He had always been free from colour prejudice but his interest in the question deepened after the starting of satyagraha. The Europeans of Germiston, which is something like a suburb of Johannesburg, expressed a desire to hear me. A meeting was held, and introducing me and the movement I stood for to the audience, Mr.
They do not enjoy the franchise. Numerically, they are only a few. They are weak and have no arms. Therefore they have taken to passive resistance which is a weapon of the weak. In contradicting Mr. Hosken, I defined our passive resistance as 'soul force'. I will try to distinguish between passive resistance and soul force by amplifying the argument which I made before that meeting so as to make things clearer.
I have no idea when the phrase 'passive resistance' was first used in English and by whom. But among the English people, whenever a small minority did not approve of some obnoxious piece of legislation, instead of rising in rebellion they took the passive or milder step of not submitting to the law and inviting the penalties of such non-submission upon their heads. When the British Parliament passed the Education Act some years ago, the Nonconformists offered passive resistance under the leadership of Dr.
The great movement of the English women for the vote was also known as passive resistance. It was in view of these two cases that Mr. Hosken described passive resistance as a weapon of the weak or the voteless. Clifford and his friends had the vote, but as they were in a minority in the Parliament, they could not prevent the passage of the Education Act. That is to say, they were weak in numbers. Not that they were averse to the use of arms for the attainment of their aims, but they had no hope of succeeding by force of arms.
And in a well-regulated state, recourse to arms every now and then in order to secure popular rights would defeat its own purpose. Again some of the Nonconformists would generally object to taking up arms even if it was a practical proposition.
The suffragists had no franchise rights. They were weak in numbers as well as in physical force. Thus their case lent colour to Mr. Hosken's observations. But this doesn't mean civil disobedience didn't work. As a matter of fact, it did work. The only thing off-kilter was Gandhi's explanation of how and why it worked. Let me give a general description of what seems really to have happened when Gandhi and his followers committed civil disobedience:.
Gandhi and followers break a law-politely. Public leader has them arrested, tried, put in prison. Gandhi and followers cheerfully accept it all. Members of the public are impressed by the protest, public sympathy is aroused for the protesters and their cause. Members of the public put pressure on public leader to negotiate with Gandhi. As cycles of civil disobedience recur, public pressure grows stronger.
Finally, public leader gives in to pressure from his constituency, negotiates with Gandhi. That's the general outline. Notice that there is a "change of heart," but it's more in the public than in the opponent.
And notice too that there's an element of coercion, though it's indirect, coming from the public, rather than directly from Gandhi's camp. Some campaigns of Gandhi's show a variation on this model. Sometimes Gandhi's opponents had superiors who wound up pressuring them or even ordering them to negotiate with Gandhi. These superiors might have been influenced by Gandhi's campaign, or by pressure from their own public-for instance, when British citizens pressured government leaders in Britain to intervene in affairs of their colonial government in India.
But the basic principle was the same: Gandhi's most decisive influence on his opponents was more indirect than direct. Gandhi set out a number of rules for the practice of civil disobedience. These rules often baffle his critics, and often even his admirers set them aside as nonessential. But once you understand that civil disobedience, for Gandhi, was aimed at working a change of heart-whether in the opponent or the public - then it's easy to make sense of them.
This certainly sounds Foucaultian. But despite this recognition, I would argue that if we head down the path of civil war as anything more than just recognition—as, for instance, something one must engage or one inevitably engages in conflict with others—then one has moved a far distance from satyagraha. This is, I take it, the deep and perhaps insurmountable tension between Gandhi and Foucault.
It addresses issues of crime and punishment. It is a remarkable passage, from which there is, I believe, a lot to be learned. I will leave the final word to Gandhi then:. A villager was brought to him with injuries on his body, received at the hands of thieves who had taken away ornaments etc. There were three ways, Gandhiji told the villagers of Uruli, of dealing with the case. The first was the stereotyped orthodox way of reporting to the police. Very often, it only provided the police a further opportunity for corruption and brought no relief to the victim.
The second way, which was followed by the general run of the village people, was to passively acquiesce in it. This was reprehensible as it was rooted in cowardice. Crime would flourish, while cowardice remained. What was more, by such acquiescence we ourselves became party to the crime.
The third way, which Gandhiji commended, was that of pure Satyagraha. It required that we should regard even thieves and criminals as our brothers and sisters, and crime as a disease of which the latter were the victims and needed to be cured. Instead of bearing ill-will towards a thief or a criminal and trying to get him punished they should try to get under his skin, understand the cause that had led him into crime and try to remedy it.
They should, for instance, teach him a vocation and provide him with the means to make an honest living and thereby transform his life. They should realize that a thief or a criminal was not a different being from themselves. Mehta discusses these writings at p. Mahatma K. Your email address will not be published.
By Bernard E. Gandhi wrote: It is a breach of Satyagraha to wish ill to an opponent or to say a harsh word to him or of him with the intention of harming him. Satyagraha can be regarded as a vindication of truth by taking self-suffering in the form of love. It is the weapon of the bravest and the strongest. It is an antidote for coercion. It was believed that Satyagraha enables elevation of spiritual and moral qualities of an individual.
The main function of a Satyagraha is not to injure the enemy by any means. It is an appeal to the enemy either through reason or by a gentle rational argument.
It is something like a sacrifice of the self. Satyagraha has two positive features, viz. The concept of Satyagraha advocates that it is through suffering that there are achievements. For instance, just like a mother who takes all the suffering for the sake of a child, Satyagraha also takes all the pain for the cause of the fellow citizens. This ideal also expounded that there is a direct relationship between the purity of the suffering and the extent of progress.
It believes that the purer the suffering, the greater the material and spiritual progress. The theory of Satyagraha has three main purposes firstly, it purifies the sufferer; secondly, it intensifies favorable public opinion; and thirdly, makes a direct appeal to the soul of the oppressor.
Gandhi differentiated between the terms Satyagraha and Passive resistance. The former, according to him, is a moral weapon and the latter is a political weapon.
The victory of the soul power over the physical force is reflected in the idea of Satyagraha. The former is dynamic, while the latter is static. The ultimate aim of Satyagraha is to achieve success, despite his extreme sufferings, with cheerfulness and love unlike passive resistance that is undertaken in a situation of weakness and despair.
Ultimately, Satyagraha offers a substantial and effective opposition to injustice and tyranny in comparison to passive resistance. Some of the major techniques of Satyagraha are non-cooperation, civil disobedience, Hijrat, fasting and strike.
Gandhi was of the opinion that injustice prevails in the society only when both, the government perpetuates and the people extend their cooperation. Once this cooperation is withdrawn, then the entire system paralyses.
It is widely accepted that even the most despotic leader cannot continue for long if he lacks the consent of his subjects.
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