We, in our time, are the first generation to live in a
truly world society. Until yesterday, the world was
dominated by Europe and European values. In the field
of politics, the world took its ideologies, its
institutions, its modes of political action almost
exclusively from models provided by Britain, France and
the United States. Today, the world has become the
whole world, despite the continuing dominance of the
superpowers. And we, the British, having for so long
been the people who did things to others, find
ourselves having things done to us. The politics of
European dominance has largely yielded place to the
politics of interaction.
This article is intended to explore and illustrate the
politics of interaction by an investigation of how
nonviolence has emerged in our own day as a political
philosophy and a form of political action. We are going
to look at three main actors or thinkers, each of them
belonged to a different political culture: Thoreau,
Tolstoy, Gandhi. Each of these men drew part of his
philosophy from beyond his own society. The key figure
is Gandhi. We shall find that Gandhi discovered his
philosophy and his technique of political action partly
by following British and American models. His
essentially Hindu mind was indelibly influenced by
Christian beliefs. Yet the end-result was uniquely his
own Gandhi was ultimately Gandhian.
Perhaps my approach may also provide a commentary on
the actual working out of that concept so often
emphasised in the arts and literature: the concept of
"influence". I shall try to show that the overall idea
of influence, of people absolutely becoming
intellectual disciples of a master or wholehearted
members of a movement, needs very careful revision.
Often, the disciple chooses only what he wants to find
in the original and omits what he does not want. This
is equally true of many who call themselves either
Christian or Marxists, but who are really
eclectics.
Of course, it is arbitrary and artificial to look at my
subject in the context of a century of experience. I
would have liked to return to the great religious
teachers who first comprehended nonviolence as
essential to right thinking and right action. It would
be delightful to try to illustrate my view of the way
that "influence" actually works by considering how
Jesus Christ attained his vision of nonviolence.
Because Christ so often emphasised his own continuity
with the Judaic teaching of the Old Testament, we have
not, perhaps, sufficiently considered how much of his
thinking may have derived from non-Judaic origins.
Serious scholars have suggested that there was a
"remote origin" in the sources of Indian religion.
Parallels between Jesus and Gautama Buddha seem to be
much more than coincidences. But I cannot here embark
on such a survey, and so I will begin my investigation
into how nonviolence has emerged today by going to the
little town of Concord, thirty miles from Boston, to
find Henry David Thoreau.
Henry David Thoreau
Just beyond Concord there occurred the
first skirmish of the American revolution between the
British redcoats and the American militiamen who in
1775 "fired the shot heard round the world". Born over
forty years later, Thoreau was nevertheless a child of
that revolution. He regarded almost everything that had
followed in America as a decline from the heights of
the revolution, which, as he believed, had demonstrated
that the human spirit is greater, nobler than the power
of government. Like Tolstoy and also Gandhi, Thoreau
was a spiritual anarchist. "That government is best
which governs feast", he asserts in his essay, Civil
Disobedience, adding that best of all would be a state
which governs not at all! He believed firmly in the
innate capacity of men to transform their political
system. In his estimation, free men were the masters of
their destiny, while government was merely "a
semi-human tiger or ox . . . with its heart taken out
and the top of its brain shot away".
American city politics in his day had already become
machine politics; this, Thoreau repudiated. It was "so
superficial and inhuman that practically I have never
recognised that it concerns me at all". There remained
rural America, and in a gathering of farmers, Thoreau
saw "the true Congress", the true will of the people.
If they recognised their own power and strength they
might still, like the farmer-militiamen of 1775, change
the course of their country's history.
An implacable opponent of slavery, be declared: "If a
thousand, if a hundred, if ten men whom I could name-if
ten honest men only- ay, if one honest man in this
state of Massachusetts. . . will withdraw from this
copartnership [the slavery system] and be locked up in
the county jail therefore, it would be the abolition of
slavery in America". Probably nobody has ever made such
a claim on behalf of men against the state. As everyone
knows, he tried out his own theory by refusing to pay
his taxes in protest against the invasion of Mexico by
the United States and he was locked up in the Concord
jail. He was released because his aunt paid the taxes
without consulting him. Thoreau never tried this
experiment again.
There is no evidence that Thoreau conceived of civil
disobedience as a strategy of mass action. Indeed, when
John Brown launched his raid on
the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Thoreau, in the
newspaper The Liberator, praised his strategy of
selectivity: for like Gideon, be had discarded all but
the strong. Wrote Thoreau: "Few could be found worthy
to pass muster". In pursuit of his quest for
individuality, Thoreau erected a shack in the woods
near Walden Pond, about two miles outside Concord.
In solitude, Thoreau endeavoured to discover his true
self and the true meaning of life. His friend, Emerson,
had introduced him to Buddhist and Hindu texts. Now he
made a deep study of these writings. In his Walden
journal he recorded: "I bathe my intellect in the
stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy or the Bhagavadgita . . . in comparison with
which our modern world and its literature seem puny and
trivial".
The Bhagavadgita emphasises "acting and yet not
acting", that is not acting for personal gain. The Gita
offers a concept of sacrifice embracing all actions
done in fulfilment of svadharrna, one's duty or one's
own obligations to society. This is the path of
humility. The devotee is required to renounce desires,
to feel no attachment to anything, to be abstinent,
disciplined, not to entertain hatred for any, to be
compassionate, to be free of egoism, to behave alike to
friend and foe, to be "silent, content with anything
whatever, of no fixed abode, steadfast in mind". It is
not difficult to understand why Thoreau in his little
hut, listening to the call of the birds and beasts of
his solitary wood, felt that this had a message for
him. Sixty years later, in jail in South Africa, Gandhi
was to discover the Bhagavadgita and to find that it
held the essence of truth for him also.
We may ponder whether Thoreau would have been any
different if he had not felt the impact of the
Bhagavadgita. Probably not; its reading only released
forces within him which were latent anyway. However,
his understanding of Indian philosophy was another link
which connected him with Hindu-Indian nationalists
seventy and eighty years later.
In his drive to discover solitude, Thoreau had not
penetrated into the great American wilderness; he had
merely opted out of contemporary American middle class
society. Just the other side of Walden's mysterious
pond lay the railroad from Boston, and every hour the
whistle and clang of the trains approaching the Concord
depot must have interrupted Thoreau's reverie. Thoreau
was not really a pioneer; he was just a rebel against
the pressures of modern industrial society, like so
many today.
His writings scarcely influenced the Americans of his
own time (three quarters of his books remained unsold)
but insofar as he was absorbed into the American ethos
it was as one who longed to take the trail, to get away
from it all, like so many Americans ever since. His
political ideas were ignored; and it was really only in
the 1960s that young American radicals adopted aspects
of his philosophy of civil disobedience. Thoreau is a
kind of barometer of the current state of American
society and politics. Ten years ago he was an important
cult figure. Today, in the late 1970s, when young
America has returned to conformity, his political
message is again ignored, indeed, derided.
Leo Tolstoy
Our next subject, Leo Tolstoy, probably
never heard of Thoreau. He was in touch with American
pacifists and reformers, but he absorbed his main
impression of the American civil disobedience movement
from the internationally famous anti-slavery leader
William Lloyd Garrison, and not from his little-known
follower, Henry David Thoreau.
Garrison's message, in his radical newspaper The
Liberator, combined militancy, anarchism, and pacifism.
Like Thoreau, Garrison applauded John Brown's raid
(though Brown's methods were almost identical with
those of the I.R.A.). Garrison at one stage totally
rejected the authority of the United States, publicly
burning the Constitution. Yet his constant message was
one of pacifism or "non-resistance". He was this aspect
which most appealed to Tolstoy.
Tolstoy's political thought (as well as his artistic
inspiration) was greatly affected by the four years in
which he was an officer in the Czarist army (1852-56)
which included combat experience in the Crimean war.
From his observation of the ineptitude of the high
command and the bravery of the common soldiers-peasants
in uniform-Tolstoy drew the conclusion that the higher
up the chain of command ran, to the General Staff and
the Czar, the further the leaders were from any
knowledge of the ordinary people, and from the truth
about Russia.
Conversely, Tolstoy saw in the supposedly ignorant and
despised rural poor the source of goodness and wisdom.
It was from the horrors of the Crimean War and from the
patience and capacity for suffering of the downtrodden
that Tolstoy eventually worked out his philosophy of
nonviolence. Change could only come as men followed
Christ's teaching and example, freeing themselves from
hatred, greed, and all other marks of modern,
materialistic society. By their own teaching and
example they might hope to persuade others. They must
never employ coercion or force. They must embrace total
pacificsm, which he defined as "refraining from
opposing evil by violence". There could be no
exceptions: the robber about to kill the innocent
victim must not be prevented by force. An unknown evil,
greater than the identifiable evil, might result.
Tolstoy's view of government was very similar to that
of Thoreau and Garrison; governments, he declared are
"in their very essence a violation ofjustiee". But
unlike the American abolitionists-anarchists who
imagined that men could by courage and effort overcome
governments-Tolstoy (as a Russian who had experienced
authoritarianism and tyranny) was under no illusion
about the capacity of governments to enforce their
domination. Before he could hope to change the system
the protester must be prepared for persecution, defeat,
destruction or death. Yet, in the infinity of God's own
time, if there was a transforming change among the
state's subjects, this might, slowly and stealthily,
affect agents of the state, who had to enforce
injustice, and might eventually lead to the
disintegration of the structure of repression.
Tolstoy did not wish to substitute one system for
another: to him, the British or American system was
merely a less absolute alternative to the Russian or
Prussian system. Men should govern themselves, by "the
free expression of the people's will": "There will be
no organisation to do violence," he proclaimed. For
Tolstoy. the Dukhobors, or "Spirit Fighters", the
Universal Brotherhood, represented the embodiment of
non-resistance.
Their community rejected war and government itself.
Driven out by the Czarist regime into the remote,
barren Caucusus, they managed to survive and prosper by
their industry and careful agricultural techniques.
Then in the 1880s, when military conscription became
universal in Russia, their suffering began again. Their
young men were forced into the army and when they
refused to obey orders they were flogged, jailed and
consigned to penal battalions where cruelty was the
norm. Tolstoy endeavoured to intercede on their behalf
with their central government, and he appealed to the
Czar's sister.
In 1899, the Dukhobors were given permission to
emigrate, and with financial help from English Quakers,
most of them resettled in Canada. Perhaps the Czarist
regime calculated that this nonconforming,
non-assimilable element might create unrest in the
general population and were therefore better sent
outside (like the Soviet Jews today). At any rate, this
solution meant that the regime remained unaffected by
their campaign of resistance to government (which was
subsequently directed against the Canadian
authorities).
In a sense, Tolstoy had connived at a cop-out: and
perhaps this oblique response to attthoritarian
repression is the reason why the Soviet dissidents in
the l970s do not include him among the nineteenth
century rebels to whom they look for inspiration,
despite his powerful Christian philosophy, which is
closely akin to their own.
Tolstoy, of course, totally rejected organised
Christianity and was excommunicated by the Orthodox
Church. Hopefully, he looked to Asians who had adopted
the Christian religion as intermediaries to show to the
West the difference between established doctrine and
spiritual truth, to "expose the contradictions in the
midst of which we live without noting them", as he
wrote. Tolstoy's writings on nonviolence, such as The
Kingdom of God is Within You, made a strong appeal to
many Indians. One leader of the East Indian community
in British Columbia approached Tolstoy for advice on
how they might combat the hostility and discrimination
practiced by White Canada against them. Tolstoy replied
in his Letter to a Hindu urging them to be true to
themselves and to resist oppression nonviolently. This
letter made an enormous impression on Gandhi, who
started a correspondence with the aged Russian in
1908.
Although Tolstoy became ever more immersed in the
teaching of Christ towards his life's end, there is
some indication that his last dramatic action-the
flight from his wife-was inspired by the example of
Gautama Buddha. It will be remembered that Gautama, as
a prince, with a beautiful wife and worldly riches,
decided that in order to obtain enlightenment and truth
he must renounce all these worldly attachments. While
she lay asleep, Gautama, left behind wife and
possessions for ever. So did Leo Tolstoy in 1910,
though in his departure from home in search of truth he
was to find the answer in death.
Mahatma Gandhi
Thus far, we have watched the two strands of nonviolent
political strategy being woven-civil disobedience, or
defiance of the state, and the quest for individual and
social freedom or liberation. We have noticed isolated
experiments in their application, but we have witnessed
no systematic development of strategies, and no effort
to mobilise a political movement trained in non-violent
techniques. This comes with Gandhi, but it comes only
after several contrasting episodes of social and
political thought and action.
After his years in London, associated with
vegetarianism, theosophy, and Nonconformist
church-going, Gandhi arrived in South Africa, in 1895,
and was drawn into agitations for the rights of the
local Indians, already under attack. At first, he
adopted what he was later to call the politics of
"mendicancy", addressing appeals to the Colonial
Secretary in London, organising petitions, and writing
letters to newspapers. His appeal was almost
exclusively on behalf of the middle class Indians, and
his argument was that, unlike the Africans, they were
civilised and, therefore, deserved to be treated as
equals by the Whites. Gandhi believed that
discrimination was the result of Afrikaner bigotry,
especally in Kruger's Transvaal, and that he had only
to convince the Imperial Government in London of the
wrongs suffered by the Indians for justice to be
done.
When, in 1899, the British Empire went to war with the
Afrikaners, Gandhi sprang forward to do his bit.
Indians were not admitted to the fighting forces, but
Gandhi recruited an ambulance Unit of litter-bearers
from the local Indian community and led them into
battle. He was often under fire, and he rescued the son
of the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Roberts, as he fell,
fatally wounded. Lady Roberts never forgot, and sent Mr
Gandhi socks she had personally knitted every
Christmas, which he always appreciated: though he was
soon to give up socks for ever!
After the war ended, Gandhi returned to his law
practice. Pictures taken at this time show him wearing
a smart European suit and a very high stiff collar with
moustache neatly trimmed and hair carefully brushed
like an Edwardian English gentleman. Despite the defeat
of the Boers by the British Empire, the condition of
the Indians in South Africa actually deteriorated; but
Gandhi still hoped. In 1906, there was a revolt among
the Zulus of Natal, and once again Gandhi raised an
Indian ambulance unit. However, this experience proved
traumatic. It was a very minor revolt, but it brought
white troops with modern weapons up against African
guerrillas, and as so often in this situation the
tactics of overkill were employed. Gandhi was
horrified. His reaction was similar to that of Tolstoy
in the Crimean war. But whereas Tolstoy took many years
to reach his final renunciation, Gandhi's response had
all the signs to total and almost "instant"
conversion.
We may recall that in 1906 Gandhi was 37 years old:
this is an age at which, psychiatrists tell us, the
restless male is liable to rebel against his whole
style of life, and sometimes takes a radical new
direction. Never was this more true than with Gandhi.
The symbol of his changed life was his adoption of a
vow of brahmacharya or celibacy within marriage. This
symbolised his renunciation of worldly ways, and
atonement for the violence which he believed he had
inflicted upon his child wife. He reduced his sparse
diet even further, and went in for exercise and
physical labour. He wore plain drab clothes and shaved
his head. He broadened his political concept of the
Indian community to embrace the poorest and the
downtrodden.
Gandhi was much influenced by reading Unto This Last,
by John Ruskin: "That book marked the turning point in
my life" he later declared. At one stage of his
argument, Ruskin asked why the profession of the
soldier was more highly honoured in Victorian England
than that of the merchant. He offers this answer: "The
soldier's trade, verily and essentially, is not slaying
but being slain". The soldier, ultimately, is prepared
for sacrifice: "Truly the man who does not know when to
die does not know how to live".
This accorded with Gandhi's own experience. His
stretcher bearers were all unskilled labourers, brought
to South Africa under the indenture system to work
under conditions of exploitation and bondage. And yet,
under stress, they had shown courage and nobility.
Possessing little or nothing, they knew how to share
life 'with and sacrifice for one another. It was from
the patient capacity to endure suffering of the Indian
labourers that Gandhi drew his new conception of
politics, satyagraha.
The movement was sparked off by the alteration of the
law in the Transvaal requiring all Indians to register
and obtain a certificate in order to reside and work
there. Only limited numbers would be allowed to remain,
and new immigration would be severely restricted. At a
mass public meeting it was agreed to defy the law and
accept imprisonment as the inevitable consequence.
Gandhi called upon his followers to take a sacred oath
to resist. But he insisted that this must be each man's
personal decision, individually arrived at, and only
"if the inner voice assures him that he has the
requisite strength to carry it through". As yet, the
movement was called "passive resistance", and when
asked what had led him to this course, Gandhi quoted
the Sermon on the Mount: "resist not him that is evil".
"It was the New Testament which really awakened me to
the rightness and value of Passive Resistance," he told
an interviewer, adding "The Bhagavadgita deepened the impression and
Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You gave it
permanent form".
The British government hesitated before enforcing the
new law, and this gave an opportunity for Gandhi to
journey to London and argue the case with British
political leaders. His visit coincided with the opening
of a new development in the women's suffrage movement
in England. Three days after Gandhi reached London, the
suffragettes demonstrated in the lobby of the House of
Commons, and eleven women were arrested. In Court, they
refused to pay fines and were sentenced to three months
in jail. Their action encouraged other women to
demonstrate and face imprisonment.
Gandhi was outstanding among Indian leaders in
respecting women as equals, and he was to choose women
as some of his most trusted political comrades. Now,
lie identified with the suffragettes because, although
equal with men, they were treated as unequal; and also
because they were not demanding privileges but were
asking for their rights, wrongly withheld. Writing for
his paper, Indian Opinion, Gandhi observed
"Today the country is laughing at
them and they have only only a few people on their
side. But undaunted these women work on, steadfast in
their cause. They are bound to succeed and gain the
franchise for the simple reason that deeds are better
than words. . . . If women display such courage will
the Transvaal Indians fail in their duty and be
afraid of jail? Or would they rather consider jail a
palace and readily go there? When that time comes,
India's bonds will snap of themselves".
When Gandhi returned to South Africa he
continued to follow the suffragettes' campaign,
reporting their work in his paper, in particular the
"Women's Parliaments", as they were called. These took
the form of rallies at Caxton Hall, London, followed by
a mass match on Parliament. The women were harassed on
the march by mounted police, but plodded on, and into
the central lobby, where they were arrested and again
went to jail instead of paying fines. Gandhi's rather
endearing liking for the British upper classes emerged
in his singling out Mrs Cobden Sanderson, daughter of
Richard Cobden, and Mrs Despard, sister of General
French, for special praise, emphasising that they were
elderly and used to comfort, and yet accepted police
harrasment and jail for the advancement of their
cause.
There was soon an opportunity to test the ability of
the Indians to equal the courage of the suffragettes.
Gandhi felt that they ought to be able to express their
belief in Indian terms; also he was dissatisfied with
the negative connotations of "passive resistance". So
he ran a competition in Indian Opinion for the best
suggestion, and satyagraha was adopted as the name. The
term is often translated "soul force". Satya means
truth, and also sacrifice; agralia means firmness or
insistence. Gandhi explained, "my aim is in doing good
against evil." There has been endless argument about
whether satyagraha actually embodies a traditional
Indian concept from the Bhagavadgita. Here, we may
briefly conclude that Gandhi took an old concept,
satya, and reshaped it into something new and in a
sense different. After Gandhi, it was impossible to go
back to the old form.
We cannot follow events in the next two years in
detail: Gandhi went to jail three times, and hundreds
went with him. The congestion this caused in the
Transvaal prisons embarrassed the authorities and there
were negotiations. Gandhi was always ready to
compromise, but he insisted that any settlement must
give "honour" to the Indians, i.e., their self-respect
must be recognised. Meanwhile, the British Government
was actively negotiating to transfer imperial
responsibilities to a self-governing white South
Africa. The Indians urged Gandhi to go to London to
safeguard their rights, and in 1909 he paid another
visit.
During his 18 weeks in London he spent much of his time
meeting suffragette leaders like Emmeline Pankhurst and
attending their rallies. The women's movement was
attaining a high pitch of militancy. The breaking of
windows in public buildings was now a frequent tactic.
Sentenced to jail, the suffragettes went on hunger
strike. Gandhi reported this new development in Indian
Opinion. At first he made no mention of the window
breaking, of which he thoroughly disapproved, but when
they invaded Mr Asquith's holiday residence he felt
compelled to condemn what he saw as violence. In
explanation, he suggested "Some of these women have
grown impatient". But he added "There is no room for
impatience in satyagraha. . . Indian satyagrahis must
realise from this that the women are not satyagrahis
but are resorting to physical force. For a certainty,
they will suffer a setback now". He continued to praise
their courage and dedication but he condemned their
change of strategy, as he saw it. If women gained
access to politics through violence, then their entry
into the political arena would not serve to alter the
old game of power politics. They would be just like
those men who had repressed them.
There was a split in the women's movement over the
militancy issue, and General French's sister, Mrs
Despard, organised the nonviolent Women's Freedom
League. They adopted the tactic of the "vigil", what
would properly be called "peaceful picketIng", outside
parliament, during all the hours it was in session.
Gandhi praised Mrs Despard's "spiritual resistance", as
he termed it.
Back in South Africa, the Indian campaign now
approached its climax. Gandhi broadened the issues in
the struggle from these affecting only the Transvaal,
demanding especially abolition of the £ 3 tax
which all the Indian labourers had to pay for each
member of their family when they were released from the
restrictions of indenture. Gandhi now confronted the
South African politicians given power by the British
Government, in particular, Jan Christian Smuts. Both
men were a strange mixture of the seer and the prophet
and the shrewd political fixer, though I would argue
that the "mix" was in strikingly different proportions
in each. The imperial rulers in London anxiously
awaited the outcome of this encounter between the
representatives of the white people of the British
Empire with the non-white, hitherto regarded as the
helots of the imperial system.
Gandhi's headquarters were at Tolstoy Farm, a
cooperative settlement which he organised outside
Johannesburg on the lines of Ruskin's challenge: "How
much use, for food, knowledge, or joy, this that you
have bought can be put?" At Tolstoy Farm, he trained a
group of volunteers in nonviolent methods. Most were
Indians, but one or two were Chinese and some were
Europeans. Many were women. All were dedicated to the
cause putting whatever material assets they possessed
into the common stock.
Declared Gandhi: "Tolstoy Farm proved
to be a centre of spiritual purification and penance
for the final campaign". From 1910, the struggle
intensified. By now, Gandhi had familiarised himself
with the writings of Thoreau and found himself very
much in sympathy with his robust rejection of
over-powerful government: "The State represents
violence in a concentrated and organised form", he
wrote. "The individual has a soul, but the State is a
soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence
to which it owes its very existence". The only way to
create change was to change the attitude of white South
Africans towards their Indian compatriots. This might
be done by demonstrating that the Indians had as much
of bravery, dignity, solidarity, as the whites.
By now, the eyes of the world had turned towards the
struggle in South Africa. Liberal opinion in Britain
and America was critical of the powers assumed by the
new white government. Opinion in India, from the most
conservative to the most radical, was vociferous in
condemning the humiliations inflicted on their
compatriots. In 1913, Gandhi resolved to launch a
full-scale satyagraha campaign. It would take the form
of a march from Natal into the Transvaal, an action
that broke South African law.
At first, a party of sixteen, including Gandhi's wife,
Kasturbai, made the march. They were arrested and
jailed. He then called upon the Indians working under
indenture in the Natal coal mines to go on strike in
protest against the discriminatory laws. Three thousand
came out, and were soon joined by 1,500 Indian railway
workers. The managers ejected the strikers from their
quarters. Gandhi found himself with thousands of
half-starved supporters, camping out, awaiting his
orders. He called upon them to follow him in a mass
march to the Transvaal border. Symbolically, he cast
aside western clothes and donned the coarse garments of
an Indian industrial worker. He never wore European
dress again. Then, taking a staff in his hand, he led
them on their way.
The march was covered by reporters from many countries
and the authorities hesitated to take drastic action.
Messages were sent to Gandhi, urging him to call it
off. Still, the motley army marched on, and only when
they were well inside the Transvaal border were they
all arrested.
There were far too many prisoners to lock up in the
Transvaal jails, but Smuts thought of a way to deal
with the Indians. They were taken back to the mine
compounds, which were turned into jails. The white
mining supervisors were enrolled as warders and the
prisoners were ordered underground. The orders were
defied, and the Indians were subjected to increasingly
severe penalties. Some died from their treatment. It
was noticeable that one or two of the middle-class
satyagrahis appealed against these privations, and
asked for special treatment. But indentured labourers
silently endured: for them, suffering was a way of
life.
Gandhi was sentenced to one year's rigorous
imprisonment. Thereupon, the entire Indian labour force
in the Durban area went on strike, bringing city life
to a standstill. Protest in India was led by the
British Viceroy. In perhaps the most remarkable speech
ever delivered by a Viceroy, Lord Hardinge
congratulated the sat~agrahis who "have violated, as
they have intended to violate, those laws with full
knowledge of the penalties involved . . . In all this
they have the sympathies of India-deep and burning-and
not only of India but of those like myself".
This could not go on: the Viceroy of India was
endorsing civil disobedience in a British Dominion.
Smuts called for Hardinge's removal, but the British
government declined to act. Smuts had to do something:
the world was turning against white South Africa. He
appointed a commission of inquiry into the Indian's
grievances and he let Gandhi and the other satyagrahis
out of jail. Kasturbai was so ill she had become an old
woman overnight. The commission recommended the
abolition of the £ 3 tax and other concessions.
Gandhi hesitated: should he lead another campaign to
secure everything the Indians demanded? Smuts offered a
compromise formula which recognised the Indians'
"honour," and Gandhi signed an agreement. He left for
London to consult his friends and allies. In his
farewell to South Africa he called for equality for the
Indians, and added: "We can gain everything without
hurting anybody and through soulforce or satyagraha
alone." Typically, Smuts commented: "The saint has
departed from our shores. I trust he will never
return."
This was the highest point reached by Gandhian
Satyagraha in South Africa. Not because the campaign
was a success: in the years that followed, the rights
of the Indians were again whittled away. It was because
downtrodden South African Indians had fully grasped the
meaning of nonviolence. Whatever gains they had
achieved, or failed to achieve, they had realised their
full potential as men and women, capable of behaving as
superior beings, and they had challenged white South
Africa without raising the level of hatred in that
hate-ridden country. While in prison, Gandhi made a
pair of sandals which he gave to General Smuts. Smuts
wore them for the rest of his life, for Gandhi had made
them well. Their personal relationship was strained
many times. But Smuts, so calculating and ruthless with
other political foes, always felt compelled to respond
to a call from Gandhi.
Returning to India in 1915, Gandhi began to apply
nonviolence to social and industrial problems. When the
Ahmedabad millworkers went on strike, Gandhi
investigated their grievances. As it happened, the
leader of the millowners was one of his friends and
supporters. Nevertheless, Gandhi pronounced that a 35
per cent increase in wages ought to be conceded. The
bosses stood firm; the workers began to give up. Seeing
that they were too cowardly to implement satyagraha
themselves, Gandhi announced that he would fast until
his claim was accepted. The political fast is
frequently employed as a means of defiance or coercion.
Gandhi said that one must fast as towards a lover; to
persuade, not to overcome. Quite rapidly, a formula was
found which both sides could accept. Gandhi broke his
fast, declaring that the millowners' leader had
captured his heart: "It was a pleasure to be pitched
against him."
Next followed a complete reversal of roles by Gandhi.
During the summer of 1918, he became a recruiting
officer for the British-Indian army: "No stone will be
left unturned by me to offer recruits in their
thousands", he told the Viceroy. When his puzzled
friends demanded an explanation, Gandhi replied that
the people of the area where he was
recruiting-Gujarat-had become cowardly and spiritless
(as witness the Ahmedabad example). They must learn
bravery and discipline. The first stage towards
becoming a satyagrahi was to be a himsak or warrior.
Even in South Africa, Gandhi told Charlie Andrews, who
had been at his side, some had accepted his methods
only because "they were too weak to undertake methods
of violence". India had no real tradition of pacifism;
moral force "is not in us". Hence physical courage must
first be acquired before spiritual courage was
possible.
Gandhi undertook the recruiting drive because in 1918
he still believed in the British Empire. Next year, the
Government of India introduced a code of repression,
designed to combat Bolshevik revolution. Gandhi decided
to lead a nation-wide protest. His first intention was
to call a national day of prayer, but events got out of
hand. There were violent clashes in which British and
Indians were killed. Gandhi announced that he had
committed a "Himalayan Blunder". He called upon his
followers to discontinue the campaign, adding, "The
time may come for me to offer satyagraha against
ourselves". Most Indian politicians regarded Gandhi's
reversal as a sign of weakness. It was left to
Rabindranath Tagore-who at this time hailed Gandhi as
Mahatma, to see his action as "fearlessness": he had
lifted "moral power above brute forces," said the
Poet.
Two years later, Gandhi directed another nationwide
campaign against British rule. This time the strategy
carefully worked out, the people of India would
disassociate themselves from everything that was
British. They would not attend schools, colleges, or
the law courts. They would not buy Lancashire cloth.
But there was a positive aspect to the campaign also.
Gandhi wished to create solidarity between Hindus and
Muslims and to heal the divisions within the Hindu
caste system: "The instant India is purified, India
becomes free, and not a moment earlier", he told
Andrews.
The opening of the campaign was signalled by
reproducing slogans from Thoreau's writings on city
walls throughout India. Thousands of idealistic
students quit their studies. Plans to mobilise them for
work among the rural poor were less successful: most
were "simply slacking" Charlie Andrews decided.
There was increasing emphasis on the boycott of foreign
cloth, and shopkeepers were forced to burn bales
imported from Lancashire. There was ~'a subtle appeal
to racial feeling in that word foreign", Andrews told
Gandhi, ". . . the picture of you lighting that great
pile shocked me intensely . . . and seemed to me a form
almost of violence". Gandhi justified these acts by
arguing that it was better for hatred to be purged by
action against things, rather than against men. Even
this argument failed when twenty-two Indian constables
were deliberately burned to death at Chauri Chaura
police station. Once again, Gandhi castigated his
followers and suspended civil disobedience. The young
JawaharIal Nehru asked why a national campaign must
stop because of one untoward incident. To Nehru,
freedom for India was more important than the
realisation of freedom within Indians. He had no real
use for Gandhi's dictum: "Self-government is
self-knowledge which is self-control".
In subsequent years Gandhi hesitated before attempting
another nationwide campaign. He returned to individual
satyagraha and fasting, in order to attain Hindu-Muslim
unity and to abolish Untouchability. Not until 1930 did
he launch another national campaign, and this was even
more carefully orchestrated. Gandhi decided to frame
the campaign around the government monopoly of salt
manufacture. Government levied a minute tax, calculated
by one Indian historian to to cost lcss than three
annas (now 20 paise) per head per annum. This rather
strange grievance was chosen by Gandhi because it
symbolised the artificial western grip on India's
"natural" or "traditional" economy. Gandhi announced
that he would lead a march from Ahmedabad to to Dandi
on the seacoast, two hundred miles away, where he would
break the law by making salt from saline crystals.
Gandhi was now 61 years old. The pace he set on the
march tired out men half his age. Many compared this
journey to the final journey by Jesus to Jerusalm.
Gandhi was accompanied by a donkey, symbol of humility
and patience. Some thought he believed he was going to
his death. Police agents reported a remarkable rise in
the sale of Bibles on the route to Dandi. The march
lasted from 12 March to 6 April.
Gandhi expected to be arrested any moment, but the
Viceroy, Lord Irwin (later Halifax) stayed his hand.
The arrival at Dandi could have been an absurd
anticlimax, for the beach was a bank of mud. There was
no salt anywhere. Undeterred, Gandhi solemnly shovelled
the wet mud into a bucket and boiled up a nasty brew,
pronouncing that he had produced salt. All over India,
satyagrahis joined him in making salt.
The government still waited, and only after the
campaign had taken the usual turn towards violence,
with bomb throwing and assassination weapons, did the
authorities arrest Gandhi and the other leaders.
Irwin had been perplexed about how to handle the
nonviolent protest. He did not hesitate to clamp down
ruthlessly after the eruption of violence, Gandhi was
in jail once more, but this was no solution. As he told
Charlie Andrews, in jail, he was "as happy as a bird".
Irwin, like Harding, was an unusual Viceroy: he knew
that Gandhi could not be handled like any ordinary
politician. He asked for cooperation, inviting him "to
place the seal of friendship once again upon the
relations of two peoples whom unhappy circumstances
have latterly estranged".
Gandhi responded. He joined the search for a
settlement, and after much hesitation (he was waiting
for a call from the "inner voice") he agreed to come to
London for a conference. The conference was a failure,
but the visit was by no means a failure. Gandhi
captured the imagination of the British people. He took
time off to visit Lancashire in order to explain to
unemployed mill hands why India was boycotting their
product. The evidence suggests that the workers
responded to him though the manufacturers did not.
Gandhi always believed that it was possible to convince
the British people that they had no moral right to
govern India as an imperial possession. He told
Andrews: "You have to convince the religious people of
Great Britain that the moral character of British rule
in India is now called in question. You have to bring
back to us the sense that the British really desire to
do justice in India". For India he insisted: "If we do
the right thing we shall come out right". Honesty
compelled him to add: "Many bad men have crept into the
Congress" though "there are some who are 24 carats
gold".
Independence brought disillusionment. Congress was
power-hungry. Gandhi announced that "the scales have
fallen from my eyes". He added, "The one great problem
. . . is the moral degradation into which the men in
Congress circles have fallen . . . The taste for
political power has turned their heads . . . Now that
the goal has been reached, all moral restrictions have
lost their power on most of the fighters in the great
struggle".
Conclusion
The contrast between the ideal and the reality has led
many to conclude that Gandhi was a "magnificent
failure". And it is true that the Gandhian ideal is
practiced in India today only by small dedicated groups
of disciples. But should we judge Gandhi and
nonviolence only by the test of short-term success? Do
we dismiss Gandhi and Tolstoy and Thoreau because their
countrymen have not followed their precepts?
In my view, politics is concerned only formally with
power and government and fundamentally with the moral development of
human beings. Politics is about people, and how
they endeavour to face the challenge of their times.
M.N. Roy, the international communist who founded
Radical Humanism, put, his beliefs this way: "When a
man really wants freedom and to live in a democratic
society he may not be able to free the whole world . .
. but he can to a large extent at least free himself by
behaving as a rational and moral being, and if he can
do this, others around him can do the same, and these
again will spread freedom by their example." I don't
think I can put it any better. If that is the goal,
then Gandhi is more relevant than ever, both in India
and in the West.
