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SATYAGRAHA-THEORY,PRACTICE AND HISTORIC ACHIEVEMENTS (Text of lecture by Ambassador (Retd) Pascal Alan Nazareth at Embassy of India, Jakarta on May 15, 2007 )

The 20th century has the unenviable distinction of being the most blood stained in human history. Almost a hundred million people have been killed in the two world wars, Hitler's gas chambers, the atom bomb drops on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Arab-Israeli, India- Pakistan, Iraq-Iran, Korean, Vietnamese and other binational, civil and tribal wars. Its only redeeming feature is that during its first decade, Gandhi fashioned his innovative Truth and Non Violence 'Satyagraha' strategy and used it effectively to fight racial oppression in South Africa, bring down the world's most powerful empire and induce broad spectrum political and social changes in India and other parts of the world..

The theory of Satyagraha is contained in the following five paragraphs, culled from Gandhi's writings and discourses :

"The world rests upon the bedrock of Satya (Truth) … which being what is can never be destroyed.".

"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 - that of the spirit…."

"Satyagraha is literally holding on to Truth and it means therefore Truth Force. Truth is soul or spirit. It is therefore known as Soul Force…The word was coined in South Africa to distinguish the non violent resistance of the Indians in South Africa from the contemporary 'passive resistance' of suffragettes and others. It is not conceived as a 'weapon of the weak, but of the strongest and the bravest"

"This force (satyagraha) is to violence and therefore to all tyranny and injustice, what light is to darkness. In politics, its use is based upon the immutable maxim, that government of the people is possible only so long as they consent either consciously or unconsciously to be governed" .

"Satyagraha connotes the living Law of Life. The law will work, just as the law of gravitation will work, whether we accept it or not. And just as a scientist will work wonders out of various applications of the laws of nature, even so a man who applies the law of love with scientific precision can work greater wonders".

Gandhi described his "theory" as "science in the making" and in his later years stated "My technique of nonviolent struggle is in the same stage as electricity in Edison's time. It needs to be refined and developed"

In fashioning his Satyagraha strategy Gandhi disclaimed originating any new theory or philosophy and affirmed he had "simply tried in my own way to apply the eternal principles of Truth and Non-Violence to our daily life and problems ……I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and nonviolence are as old as the hills". However Rahgavan Iyer and Antony Copley argue that Satyagraha was in fact a significant theoretical contribution. Copley writes "Gandhi's claim that ahimsa lay at the heart of Satya was interesting and by itself unorthodox; the ancient Vedic texts, the sacred writings of early Hinduism, make no such claims for ahimsa and the concept only percolated into Hinduism through the rival faiths of Jainism and Buddhism. Gandhi was effectively arguing in a highly innovative and heretical way" As animal sacrifices were widely prevalent in Hinduism until the advent of Jainism and Buddhism, and it was the former that proscribed them and made ahimsa "paramo dharma" (the highest duty ) Copley's assertion is a valid one.

For Gandhi, Truth was as real and omnipotent. In fact, Truth is God, as Truth is what is and God is the only reality that always is. Truth is therefore the 'Right Path' and it is 'Right that is Might' not the other way round. Since humans are created "in the image of God" and are imbued with the "Divine Spark" they have to be led by Truth and love, not by fear and hate. One has to live, and if necessary to die for Truth, but never to hurt or kill anyone.

Truth implies Justice and both are essential requisites for the attainment of peace. Justice requires that the adversary's views and demands must be given due consideration. Three important affirmations of his in this context are :
"Peace will come when Truth is pursued, and Truth implies Justice".
"Three fourths of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world would disappear if we step into the shoes of our adversaries and understand their standpoint".
"The objective of all non-violent activity is always a mutually acceptable agreement, never the defeat, much less the humiliation of the opponent "

Gandhi's biographer Louis Fischer writes "For Gandhi, Satyagraha was "the vindication of Truth not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but on one's self". That requires self control. The weapons of the Satyagrahi are within him. Satyagraha is peaceful. If words fail to convince the adversary perhaps purity, humility and honesty will. The opponent must be "weaned from error by patience and sympathy", weaned not crushed, converted not annihilated…You cannot inject new ideas into a man's head by chopping it off; neither will you infuse a new spirit into his heart by piercing it with a dagger".

Erik Erikson, Krishanlal Sridharani and Richard Gregg have described Satyagraha as "militant non-violence", "war without violence" and "moral jiujitsu" respectively. About Gandhi's militancy Mark Jugensmeyer writes "Gandhi was a fighter. Whatever else one might say about him -that he was a saint, a clever politician, or a "seditious fakir" as Winston Churchill once put it - Gandhi certainly knew how to fight. In fact his approach to conflict resolution is one of Mohandas Gandhi's enduring legacies".

Gandhi's satyagraha was first used in 1907 to oppose the "Black Act" (Asian Registration Act) in South Africa. Its actual genesis however took place at the historic September 11, 1906 Indian community meeting at the Empire Theatre in Johannesberg, where the new non-violent struggle was decided upon. Soon thereafter Gandhi invited suggestions for an appropriate name for it. A cousin, Maganlal Gandhi, suggested "Sadagraha" (firmness in a good cause). Gandhi amended it to "Satyagraha" (firm adherence to Truth). The period September 2006 to September 2007 is therefore being celebrated globally as Satyagraha Centenary year.

Using his Satyagraha strategy, which included mass mobilization, marches, fasts, economic boycotts, breaking unjust laws, and bravely facing beatings, imprisonment etc, Gandhi succeeded in redressing the in South African Indian community's racial oppression and subsequently in liberating India from British Imperialism and transforming the oppressive Britain - India colonial relationship into one of equality and friendship. Among Independent India's first few acts was to request the last British Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, to be its first Governor General, and join the British Commonwealth as an equal partner. Gandhi's affirmation that "a non-violent revolution is not a programme of 'seizure of power' but one of transformation of relationships ending in a peaceful transfer of power" was amply vindicated.

Besides liberating India and transforming the Britain-India relationship, Gandhi's satyagraha strategy also succeeded in emancipating India's untouchables, empowering its women, ending its deeply entrenched feudalism, and creating employment for its poverty stricken peasantry by reviving age old village industries.

As early as May 25th,1921 Gandhi wrote in Young India "Swaraj or independence is meaningless if we continue to keep a fifth of India under perpetual subjection. Inhuman ourselves, we may not plead before the throne for deliverance from the inhumanity of others". Subsequently he wrote "If it was proved to me that untouchability is an essential part of Hinduism, I would declare myself an open rebel against it." These unfortunate people, who for centuries had to live outside village limits, perform the most despised tasks and live on carrion, he renamed "Harijans" (children of God) and made their emancipation an integral element in the national freedom struggle. As a result of his strenuous efforts, particularly his extensive nine month long anti-untouchability travels through India in 1932, and insistence that the untouchable leader B.R.Ambedkar should be included in the Jawaharlal Nehru's interim cabinet even though he was not a member of the Congress Party, many temples opened their doors to untouchables and untouchability was proscribed in the Constitution of India. A number benefits were also included in it for them. As a result this community, now known as 'Dalits' has emerged as an important political group, with a party of their own, since the early 1980s. A dalit woman has twice been Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state, during the 1998 - 2003 period. A brilliant dalit, with a London School of Economics degree, became India's Ambassador to Turkey, China and USA and subsequently Minister for Science and Technology, Vice President of India and President of India (1997-2002). Many others are now ministers, ambassadors and senior civil servants.

"Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacities. She has the right to participate in the minutest detail in the activities of man……As long as women do not come to public life and purify it, we are not likely to attainSwaraj. Even if we did, I would have no use for that Swaraj in which women have not made their full contribution" Gandhi had declared quite soon after his return to India in 1915. Indian women responded to his call. Initially they came as volunteers at Congress sessions but by the time of his non cooperation, anti foreign cloth and salt satyagrahas, thousands were active participants. The poetess Sarojini Naidu became one of his deputies.

When the 1942 'Quit India' Movement was launched and Gandhi and other leaders were arrested in Bombay, a brave young woman named Aruna Asaf Ali unfurled the Indian flag. Another brave woman Usha Mehta, along with three other women, set up and operated a secret "Congress Radio from somewhere in India" Through Gandhi's non-violent national movement, Indian women for the first time combined their roles as wives and mothers with their new roles of "non-violent warriors".

When Independence came women were accorded full legal equality with men. In the first Union Cabinet the health minister was Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, a princess of Kapurthala, who in 1915 had given up royal comforts to become Gandhi's disciple. Mrs Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was India's first Ambassador to the Soviet Union. In 1953 she was elected President of the UN General Assembly. Within fifteen years thereafter, Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister of India and continued in that high office for 16 years with only an intervening two year break. Since then, numerous Indian women have risen to high positions in politics, diplomacy, business, banking, industry, biotechnology, newsmedia and other professions including aviation.

These impressive gains in the status of Indian women are a direct outcome of Gandhi's satyagraha movement and his insistence on women's participation in and empowerment through it. In most European countries, as also in the US, women secured the right to vote only after many years of arduous struggle in and after the second decade of 20th century.

Before Independence, India was a highly feudal country of opulent colonial administrators and princes, and poverty stricken, starving peasants. The princes competed with each other in lavish entertainment of British officials, who actively encouraged this.

Under Gandhi's instructions the Congress party maintained a discreet non intervention in the affairs of the Princely states until the late 1930s. so as not to drive them further into the arms of the British. However, Gandhi's focus on the poor and unemployed created widespread revulsion against princely life styles. Some rulers like the Maharajas of Baroda and Mysore were stirred by the national awakening and supported Gandhi. Most others however foresaw that it would bring an end to their feudal regimes and opposed it. They however soon discovered to their chagrin that the national upsurge in British India had also aroused their subjects, many of whom actively supported it. This left these princes little choice but to make virtue of necessity and signify their accession to India or Pakistan. Before August 15, 1947 all princely states within the territory of India (excluding Hyderabad) or having a common frontier with it (excluding Kashmir) acceded to it. The distinct possibility of India being balkanized was thus averted. The more important princes who acceded to India were compensated with privy purses, diplomatic appointments and governorships for almost thirty years.

In 1951, just four years after Independence, the Zamindari system, the other pillar of India's feudalism in the rural areas, was abolished and all its lands, except those personally cultivated by the zamindars or their families, were transferred to the tillers. The former were paid non justiciable compensation.

The bloodless ending of regal and autocratic life styles and the iniquitous zamindari system, and the smooth, prompt, integration of numerous princely states into the Indian Union, is another significant achievement of Gandhi's mass based satyagraha strategy. It contrasts sharply with the considerable bloodshed in the American, French, Italian, German, Russian Chinese and Ethiopian Revolutions and Civil Wars before independence and national unification were achieved, and feudalism and slavery ended.

Gandhi's great concern for the poverty stricken Indian peasant made him choose the Charka (spinning wheel) as the prime weapon of his satyagraha strategy. All participants in the national movement were required to spin and wear only hand spun, hand woven "Khadi" clothes. Subsequently boycotts and bonfires were made of imported cloth. These moves initially revived the weaving and allied industries. Later, there was a revival and flowering of the whole spectrum of cottage and village industries . Today, these industries, located predominantly in rural areas, provide employment to over 30 million families of spinners, weavers, embroiderers, leather, marble & metal workers, wood, bone & stone carvers, carpet and rug makers etc. India's annual exports of these items is now well over US$ 1 billion.

Gandhi's Satyagraha strategy also has many achievements to its credit globally. Martin Luther King was won over to it in 1956, after hearing a talk by Howard University President Dr Mordecai Johnson. He visited India in 1959 to learn how nonviolent resistance was planned and implemented. On return to the US he wrote "I left India more convinced than ever before that non-violent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom." It was in the Montgomery bus boycott of 1961 that King first tried out 'satyagraha' in his struggle for racial equality. Using it consistently thereafter he brought about more beneficial change for American blacks in eight years of non-violent struggle, than had come to them in the hundred years after the Civil War.

The way non-violent struggle transformed his fellow blacks King described 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".

King affirmed : "If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable. We may ignore him at our own peril".

The 1980s witnessed successful non-violent struggles in many countries of Eastern Europe as also in South Africa and the Phillipnes. 'Solidarity' was set up in Poland by Lech Walesa and fellow dock workers in Gdansk In 1980. Their seven year struggle brought about the collapse of Communism in Poland and the election of Lech Walesa as President. During the same period "People's Power" revolutions ended Apartheid in South Africa, the Marcos Dictatorship in the Phillipines, the Pinochet regime in Chile, and Communist dictatorships in Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, GDR, Bulgaria and the Baltic States. Subsequently, Communist dictatorships collapsed in Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, Georgia & Uzbekistan.

Paying tribute to Gandhi Nelson Mandela wrote: "Gandhi threatened the South African Government during the first and second decades of our century as no other man did. He established the first anti-colonial political organization in the country, if not in the world, founding the Natal Indian Congress in 1894. The African People's organization (APO) was established in 1902, the African National Congress (ANC) in 1912. So both were witnesses to and highly influenced by Gandhi's militant Satyagraha which began in 1907 and reached its climax in 1913 with the epic march of 5000 indentured workers on the coal mines of Natal. So the Indian struggle, in a sense is rooted in the African.….Though separated in time there is a bond between us, in our shared prison experiences, our defiance of unjust laws and in the fact that violence threatens our aspirations for peace and reconciliation".

Though Independent India summarily rejected Gandhi's ideas on nonviolent national defence they have been received quite favourably abroad. The 1964 Oxford Conference on Civilian Defence brought together military strategists, defence researchers, political analysts and people with direct experience of non-violent resistance and resulted in a scholarly publication by Adam Roberts on the efficacy and potential of non-violent defence. As a follow up to the Oxford Conference another conference was held in Munich in 1967. It led to a research group headed by Theodore Ebert making a detailed study of the 1968 Soviet suppression of the Czech uprising and the civilian resistance which followed. This group subsequently submitted a proposal for a German Social Defence strategy.

The Norwegian government was the first to officially study the merits of civilian defence. The Galtung and Hansen Commission set up for this purpose in 1987 recommended 'Total Defence' whereby Norwegians would be trained for civilian as well as military defence. A similar study undertaken by Denmark recommended that in case of any future attack only Jutland would be militarily defended and the Danish islands would have to rely only on civilian defence. Other European Governments that have set up commissions to study the merits of such defence are Holland, Sweden, Austria and Finland. A study by the Finnish Government's Psychological Defence Board led a parliamentary committee to conclude that civilian defence must be an integral part of national defence policy. By the 1990s Civilian / Social Defence had been incorporated as an integral component in the national defence policies of Sweden, Norway and Lithuania with Denmark, Holland and Finland moving in the same direction..

Paul Wehr, in his article on 'Non-Violence and National Defence' in the book 'Gandhi in the Post Modern Age', writes "Social Defence as a concept originated in the ethical principles of the Gandhian movement and in pacifist ideology. The Gandhian movement demonstrated the power of massive non cooperation with an occupying power in that case Britain. As the destructiveness of modern war became more evident, it was natural that the principles and techniques of Gandhian non cooperation would be applied to the problem of national defense. At first social defence research was non governmental. By the 1970s Governments were supporting it and political parties and peace movements were debating it. A quarter century of scholarly research has produced a respectable body of knowledge about the underlying principles, diverse methods and practical developments of social defence….Only time and events will tell whether Gandhi's ideas and practice will be as influential in the area of national defence as they have been in the field of social change"

In his recent book 'Waging Non-Violent Struggle - 20th Century Practice, 21st Century Potential', Professor Gene Sharpe has analysed 23 separate 20th century non-violent struggles and indicated how this form of struggle operates in undermining sources of political legitimacy and power, and how it can be made more effective by strategic planning and systematic training. He affirms "Today, if understood accurately and applied intelligently, wisely, and courageously, this type of struggle in fact offers great hope for a better future for our world"

Jonathan Schell, in his book 'The Unconquerable World' writes "As the new century begins, no question is more important than whether the world has now embarked on a new cycle of violence, condemning the 21st century to repeat or even outdo, the bloodshed of the 20th." He states the present dangers are not, as before, "the massed conventional armies and systematized hatreds of rival great powers" but "the persistent and steady spread of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction and the unappeased demons of national, ethnic, religious and class fury". He argues that, notwithstanding the shock of September 11th and the need to take forceful measures to meet the threat of global terrorism, a new and promising path has opened up. "For in 20th century history another complimentary lesson, less conspicuous than the first but just as important, has been emerging. It is that forms of non-violent action can serve effectively in the place of violence at every level of political affairs. This is the promise of Mohandas K. Gandhi's resistance to the British Empire in India, of Martin Luther King's civil rights movement in the United States, of the non-violent movements in Eastern Europe and Russia that brought down Communism and the Soviet Union"

There presently are Gandhi 'Centres' or 'Ashrams' in over thirty countries around the world each of them promoting understanding and respect for Gandhian values and non-violent struggle. His statues are seen in over a hundred countries. In some Francophone and Latin American countries there are 'Communities of the Ark', which Jean Lanza Del Vasto, a dedicated Gandhian launched in an effort to establish a 'Gandhian Order in the West'. These 'Communities' seek to be self sufficient by adopting a frugal lifestyle and undertaking manual work as Gandhi had urged. No other non violent conflict resolution strategy has achieved a global impact of this magnitude. Satyagraha is now widely acclaimed as the great hope of mankind in a violence and terrorism plagued world.

I thank you for your attention and would be glad to answer any questions you might have.