Satyagraha as a weapon

Salil Misra

The question is: can the Gandhian technique of non-violence work in times of global anger, rage, insecurity and ruthlessness? Quite clearly we don’t know. Gandhi thought it would. But then, he was an incorrigible optimist with a great faith in the innate goodness among all humans

Is Gandhi relevant in today’s world? Many would argue that his relevance ended after the successful culmination of the struggle for Indian freedom. But it is necessary to see Gandhi not simply as a great leader from the past, but as an important resource for organising the entire gamut of politics in contemporary times. Particularly, the way modern world has shaped up, Gandhi is not just relevant today. He has actually become indispensable.  

The 20th century was truly revolutionary with huge transformative potential. It was fundamentally different from the preceding centuries in many respects. It was a century of ‘empowerment’ all over. State systems became much more powerful, backed by modern technology, and often popular support. It was not easy to smash and topple a government through violent insurrection, as was imagined by some 19th century philosophers. At the same time, it was also a century of peoples’ empowerment.

Considerable power also flowed to the people, who were transformed as vigilant agents rather than passive subjects. A number of European colonial states were challenged by peoples’ struggles which succeeded in toppling these governments. This fact — an overall empowerment both of the states and the people — had an important implication for the 20th century. It was much more conflict-prone than earlier centuries. The conflicts of the 20th century could occur along multiple axes — between one or more states, between state and people in the form of a popular struggle against the government, and between sections of population in the form of a civil war. Ethnicity, language, culture and religion have all become vehicles for many conflicts in the modern world.

At the same time, the nature of these conflicts — both actual and potential — has also undergone a transformation. Modern conflicts, unlike their pre-modern counterparts, are much more about principles than simply about ‘interests’. The fact is that people who fight for principles are less likely to compromise than those fighting simply for interest. This imparts a complexity and an irresolvable quality to most modern conflicts. Moreover, modern wars are fought not just between the rival armies but between populations as a whole. And finally, a possibility of total destruction of the entire planet has become a reality in the 20th century, no longer a distant and improbable nightmare predicted by traditional religions. A total annihilation of the planet is a real possibility, made possible by modern technology. We are closer to it than ever before in the past.

The inherent paradox

The 20th century has been a century of paradoxes. There have been real accomplishments, progress, conquest of human will, triumph over hunger and poverty. It has been truly a revolutionary century. But, on the other hand, more people were killed in man-made violence in the 20th century than ever before. The two World Wars and genocides took more human lives than in the previous centuries. A century of progress was also a century of war and catastrophe. There is every possibility that all these contradictory possibilities generated by the 20th century will continue in the 21st century.

It is in this kind of a world that Gandhi and his methods emerge as indispensable. He provides a framework for not just organising struggles, but also settling disputes. Gandhi actually offers a wholesome paradigm of conflict resolution, rather than that of victory or defeat. Gandhi posits conflict resolution as a viable alternative to victory or retributive justice or simply revenge. His famous maxim “an eye for an eye can only make the whole world go blind” acquires relevance in this sense. While in South Africa, he perfected his techniques of Satyagraha and wrote a book Satyagraha in South Africa after returning to India. The purpose of the book, according to him, was to present Satyagraha as an important political weapon for resolving the disputes of the world. He emphasised: “An honest Satyagrahi must always be ready for an honourable settlement.” While promoting Satyagraha, he also took care to make a distinction between satyagraha and duragraha (moral blackmail). The latter was a form of blackmail, even though it might superficially resemble Satyagraha. Satyagraha was an instrument for resolving disputes and for generating consensus around truth and justice.

The universal struggle

For Gandhi, the objective of a moral non-violent struggle was not to score a victory but win over the opponent by appealing to his heart and conscience. His famous statement — hate the evil, not the evil-doer — acquires significance in this context. It had important implications for the freedom struggle against British imperialism. It ensured that the struggle remained firmly geared to certain principles and did not degenerate into a reverse racial struggle of non-White people against White Europeans. It enabled Gandhi to gather support for the Indian nationalist cause from a large number of British people and from British media and civil society. In a famous appeal to the British, Gandhi asked the British to get off the backs of Indian people so that they could all hold hands and walk together. Gandhi used to emphasise that the system of imperialism was bad above all for the people of England as it deprived them of much goodness that they were capable of. Thus, all his struggles acquired universality. They were necessary for everybody, the oppressor as well as the victim.

It was this aspect of Gandhi’s technique of a moral non-violent struggle that appealed to many leaders and struggles outside India — Lech Walesa of Poland, Alexander Dubcek of erstwhile Czechoslovakia, and Martin Luther King (Jr.) and Nelson Mandela in their struggles against racism in the USA and South Africa, respectively. It would be true to say that in India his techniques of struggle have been reduced to mere tokenism and people have often practised Duragraha in the name of Satyagraha. But outside India, Gandhi has been applied very creatively. Whereas in India, people have been keen on mechanically following Gandhian techniques, in other countries, political struggles have looked at Gandhi as a resource and made good use of his techniques.

The Gandhian way

But is Gandhi’s Satyagraha capable of effectively dealing with the bomb — both the atom and the nuclear? After the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Gandhi became quite obsessed with this question and wrote a lot on it. The big question is: is there a Gandhian way of stopping the atom or nuclear bomb? The answer has to be both ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

In Gandhi’s approach to this question, what was more important was not the bomb but the human hand that held the bomb, ready to drop it on innocent millions. Gandhi dealt extensively with this question in the last interview of his life, conducted by the American journalist Margaret Bourke-White, who was in India in 1947 to capture on camera the monumental changes sweeping through India. The interview was just a few hours before Gandhi was killed. Bourke-White described this interview in her book Halfway to Freedom published in 1950. Towards the end of the interview, she asked Gandhi quite bluntly how he would encounter the atom bomb. Would he meet it with non-violence? Gandhi replied in a very low but resolute voice: “I would meet it by prayerful action.” Bourke-White persisted with her enquiry and asked him what he meant by it. “I will not go underground. I will not go into shelter. I will come out in the open and let the pilot see I have not the face of evil against him. [But] the pilot will not see our faces from his great height, I know. But that longing in our hearts that he will not come to harm would reach up to him and his eyes would be opened.” Gandhi then added on the end of the war: “It is a question now whether the victors are really victors or victims of our own lust. Because the world is not at peace. It is still more dreadful.”

The question is: can this Gandhian technique work in times of global anger, rage, insecurity and ruthlessness? Quite clearly we don’t know. Gandhi thought it would. But then, he was an incorrigible optimist with a great faith in the innate goodness among all humans. The greatest catastrophe facing all humanity has two dimensions — capacity for annihilation and the desire for annihilation. The capacity has been produced by modern technology. But the desire has to be a product of human mind and heart, driven by excessive visceral hatred. Gandhi thought he had perfected the technique of working on human mind to transform it. It was this faith that remained unshaken and supreme in Gandhi till the last moment of his life. Was this faith justified? Again, we do not know. But we should know this much: if his technique doesn’t work, nothing else does either.

In Freud’s world

On this theme, it is possible to contrast the paradigm of Sigmund Freud with that of Gandhi. Freud gave us the crucial language with which to make sense of the (self) destructive nature of modern human civilisation. He saw collective, genocidal violence as rooted in human instincts residing somewhere in the subconscious. Upon this view, the individual instincts coalesce into a collective death-wish erupting into the barbarism of war and genocide. Freud was not very optimistic about the possibility of controlling this destructive instinct. “There is no likelihood of our being able to suppress humanity’s aggressive tendencies,” he wrote in a letter to Albert Einstein. Gandhi obviously would not agree. He had great faith in the innate goodness of all humans, saints and tyrants alike. Our basic nature is not to kill and eliminate, but to love and cooperate. Greed, violence, jealousy and coercion are not innate to humans but rather avoidable aberrations. Through human effort and persuasion, it should be possible to establish love and cooperation in the hearts of all humans, and thereby also in the social order.

Is Gandhian utopia anywhere close to the realm of possibility? Isn’t it too ambitious an agenda? Possibly so. Many would argue that it is simply not feasible. But who could possibly argue against its social desirability and supreme necessity? As Martin Luther King wrote in 1958: “The choice is no longer between violence and non-violence. It is either non-violence or non-existence.” It is quite clear that in the 21st century, Gandhi remains our best bet and the last hope.

  — The writer is Professor of History, Ambedkar University, Delhi