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Applications of Non-violence in an Era of Terror" (Text of lecture by Ambassador (Retd) P. Alan Nazareth, Managing Trustee, Sarvodaya International Trust, at Asian Centre , University of the Phillipines, Manila, February 6,2004)

Distinguished President of the University of the Philipnes and Director of its Asian Centre, your excellency Mrs Navrekha Sharma, Ambassador of India to the Phillipines, respected faculty members and dear students. I am indeed honoured, and grateful, to have this opportunity to speak about Mahatma Gandhi at this renowned university. Since I retired from the Indian Foreign Service in 1994, I have dedicated myself to reviving the memory of Mahatma Gandhi and promoting his ideals of Truth, non violence, communal harmony, humanitarian service and peace, as India and the world, plagued with corruption, disharmony, and escalating violence terrorism, are desperately in need of them. 

The 20th century has certainly been the most violent and destructive in human history. Over 90 million people have died in the two world wars, in the Spanish and Greek civil wars, Hitler's gas chambers, Arab-Israeli and India-Pakistan wars, and innumerable local conflicts in different parts of the world. Yet, quite possibly more people live in constant dread of sudden and violent death today than at any time in the previous century. The collapse of the blazing World Trade Towers on September 11, 2001 have seared themselves on the human mind universally. The suicide bomber has become the new symbol of terror of our times. Even the most sophisticated surveillance systems of a super power have proved incapable of preventing terrorist attacks in broad daylight. Drastic reprisals too have proved ineffective deterrents. Invariably they have gestated more suicide bombers and further terrorist violence as recent events in the Middle East have shown. How does one protect oneself, one's family and nation in this scenario. How does one forestall the violence of the terrorist, who has the supreme advantage of anonymity and surprise. What makes him, even her, so willing and unafraid to die in perpetrating terrorism. These questions cry for answers, but are as difficult to handle as they are vital to solve.

Prof. Ralph Bultjens, Toynbee History Prize Laureate, in his foreword to 'Gandhi in the Post Modern Age' writes " The fragility of modern civilization is exposed by the frighteningly ineffective way in which our world approaches conflict resolution. In international relationships, neither conventional diplomacy nor various uses of military deterence have improved the thin margin on which the world exists. This somewhat pessimistic reading of history is challenged by one major exception, Mahatma Gandhi's application of policies and techniques of non violence in India. Gandhi's success both redeems human nature from the inevitability of its historical experience and also suggests the viability of non violence in modern situations"

To adequately appreciate Gandhi's achievement an understanding of the Indian political scene in the early twentieth century is essential.

When Gandhi arrived on the Indian politicaI scene in 1918, the Russian Revolution had just taken place. This and the widespread antipathy for British rule had generated strong revolutionary fervour among Indian nationalists. Their father figure was the Bengali novelist Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, whose popular novel 'Anandamath' was the inspiration for secret societies, and its hero Satyanand, the model for "revolutionaries". It contained the rousing hymn 'Bande Mataram'. Aurobindo Ghosh was the other influential figure. Educated in England, and selected for the coveted Indian Civil Service he had given it up to join the "revolution". Like many others who had studied abroad, including Jawaharlal Nehru, he was deeply impressed by the achievements of Mazzini and Garibaldi, and Japan's defeat of Russia in 1905. Besides, like the rest of India,he was outraged by British division of Bengal on religious lines in 1904. In the book 'Bhabhani Mandir' which he wrote in 1904, he urged fellow Indians to come forward to end the exploitation of Mother India by worshiping Kali, Goddess of Energy, and making great sacrifices in her name to liberate the motherland. Shortly thereafter a friend of his launched Yugantar, a new weekly, which "breathed bombs in very line". 'Bartaman Rananiti, ('Modern Art of War') published anonymously in 1907 propagated Bakunin's idea that destruction was another form of creation and that funds for revolutionary activities must be raised by any means including terrorism. During the 1905 - 1915 period there was a spate of assassinations of British officials not only in India but also in England. Among those attacked but fortunately escaped death were Vicerorys Lord Minto (in April 1909) and Lord Hardinge (in December 1912). 

At the 1919 Amritsar Congress session when Gandhi spoke about Truth and Non Violence, Bal Gangadhar Tilak a senior nationalist leader who had connections with and sympathies for the revolutionaries, contemptuously retorted "My friend, Truth has no place in politics". Two decades later another nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose, who assessed the non-violent approach impractical and ineffectual, secretly left India for Germany and Japan. In collaboration with the latter he set up the 'Indian National Army' with Indian troops taken as prisoners of war by the Japanese in SE Asia. Gandhi's task in promoting Truth and Non Violence within the Indian national movement was therefore not an easy one. He succeeded only because of his great moral strength, his total identification with the poverty stricken Indian people, and the impressive results his non violent campaigns, based on mass participation, began produced vis a vis the British, 1920 onwards. Besides, Tilak died in 1920 and left a more open arena for him.

Gandhi ardently believed that Truth was an objective moral reality as real and mighty as God himself. Truth was what constituted the 'Right Path'. Therefore it was not 'Might which was Right' but 'Right which was Might'. For him there was no greater strength than the strength of the Human Spirit when it is imbued with Truth and is unafraid to die, unarmed, upholding it. Since Humans have been created "in the image of God" and have the "Divine Spark" in them they have to be motivated and governed by Reason and Love rather than by fear and violence. When one is steadfastly rooted in Truth, reason will always lead him along the path of Love and Righteousness. One has to live, and be ready to die, for Truth, Love and Righteousness, but never to kill. "Given a just cause, capacity for endless suffering, and avoidance of violence, victory is a certainty", "Peace will come when Truth is pursued, and Truth implies Justice" and "The end of non violent struggle is always a mutually acceptable agreement, never the defeat, much less the humiliation of the enemy" are the three cardinal principles of Gandhi's Truth and Non Violence strategy. 

Gandhi consistently opposed violence except when it was resorted to protect defenceless people. Quite early in his public life he had affirmed "However much I may sympathise with and admire worthy motives, I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes". In an essay entitled 'The curse of assassination' written in December 1928 he wrote : "English books have taught us to applaud as heroic deeds of daring, even of free-booters, villains, pirates and train wreckers. Newspapers fill columns with exciting stories, real or imaginary, of such deeds. Some of us have learnt this art of applauding anything adventurous. This cannot be regarded as anything but a bad omen. Surely there is nothing about a cold blooded robbery or murder…. It is time we began, irrespective of nationalities, to regard deeds with mean motives, or meaner consequences with nothing but horror. I know that this will require a new valuation on such terms as heroism, patriotism, and the like.". He had also affirmed "What is obtained by love is retained for all time, what is obtained through hatred proves a burden for it increases hatred" He offered to the Indian people an alternative startegy - Non Violence, which he held was the highest bravery and the greatest virtue. He also held that "Strength does not come from physical capacity, it comes from an indomitable will" and "A small body of determined spirits, fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission, can alter the course of history". 

It is Gandhi's incredible achievement that he got the mainstream Indian national movement, and the Indian people, to accept this unconventional strategy, even though an influential minority considered it impractical and favoured the revolutionary or miltary approach. An equally great achievement of his was getting the violence prone tribal Pathans led by the outstanding Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan to adopt non violence. 

Within thirty years of Gandhi launching his non violent national struggle for independence the British withdrew from India voluntarily and among the first acts of independent India was to become a member of the British Commonwealth. Britain and India parted company as Imperial power and colony but stayed as friends. The Non violent struggle for independence had been amply justifed. 

Gandhi's strategy of Truth and non violence also has had notable successes outside India. Using this strategy, Martin Luther King managed to bring about more beneficial change for his fellow blacks in the US in the single decade of the 1960s, than a bloody civil war and the subsequent one hundred years of constitutional and legal struggle, had achieved. It also brought about a fundamental transformation among them. King described it thus :"When legal contests were the sole form of activity, the ordinary negro was involved as a passive spectator. His interest was stirred, but his energies were unemployed. Mass marches transformed the common man into the star performer he became. The Negro was no longer a subject of change; he was the active organ of change. The dignity his job denied him, he obtained in political and social action" He said " Mahatma Gandhi was the first person in human history to lift the ethic of Love, of Jesus Christ, above mere interaction between individuals and make it into a powerful and effective social force on a large scale".

In the 1960s and 70s, over one hundred European colonies in Asia and Africa achieved independence. This came about partly because they used the same efficacious tool of non violent struggle, and partly because the national movements led by Gandhi and Martin Luther King effectively changed the global mindset on the acceptability of Imperialism, Colonialism and Racialism. In the 80s and 90s non violent movements have successfully brought down oppressive regimes in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Phillipines and South Africa. Using the same technique, one lone, frail woman, Aung San Su Syi has bravely stood up against oppressive military might in Burma and effectively swung world public opinion in support of her democratic cause. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has done likewise for the tragic Tibetan cause. In accepting his Nobel Prize in December 1989 he spoke thus : " I accept the prize with profound gratitude on behalf of the oppressed everywhere, and all those who struggle for freedom and work for world peace. I accept it as a tribute to the man who founded the modern tradition of non violent action for change - Mahatma Gandhi - whose life taught and inspired me. And of course, I accept it on behalf of the six million Tibetan people, my brave countrymen and women inside Tibet, who have suffered and continue to suffer so much…." 

Gandhiji's non violent resistance strategies aroused much interest in the US, Europe and other parts of the world not only among civil rights and peace activists and peoples' movements - the Hungarians used them after the Soviet Invasion of 1956 - but also among military strategists. Paul Wehr in his article on 'Non Violence and National Defence' in the Book 'Gandhi in the Post Modern Age' writes "Gandhi's ideas on non violent national defence made their way to a western world on the brink of war. Pacifists there were looking desperately for a viable alternative. Kenneth Boulding's essay 'Paths of Glory: A new way with War'(1937) proposed non violent resistance as a functional substitute for war. He observed that the technological revolution had made war dysfunctional. This point he made so many years ago continues to provide the basis for contemporary social defence research as does his concept of transarmament. Boulding appears to have been the first to suggest that a nation, in this case Great Britain, adopt a non violent defence policy, though others like Lindberg in Denmark, Vrind in Holland and Johan Galtung and Arne Naess in Norway were thinking along the same lines. Their work was a direct link between Gandhi and modern social defence policy..….. By the late 1950s in the looming shadow of the mushroom cloud, social defence seemed more credible as an option for national defence." By 1962,the concept of 'social defence' had taken root in Western Europe. The 1964 Oxford Conference on Civilian Defence brought together peace researchers, military strategists and people having direct experience with non violent resistance. By 1980 'Social Defence' or 'Non military resistance' had in one form or the other become an integral part of overall defence policy in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland.

On the nuclear bomb Gandhi's views were clearly articulated by him in the tragic aftermath of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945: "The moral to be legitimately drawn from the supreme tragedy of the bomb is that it will not be destroyed by counter bombs … Unless the world now adopts non violence, it will spell certain suicide for mankind.". 

Albert Einstein echoed the same sentiments when he stated "The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything but our thinking; thus we are drifting toward a catastrophe beyond comparison. We shall require a new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive….Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding". 

Interestingly, the great theoretician and proponent of nuclear weapons as an instrument of statecraft, Henry Kissinger began his July 31st,1979 testimony to the US Senate Foreign Relations committee on SALT II with the following words : "In his essay 'Perpetual Peace', the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote that world peace would come about in one of two ways : after a cycle of wars of ever increasing violence, or by an act of moral insight in which the nations of the world renounced the bitter competition bound to lead to self destruction".

What was Gandhi's approach to societal, national and global peace? It was based on the simple assumption that if one really wanted peace one had to strive for peace rather than prepare for war. One had to cleanse one's mind of hatred, arrogance, avarice and fear, and avoid all actions which create these emotions in others. This is well embodied in UNESCO's motto :   "Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed". Gandhi also emphasized that one had to strive to identify the root causes of each conflict and sincerely seek to eliminate them on the basis of equity and justice if an enduring solution is to be found. In this effort, taking into consideration the opponents viewpoint is as important as effectively putting across one's own. "If only we learn to put ourselves in the shoes of our opponents and to arrive at mutually acceptable agreements, three fourths of the world's problems would disappear" he had affirmed.

Terrorism is a dreadful scourge but it can neither be wished away, nor bombed off the face of the earth. Much of it today emanates from various brands of religious fanaticisms or religion masked political extremisms, though at deeper levels historical inequities, land, living conditions, political, economic and cultural dominance and military presences are also involved. The 9/11 terrorist attack has traumatically shown how devastating the consequences of just one such attack can be. It has in fact transformed the conventional concepts and scenario of war, and ushered in the epoch of "assymetric warfare" where the enemy is invisible, miniscule in number and strikes from within our societies and nations. 

Writing about Islamic Fundamentalism and its possible evolution into a more moderate mould Samuel Huntington, in his book 'The Clash of Civilizations' states "Islamic "fundamentalism" commonly conceived as political Islam is only one component in the much more extensive revival of Islamic ideas and practices and the rededication to Islam of Muslim populations. This Islamic resurgence, which is an extremely important historical event effecting one fifth or more of humanity, is as significant as the American, French and Russian Revolutions. The resurgence is mainstream not extremist ……If Turkey succeeds in acquiring the leadership of the Islamic world, the Islamic resurgence and the fundamentalist movements it has spawned might be gradually transformed into economic, social and political modernization,within an overall Islamic and global framework rather than continue along the violent, subversive and self destructive modes in which a number of them are now involved. Much of course will also depend on the extent to which the West,and Israel, shows understanding of Moslem aspirations and their legitimate demands to be treated with dignity and justice"

Karen Armstrong, in her book "The Battle for God" has written : "Fundamentalism is not going away. In some places it is either going from strength to strength or becoming more extreme. Suppression and coercion are clearly not the answer. They lead to a backlash and can make fundamentalists more extreme. The most extreme forms of Sunni fundamentalism surfaced out of Nasser's prisons, and the Shah's crackdowns helped to inspire the Islamic Revolution in Iran". In her more recent 'Islam - A Short History' she writes : "The world changed on September 11th. We now realize that we in the privileged Western countries can no longer assume that events in the rest of the world do not concern us. What happens in Gaza, Iraq or Afghanistan today, is likely to have repercussions in New York, Washington or London tomorrow and small groups will soon have the capacity to commit acts of mass destruction previously only possible for powerful nations".

The crucial issue to be faced by all countries plagued by violence and terrorism today is whether peace and security are better pursued through justice and negotiated, mutually acceptable agreements based on the legitimate demands of all parties in a conflict situation, or through multibillion dollar national security plans or massive preemptive or retaliatory military action. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's heroic visit to Jerusalem in 1977 and the successful outcome of his subsequent peace negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at Camp David with President Carter's assistance, is good proof that the non violent, negotiated path to peace does produce beneficial, enduring results for both parties in a conflict situation, even in the most intractable situations.