Tandon (ed.), Selections from Vinoba, p.281.
9. Harijan, 7 July 1951.
10. Kanti Shah (ed.), Vinoba on Gandhi, Varanasi: Sarva Seva Sangh, 1985, p.52.
xi. See Thomas Weber, "Nonviolence is Who?: Factor Sharp and Gandhi" Peace and Change, 2003, vol.28, no.2, pp.240-260.
12. Gene Precipitous, Gandhi as a Political Strategist, Boston: Porter Sargent, 1979, p.two.
13. Reported in Peace Research Abstruse Journal, 1999, vol.36, no.2, p.157.
14. Reprinted in Sharp, Gandhi as a Political Strategist, pp.315-318, equally "Shridharani's Contribution to the Study of Gandhi's Technique".
fifteen. New Internationalist interview with Gene Abrupt by Noreen Shanahan, Nov 1997, available at http://www.oneworld.org/issue296/interview.htm
xvi. Gene Sharp, "People 'don't demand to believe right'", National Catholic Reporter, September 7, 1984, vol. twenty, p.eleven.
17. Precipitous, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, p.64.
xviii. Sharp, The Politics of Irenic Action, pp.112-114, 452-453.
19. Gene Precipitous, Noncombatant-Based Defense: A Post-Military Weapons Organisation, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990, p.37.
20. See Richard B.Gregg, The Power of Nonviolence, Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1934.
21. Robert J.Burrowes, The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense, New York: Country University of New York Press, 1996, p.99.
22. Burrowes, The Strategy of Irenic Defense, p.99.
23. Gene Precipitous, Social Power and Political Freedom, Boston: Porter Sargent, 1980, pp.395-396.
24. Sharp, "'People 'don't need to believe right'", p.11.
25. Johan Galtung, The Way is the Goal: Gandhi Today, Ahmedabad: Gujarat Vidyapith Peace Research Center, 1992, pp.62, 88..
26. Brian Martin and Wendy Varney, Nonviolence Speaks: Communicating Against Repression, Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Printing, 2003.
27. Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Activity, p.766. However information technology should exist added that Sharp does include as a conceivable criterion of success possible "boosted subtle and indirect effects." See Abrupt, The Politics of Irenic Action, p.765.
28. In the introduction to his autobiography, Gandhi wrote: "What I want to achieve, – what I have been striving and pining to attain these thirty years, – is self-realization, to see God face to face, to attain Moksha [conservancy]. I alive and move and have my being in pursuit of this goal. All that I exercise by way of speaking and writing, and all my ventures in the political field, are directed to this same end." Thousand.Yard.Gandhi, An Autobiography: Or the Story of My Experiments with Truth, Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1927, p.xiv.
29. See Mark D.Hayes, "Domination and Peace Research," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Griffith University, 1995; Role Two, chapter two, "Domination and Nonviolence," available at
30. Ralph Summy, personal communication, 29 March 2001.
31. Kurt Schock, Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movements in Nondemocracies, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005, p.xv.
32. For the counter argument meet Chapter 15, "A Reactionary?", in B.R.Nanda, Gandhi and His Critics, Delhi: Oxford Academy Press, 1985.
33. For these arguments see Alec Kahn, Gandhi and the Myth of Non-Violent Action, Sydney: A Socialist Worker pocket pamphlet, 1996.
34. George Orwell, "Letter to the Reverend Iorwerth Jones", in The Nerveless Essays, Journalism and Messages of George Orwell, book 2: My Country Right or Left, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970, pp.109-112, at p.111.
35. Come across for case Howard Ryan, A Critique of Nonviolent Politics, formerly posted on the Internet, but now removed.
36. See for example Lynne Jones, "Perceptions of 'Peace Women' at Greenham Common 1981-85: A participant'due south View", in Sharon MacDonald, Pat Holden and Shirley Ardener (eds.), Images of Women in Peace and War: Cross-Cultural and Historical Perspectives, MacMillan: Basingstoke, 1987, pp.179-204, particularly pp.201-203; and Lynne G.Woehrle, "Feminist Debates about Nonviolence", in V.Thousand.Kool (ed.), Nonviolence: Social and Psychological Problems, Lanham: University Printing of America, 1993, pp.207-220, especially pp.208-211, 215-216.
37. Kate McGuinness, "Gene Precipitous'southward Theory of Power: A Feminist Critique of Consent", Journal of Peace Research (1993), vol.xxx, no.one, pp.101-115.
38. See Brian Martin, "Gene Sharp's Theory of Power", Journal of Peace Enquiry (1989), vol.26, no.ii, pp213-222.
39. See especially the papers in Pam McAllister, Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence, Philadelphia: New Guild Publishers, 1982.
40. Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Primer for Realistic Radicals, New York: Vintage, 1972, p.39.
41. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, p.37.
42. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, p.42.
43. Aldous Huxley, Ends and Ways: An Research into the Nature of Ideals and into the Methods Employed for Their Realization, Edinburgh: Readers' Spousal relationship and Chatto and Windus, 1938, p.9. See also Huxley'due south arguments at pp.138-139.
44. George Orwell, "Reflections on Gandhi", in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, volume 4: In Front of Your Nose, pp.523-531, at p.529.
45. Run into for example, Ralph Summy, "Nonviolence and the Case of the Extremely Ruthless Opponent", Pacifica Review (1994), vol.half-dozen, no.1, pp.ane-29; Peter Ackerman and Jack Duvall, A Force More Powerful: A Century of Irenic Conflict, New York, St. Martin's Press, 2000; and Schock, Nonviolent Insurrections.
46. V.South.Naipaul, India: A Wounded Civilisation, London: Andre Deutsch, 1977, p.174.
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