UNIT 7 GANDHI’S VIEWS ON NON-VIOLENCE

Structure
7.1 Introduction
Aims and Objectives
7.2 Meaning of Non-violent Resistance
7.3 The Intellectual Context
7.4 The Historical Context
7.5 The Means-Ends Problem
7.6 The Problem of Violence in Gandhi’s Own Words
7.7 Satyagraha and Non-violence
7.8 Critiques of Gandhi’s Non-Violent Strategy of Resistance
7.9 Summary
7.10 Terminal Questions
Suggested Readings

7.1 INTRODUCTION
The career of Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948) marked a watershed in the development
of non-violent struggle. In leading the struggle first against racial discrimination against
Indians in South Africa and then the struggle for Indian independence, Gandhi was the
first to combine a variety of tactics according to a strategic plan in a campaign of
explicitly non-violent action, and the first to conduct a series of campaigns toward long-
term goals. Deeply religious, practical, and experimental in temperament, Gandhi was a
shrewd, tireless, and efficient organiser who united cheerfulness with unshakable
determination. He was not only a political strategist but also a social visionary. Gandhi’s
non-violence had three main elements: 1) self-improvement (the effort to make oneself a
better person), 2) “constructive programme” (concrete work to create the new social
order aimed at), and 3) campaigns of resistance against evils that blocked the way
forward, such as the caste system and British colonial exploitation. Gandhi’s success in
linking mass action with non-violent discipline showed the enormous social power this
form of struggle could generate. This was based on Gandhi’s understanding of contemporary
political trends as well as everyday life.
Aims and Objectives
This unit will try to make you understand:
 Gandhi’s meaning of Ahimsa, its religious and philosophical roots in his ideology
 Its practical side and how Gandhi used it in conducting his Satyagraha and
 How he used it to fight many forms of domination, discrimination, prejudice and
subordination.
Gandhi’s views on Non-Violence 87

7.2 MEANING OF NON-VIOLENT RESISTANCE

Non-violent action is not simply any method of action which is not violent. Broadly
speaking, it means taking action that goes beyond normal institutionalised political methods
(voting, lobbying, letter writing, verbal expression) without injuring opponents. Non-violent
action, like war, is a means of waging conflict. It requires a willingness to take risks and
bear suffering without retaliation. On the most fundamental level, it is a means by which
people discover their social power. Non-violence is not the same thing as pacifism, for
which there are many words. Pacifism is a state of mind. It is passive; non-violence is
active. Pacifism is harmless and therefore easier to accept than non-violence, which is
dangerous. When Jesus said a victim should turn the other cheek, he was preaching
pacifism. But when he said an enemy should be won over through the power of love,
he was preaching non-violence. The central belief of non-violence is that forms of
persuasion that do not use physical force and do not cause suffering are more effectual.
Gandhi invented a word for it: Satyagraha, from satya, meaning truth, broadly meaning
it as “holding onto truth.”
Non-violent action takes three main forms: 1) protest and persuasion, 2) non-cooperation,
and 3) intervention.
The first category includes such activities as speech-making, picketing, petitions, vigils,
street theatre, marches, rallies, and sit-ins. When practised under conditions of governmental
tolerance, these methods can be comparatively insignificant; when the views expressed are
unpopular or controversial, or go against government policy, even the mildest of them may
require great courage and can have a powerful impact.
The second category involves active non-cooperation. In the face of institutional injustice
and discrimination, people may refuse to act in ways which are considered “normal”- to
work, buy, or obey. This largest category of non-violent action includes refusal to pay
taxes, withholding rent or utility payments, civil disobedience, draft resistance, fasting, and
more than fifty different kinds of boycotts and strikes. Non-cooperation can effectively
halt the normal functioning of society, depending on the type of action employed and how
general its use becomes.
Finally, there is non-violent intervention, which can be defined as the active inclusion and
unsettling presence of people in the natural processes of social institutions. This can
include sit-ins, occupations, obstructions of everyday business in offices, the streets, or
elsewhere, and creation of new social and economic institutions, including the establishment
of parallel governments which compete with the old order for sovereignty. These methods
tend to pose a more direct and instantaneous challenge than the other methods described
earlier and to bring either a faster success or sharper repression.

7.3 THE INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT

The ideas that shaped Gandhian non-violence were drawn both from Western and Indian
sources. The trial of Socrates as described in Plato’s Apology had a deep impact on
Gandhi. In 1908 he published a restatement of this work in English and Gujarati under
the title The Story of a Soldier of Truth. Socrates was a model for all those who would
resist non-violently the violence of the state. The moral principles of the Sermon on the
Mount, as interpreted in Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God Is within You (1893), had
a lifelong sway on him. Another of Tolstoy’s writings, Letter to a Hindu (1908), made
 88 Philosophy of Gandhi

Gandhi rethink the role of violence in the Indian society. Tolstoy had argued that the
British were able to hold India by violence because Indians themselves believed in
violence as the basis of society. That is why they submitted themselves to their rajas and
maharajas, and treated the ‘untouchables’ with extreme brutality. Under these circumstances,
the complaints of Indians against colonial violence seemed to him to look a lot like the
complaints of alcoholics against wine merchants. The removal of colonial violence would
not solve India’s problems. They would be solved only if Indians made non-violence the
basis of a new India. Gandhi was so convinced by the Letter that he translated and
published it in both English and Gujarati. Gandhi’s study of Western jurisprudence made
him a lifelong defender of the idea of the rule of law and the legitimacy of the limited,
constitutional state. The fight against violence needed such a state as its ally. Here Gandhi
departed from Tolstoy’s radical pacifism that rejected the state as such. John Ruskin’s
Unto This Last (1860) opened Gandhi’s eyes to the veiled structures of violence in
industrial capitalism. Gandhi paraphrased and published it in English and Gujarati (1908)
under the title Sarvodaya (The welfare of all), a title that he later gave to his own
economic philosophy. Finally, there was the question of nationalism and how to free it
from ethnic or religious or terrorist violence. Here he found help in the liberal nationalism
of Giuseppe Mazzini, whose An Essay on the Duties of Man, published in 1892,
became one of the recommended readings for all those who wanted to understand
Gandhi’s own basic work, Hind Swaraj (1909).
However, it was the Indian philosophical thought that helped Gandhi to assimilate the
ideas he had absorbed from the West. Here three philosophical traditions were noteworthy.
The first was the pacifist tradition of Jainism, as interpreted by Raichand—businessman,
poet and mystic, and a personal friend of Gandhi. His advice was that a non-violent way
of life was possible only if one withdrew from politics and concentrated all of one’s
energies on achieving inner harmony. Gandhi accepted the point about inner harmony but
rejected the idea of withdrawing from politics. On the contrary, he sought to link the
mission for inner harmony with that of outer harmony in society and polity. The philosophy
of yoga as expounded in the classic text, the Yogasutra of Patanjali, had also impressed
Gandhi greatly. Like Jainism, it too believed in the inappropriateness between maintaining
inner harmony and engaging in vigorous affairs of state. However, it had recommended
five moral qualities as being compulsory for inner harmony. Non-violence was one of
them; the other four were truthfulness, abstention from theft, celibacy, and self-control in
the use of material earthly wealth. Gandhi willingly integrated non-violence into his ethical
system—with one adaptation. He tailored it from being a moral virtue into a civic virtue,
thereby making it suitable for political action. But the philosophy that influenced him most
was that of the Bhagavad Gita. He interpreted it as teaching the negative lesson of the
senselessness of war. On the affirmative side, he interpreted it as teaching that the good
life called for the disinterested service of one’s fellow human beings, sustained by a deep
love of God. Obstacles to the good life came from violence and the unmanageable state
of the passions, notably anger, hatred, greed, and lust. Self-discipline, therefore, was the
psychological solution to non-violence. The philosophical basis underlying Gandhi’s theory
of non-violence is adapted from that core underpinning the Bhagavad Gita. Humans are
composites of body and soul (atman). As such, body force and soul force were both
seen as dynamic mechanism in human affairs-the first as a fact and the second as a norm.
The body was the source of violence and the passions; the soul was the cause of
kindness and of the knowledge of good and wickedness. It was because the divine soul
was a constitutive aspect of human beings that non-violence remained the model of their
behaviour. A materialistic and acquisitive view of human life, in Gandhi’s view, could not
Gandhi’s views on Non-Violence 89

justify, much less uphold, a non-violent way of life. The philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita
also gave Gandhi’s non-violence its ethical pragmatism. Since humans are composite
beings, faultless non-violence was possible only in the soul’s disembodied state, not in its
personified state. In its embodied state, the will to live always brought with it the will to
use power in legitimate and genuine self-defence. In the embodied state, one must always
abstain from blameworthy violence-that is, disgusting violence used for dishonest gains.
Defensive violence used in legitimate self-defence is not judged culpable.

7.4 THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Elements of Gandhi’s philosophy were rooted in the Indian religions of Jainism and
Buddhism. Both of these advocate ahimsa (non-violence), which is “absence of the desire
to kill or harm”. The Acaranga Sutra, a Jain text, describes the fundamental need for
non-violence: “All beings are fond of life; they like pleasure and hate pain, shun
destruction and like to live, they long to live. To all, life is dear”. Ahimsa is a way of
living. For Gandhi, ahimsa was the expression of the deepest love for all humans,
including one’s opponents; this non-violence therefore included not only a lack of physical
harm to them, but also a lack of hatred or ill-will towards them. Gandhi rejected the
traditional dichotomy between one’s own side and the “enemy;” he believed in the need
to persuade opponents of their injustice and prejudice, not to punish them, and in this
way to win their friendship.
Gandhi also firmly believed that if violence was used to achieve any end – even if it was
employed in the name of justice- the result would be more violence. He, for instance,
discarded the idea of a just war. But such practicality and expediency in matters of non-
violence was irrelevant to Gandhi. Thomas Merton writes:
“In Gandhi’s mind, non-violence was not simply a political tactic which was supremely
useful and efficacious in liberating his people from foreign rule. [. . .] On the contrary,
the spirit of non-violence sprang from an inner realization of spiritual unity in himself.”
Gandhi’s main tactic in his fight against the British was what he called Satyagraha, which
means “Soul-Force” or “The power of truth”. Gandhi developed Satyagraha as the
practical extension of ahimsa and love; it meant standing firmly behind one’s ideals, but
without hatred. Satyagraha took the form of civil disobedience and non-cooperation with
evil. Civil disobedience involved breaking a specific law if it was believed to be unjust,
and then facing the consequences. The Salt March of 1930 was one of Gandhi’s greatest
successes in civil disobedience. Salt was an essential item and the British monopoly on
salt production had led to massive taxes on the vital substance.
The other element of Satyagraha, non-cooperation with evil, consisted of pulling out all
support for an unjust system, such as the British rule of India. This tactic need not break
any law, but might include boycotting British products, refusing to work for British
employers, pulling one’s children out of British schools, refusing to supply the British with
services, and not paying taxes. In 1920, after the British army massacred 400 unarmed
demonstrators, Gandhi organised a nation-wide Satyagraha which used non-cooperation
techniques such as the ones above, as well as public demonstrations, in order to
“withdraw Indian support from the vast, monstrous, machine of Empire until it ground to
a halt”. Sadly, however, at the end of British Empire, Gandhi’s dream was not rewarded.
Gandhi was horror-struck by the communal conflict in India, and by the resulting calls for
the creation of a separate Muslim state of Pakistan. Widespread distrust and hatred was
 90 Philosophy of Gandhi

growing between Hindus and Muslims and, on the eve of India’s independence, riots
erupted all over India. The country became a bloodbath, in which it was estimated that
a million lives were lost. Many believed that Gandhi’s non-violence had failed. But had
it? In these “months of chaos and terror,” Gandhi spent his time in the most violent areas:
“Each night he preached Peace and Love and prayed,” Writes the Historian Stanley
Wolpert, “Gandhi walked from village to village through the heart of that violent madness,
preaching ahimsa. Mohandas K. Gandhi, the “Great Soul,” was anything but a failure. In
a world seemingly dominated by violence and hatred, Gandhi reincarnated the ancient idea
of Ahimsa, non-violence, as the only way of living in peace.

7.5 THE MEANS-ENDS PROBLEM

Gandhi defined Non-violence or ahimsa as any ‘action based on refusal to do harm’. It
was not simply a willingness not to kill only. Gandhi refined the meaning of the word in
the following words:
“Ahimsa is not the crude thing it has been made to appear. Not to hurt any living thing
is no doubt a part of ahimsa. But it is its least expression. The principle of himsa is hurt
by every evil thought, by undue haste, by lying, by hatred, by wishing ill to anybody.”
In this wider way, Gandhi tried to relate the concept not as a merely negative state of
harmlessness but to his notion of love, of doing good even to the evil-doer. But this did
not mean to help the evil-doer in continuing his mischief or tolerating any form of
domination or oppression passively. On the contrary, Gandhi evolved the technique to
resist the oppressors by dissociating from him. Gandhi, while identifying love and non-
violence, linked it to the problem of means and ends and to his conception of truth. The
idea of love and truth were closely related in Gandhi’s scheme of things so much so that
it was difficult to separate them. For him, ahimsa was the means and truth was the end.
Gandhi believed that means ought to be practical, within the easy reach of anyone
courageous enough to practise it. In other words, only selected few could have arms, but
non-violence could be used as a weapon by everybody. Truth, a relative truth, was the
goal or the end towards which a person must strive to reach because in Gandhian
perception absolute truth as well as absolute non-violence was difficult to achieve. Gandhi
believed that perfection was not within human capacity but if we maintain a balance
between means and ends, then it was within human reach to attain the goal. The testing
ground of truth was, however, and must be according to Gandhi, non-violence or refusal
to do harm. The use of violence, from Gandhian viewpoint, would destroy the truth, on
whichever side it lay because that was harmful to human needs. Non-violence or ahimsa
became for Gandhi, the sole criterion, the only determining yardstick by which to judge
human action. It was the supreme value that separated brute from a civilised human-being.
Gandhi’s overall approach in many things was quite flexible, but here was his supreme
dogma. Briefly stated, the only test of truth was action based on the refusal to do harm
to others. Gandhi realised that he was putting forward a means to fight injustice and any
form of domination but this was only an ideal. There were bound to be some limitations
to achieve this ideal. But Gandhi emphasised the need to sharpen this means of struggle.
How is it to be done? It meant to undergo conscious suffering in one’s cause, without
submitting to the will of offender or wrong-doer by pitting against the tyrant one’s whole
soul-force. Self-suffering in Satyagraha was neither a kind of ‘weapon of the weak’, nor
was not cowardice but an instrument of moral persuasion. The resort to self-suffering was
a kind of substitute for violence to others, one directed it inwards towards self-suffering,
Gandhi’s views on Non-Violence 91

injury to one’s own person rather than harming others. Refusing to indulge in violence and
inviting suffering upon oneself and yet not submitting to the humiliation and dominance was
the basic essence of Gandhi’s Non-violent approach to conflict resolution.
Gandhi opposed the utilitarian approach which subordinated means to ends. He argued
that if means are completely subordinated to ends then the ends which will be realised
would be quite different from the one the human actors initially visualised. Gandhi stressed
that as human beings, we cannot control results. Since results or the final outcome was
never sure in Gandhian scheme of things, Gandhi focussed only on the means or methods.
Emphasising the organic link between ends and means, Gandhi said: “The means may be
likened to a seed, the end to a tree; and there is just the same inviolable connection
between the means and ends as there is between the seed and the tree.” If the society
is a kind of brotherhood of its individual members, how can this brotherhood be
maintained and protected by lies and violence? In a similar way, if one paves the road
to power with both corpses (however justified that may be) and good intentions, it is
likely that with the passage of time good intentions will get diluted and corpses would be
more and more numerous. Gandhi never doubted the efficacy of non-violent methods of
struggle. Given a just cause, capacity for endless suffering and avoidance of violence,
victory is certain, such was his approach. This approach was against the non-active
pacifism. Inaction under the conditions of oppression and tyranny, according to Gandhi,
was ‘rank cowardice and unmanly’ and he said that he would rather see someone
incapable of non-violence resist violently than not to resist at all. He often argued that
violence was any day preferable to impotence.

7.6 THE PROBLEM OF VIOLENCE IN GANDHI’S

OWN WORDS
We here reproduce Gandhi’s own article written by him in his Journal Young India in
1920. It would give you an idea about the way Gandhi thought about the violence and
non-violence problem.
The Doctrine of Sword: M.K.Gandhi
In this age of the rule of brute force, it is almost impossible for anyone to believe that
anyone else could possibly reject the law of final supremacy of brute force. And so I
receive anonymous letters advising me that I must not interfere with the progress of non-
co-operation even though popular violence may break out. Others come to me and
assuming that secretly I must be plotting violence, inquire when the happy moment for
declaring open violence to arrive. They assure me that English never yield to anything but
violence secret or open. Yet others I am informed, believe that I am the most rascally
person living in India because I never give out my real intention and that they have not
a shadow of a doubt that I believe in violence just as much as most people do.
Such being the hold that the doctrine of the sword has on the majority of mankind, and
as success of non-co-operation depends principally on absence of violence during its
pendency and as my views in this matter affect the conduct of large number of people,
I am anxious to state them as clearly as possible.
I do believe that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence I would
advise violence. Thus when my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he
been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908, whether he should have run
 92 Philosophy of Gandhi

away and seen me killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he
could and wanted to use, and defended me, I told him that it was his duty to defend
me even by using violence. Hence it was that I took part in the Boer War, the so called
Zulu rebellion and the late war. Hence also do I advocate training in arms for those who
believe in the method of violence. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to
defend her honour than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a
helpless witness to her own dishonour.
But I believe that non-violence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly
than punishment, forgiveness adorns a soldier. But abstinence is forgiveness only when
there is the power to punish, it is meaningless when it pretends to proceed from a
helpless creature. A mouse hardly forgives cat when it allows itself to be torn to pieces
by her. I therefore appreciate the sentiment of those who cry out for the condign
punishment of General Dyer and his ilk. They would tear him to pieces if they could. But
I do not believe myself to be a helpless creature. Only I want to use India’s and my
strength for better purpose.
Let me not be misunderstood. Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes
from an indomitable will. An average Zulu is any way more than a match for an average
Englishman in boldly capacity. But he flees from an English boy, because he fears the
boy’s revolver or those who will use it for him. He fears death and is nerveless in spite
of his burly figure. We in India may in moment realize that one hundred thousand
Englishmen need not frighten three hundred million human beings. A definite forgiveness
would therefore mean a definite recognition of our strength. With enlightened forgiveness
must come mighty wave of strength in us, which would make it impossible for a Dyer
and a Frank Johnson to heap affront upon India’s devoted head. It matters little to me
that for the moment I do not drive my point home. We feel too downtrodden not to be
all angry and revengeful. But I must not refrain from a saying that India can gain more
by waiving the right of punishment. We have better work to do, a better mission to
deliver to the world.
I am not a visionary. I claim to be a practical idealist. The religion of non-violence is not
meant merely for the Rishis and saints. It is meant for the common people as well. Non-
violence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies
dormant in the brute and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man
requires obedience to a higher law to the strength of the spirit.
I have therefore ventured to place before India the ancient law of self sacrifice. For
Satyagraha and its off-shoots, non-co-operation and civil resistance, are nothing but new
names for the law of suffering. The Rishis, who discovered the law of non-violence in the
midst of non-violence, were greater geniuses than Newton. They were themselves greater
warriors than Wellington. Having themselves known the use of arms, they realized their
uselessness.
Non-violence in its dynamic condition means conscious suffering. It does not mean meek
submission to the will of the evil-doer, but it means the putting of one’s whole soul against
the will of the tyrant. Working under this law of being , it is possible for a single
individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire to save his honour, his religion, his
soul and lay the foundation for the empire’s fall or its regeneration.
Gandhi’s views on Non-Violence 93

And so I am not pleading for India to practice non-violence because it is weak. I want
her to practice non-violence being conscious of her strength and power. No training in
arms is required for realization of her strength. We seem to need it because we seem to
think that we are but a lump of flesh. I want India to recognize that she has a soul that
cannot perish and that can rise triumphant above every physical weakness and defy the
physical combination of a whole world. What is the meaning of Rama, a mere human
being, with his host of monkeys, pitting himself against the insolent strength of ten-headed
Ravan surrounded in supposed safety by the raging waters on all sides of Lanka? Does
it not mean the conquest of physical might by spiritual strength? However being a
practical man, I do not wait till India recognizes the practicability of the spiritual life in
the political world. India considers herself to be powerless and paralysed before the
machine guns, the tanks and the aeroplanes of the English. And she takes up non-co-
operation out of her weakness. It must still were the same purpose namely, bring her
delivery from the crushing weight of British injustice if a sufficient number of people
practice it.
I isolate this non-cooperation from Sinn Feininsm, for, it is so conceived as to be
incapable of being offered side by side with violence. But I invite even the school of
violence to give this peaceful non-co-operation a trial. It will not fail through its inherent
weakness. It may fail because of poverty of response. Then will be one time for real
danger. The high-souled men, who are unable to suffer national humiliation any longer, will
want to vent their wrath. They will take to violence. So far as I know, they must perish
without delivering themselves or their country from the wrong, If India takes up the
doctrine of the sword, she may gain momentary victory. Then India will cease to be the
pride of my heart. I am wedded to India because I owe my all to her. I believe
absolutely that she has a mission for the world. She is not to copy Europe blindly, India’s
acceptance of the doctrine of the sword will be the hour of my trial. I hope I shall not
be found wanting. My religion has no geographical limits. If I have a living faith in it, it
will transcend my love for India herself. My life is dedicated to service of India through
the religion of non-violence which I believed to be the root of Hinduism.
Meanwhile I urge those who distrust me, not to disturb the even working of the struggle
that has just commenced, by inciting to violence in the belief that I want violence. I detest
secrecy as a sin. Let them give non-violence non-co-operation a trial and they will find
that I had no mental reservation whatsoever.
Source: Young India, Ahmedabad, Wednesday, 11th August, 1920

7.7 SATYAGRAHA AND NON-VIOLENCE

Gandhi’s Practical tool in implementing his idea of Non-violence was Satyagraha. This
has been translated as passive resistance, non-violent resistance, non-violent direct action.
It literally means ‘Eagerness for Truth’ and contains Truth, Non-violence and Self-
suffering as basic elements. He had developed this technique of mass mobilisation in the
fight against racial policies pursued by the colonial rulers in South Africa with a moderate
success. Gandhi repeatedly stressed its essence that Non-Violence was the law of the
human race and was infinitely greater than and superior to brute force. He further linked
it with his spiritual/moral viewpoint and maintained that in the last resort it does not avail
to those who do not possess a living faith in the God of Love. He believed that Non-
violence affords the fullest protection to one’s self-respect and sense of honour, but not
always to possession of land or movable property, though its habitual practice does prove
 94 Philosophy of Gandhi

a better barricade than the possession of armed men to defend them. Non-violence in the
very nature of things is of no assistance in the defence of ill-gotten gains and immoral
acts. Individuals and nations who would practise non-violence must be prepared to
sacrifice (nations to the last man) their all except honour. It was, therefore, inconsistent
with the possession of other people’s countries, i.e. modern colonialism which is frankly
based on force for its defence. It was superior to armed struggle because as Gandhi was
to demonstrate through his practical political campaigns, non-violence was a power which
could be wielded equally by all – children, young men and women or grown up people,
provided they have a living faith in the God of Love and have therefore equal love for
all mankind. When non-violence was to be accepted as the law of life it must pervade
the whole being and not be applied to isolated acts. Moreover, Gandhi’s view was based
on the assumption that if lawful activities were good enough for individuals, the collectivity
of human beings as community or nations required armed resolution of conflicts. As we
have already pointed out, Gandhi’s advocacy of non-violence was closely connected to
his attitude towards ends and means. He believed that violent methods for achieving a
desired social result would inevitably result in an escalation of violence. The end achieved
would always be contaminated by the methods used.

7.8 CRITIQUES OF GANDHI’S NON-VIOLENT

STRATEGY OF RESISTANCE
Gandhi’s views on non-violence were severely criticised by his political opponents. Many
revolutionaries argued that force and armed struggle were necessary to end any regime
of oppression. Some believed that as there was a fight back for survival in nature among
various species, so there is also a similar kind of struggle among races and nations.
Failure to recognise this, they argued, made the Gandhi’s model of conflict resolution
utopian because the real life was based on the principle of ‘survival of the fittest’. In the
Indian context, the Leftist leadership thought that Gandhi’s principle of non-violence,
whose moral force propelled several mass movements forward in their initial phases,
repeatedly held back the struggles at key moments. As a result, privileged groups in the
urban centres and countryside were able to detach the struggle for political independence
from the struggle for radical social change and thus thwarted Gandhi’s own goals of social
justice. The British were gone, but the bureaucracy and police they built up still functioned
with little change-and continued to repress workers’ and peasants’ uprisings. Gandhi’s will
had been strong, but class forces proved stronger. They further argued that Gandhi never
promoted the class forces-workers that could have helped him in his final struggle to unite
Hindus and Muslims. Only class struggle could have achieved what Gandhi’s purely moral
mission attempted. The movement did not have to turn out in such a mess. Potentially
revolutionary situations existed in the periods 1919-22 and 1946-47, but no mass party
with revolutionary goals had been forged to steer the movements to victory. In the post-
Second World War movement, the same social forces that had overthrown the Russian
Tsar in 1917 were at the centre of the upsurge-the industrial working class, along with
peasants and workers in uniform. But in India’s case, the country’s only mass party saved
the British from being overthrown by taking power “peacefully” themselves-at the price of
leaving the class rebellion to be consumed in the fires of communalism. Moreover, the
Leftist viewpoint argued that different alignments of class forces were possible, since most
classes opposed British rule. The independence movement would have produced a
different outcome if industrial workers and the agricultural proletariat had been able to
form a revolutionary socialist party-and drawn the middle class and small-holding peasants
Gandhi’s views on Non-Violence 95

behind their class-struggle leadership. Instead, Gandhi’s party reversed these relations, with
the bourgeoisie included in the leadership with the middle classes of village and city.
Gandhi’s life was history’s longest experiment in non-violent political action. The result of
the experiment is fairly clear: an exploitative class structure cannot be broken without
violence somewhere along the way. Property rights, defended by state violence, have
never yielded to the peaceful pressure of the exploited class. In other words, no exploiting
class has ever left the stage of history without being pushed. Revolutionaries often made
fun of Gandhi’s idea of ‘change of heart of the tyrant’ as impractical day-dreaming. But
one thing is fairly clear that even if non-violence failed to win the heart of enemies, state
repression created widespread sympathies among the fellow countrymen and community
and was a helpful instrument in mobilising public opinion both at home and abroad.

7.9 SUMMARY
Gandhi faced a problem of evolving practical and viable instruments in his fight for
powerful British Empire. The nation had been thoroughly disarmed and any attempt to
resist was met with severe repression by the colonial state. Combining contemporary
methods of legal but extra-constitutional mobilisations with innovatively used century old
notions of non-violence, he was able to ‘invent’ a unique method of Satyagraha.
Gandhi’s central dogma was Ahimsa or Non-violence and this was to be his means of
achieving the truth. The radical side of this method was that it can be used by every
single individual regardless of age, physical strength and gender if he/she possessed only
a moral courage to oppose any form of oppression or dominance. The idea of non-violent
resistance to superior force might look utopian and impractical at the surface but it proves
to be a potent weapon in Gandhi’s age as well as subsequently.

7.10 TERMINAL QUESTIONS

1. Describe briefly the intellectual and historical context of Gandhi’s idea of Non-
violence.
2. What is the meaning of Ahimsa? Are its critiques justified?

SUGGESTED READINGS
1.   Anthony J. Parel., Gandhi’s Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony, Cambridge
University Press, New Delhi, 2006.
2.   Gene Sharp., The Politics of Non-violent Action, Harvard University’s Center for
International Affairs, Boston, 1973.
3.   Joan V. Bondurant., Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict,
Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1988.
4.   M.K. Gandhi., Non-Violence: Weapon of the Brave, Orient Paperbacks, New
Delhi.
5. Raghavan N. Iyer., The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi,
Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2000 edition.