Gandhian Concepts and Nonviolence

Finding Gandhi

It was 31st January 1948 when I was roused by a sea of people consisting of hundreds of thousands of people passing in front of our house in old Delhi. It continued for hours. They were chanting ‘Gandhi Amar Rahe’. I was witnessing the funeral procession of Mahatma Gandhi who had been assassinated a day before. This scary flood of people and Gandhi soon receded as my parents moved from town to town to find a place to live in. We were refugees from Pakistan.

Mahatma (The Great Soul) Gandhi again resurfaced in my life when my father introduced him to me again in 1956 when he made me read “My Experiments with Truth” his autobiography. At 15 years of age the most important concepts that stood out for me from this very interesting and incredibly simple read were nonviolence, self sacrifice, ability to wait for things to happen, emphasizing the employment of the right means (Dharma) to achieve goals and living frugally without attachments with any of the possessions. His view about sex also intrigued me.

Most importantly the Gandhian concepts insisted on complete faith in the most elements of a good human life as it has been projected by all religions and Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna and Moses. Gandhi however articulated these concepts outside the realm of scriptures and was able to explain the simplicity, difficulties and complexities of leading a righteous life. Gandhi insisted that Truth, Ahimsa or Nonviolence, Simplicity, Non possession and Tolerance all worked in tandem. Even if you miss one of them you are doomed. It is a whole conceptual framework of a good life which is needed as a basis of a harmonious society which will then be nonviolent and economically prosperous.

This book also confused me and I have been struggling with ever since. Gandhi, the father of Indian nation who is also known as “Bapu” advocated nonviolence and literally lived it. Yet only in 1947 my family was driven out our home by Muslim mobs that killed more than a million Hindus and Sikhs within a few months. The same was done by Hindus to Muslims in India. And Gandhi was shot dead by a Hindu fanatic named Nathuram Godse. I found this hard to reconcile with his philosophy and had since lived a conflicted life till I started studying Political Science in college.


Chronology of Gandhi’s life

Gandhi was born in Porbander, Gujarat, and a state in western India in a fairly prosperous Vaishnav family. He was imbued with a burning passion to self improve and learning. He married Kasturba when both of them were 13. His family sent him to England to become a Barrister. He came back and met with little success with being a lawyer. He went to South Africa and that brought out his talent as a political campaigner. He launched a campaign to oppose a law by Natal legislature to disfranchise all people of Indian decent and met with considerable success. He returned to India in 1914 and soon demanded Self Rule for India. In 1924 he was sentenced for 6 years on charges of sedition. In 1930 he led the famous Salt Tax March which has been prominently shown in the movie “Gandhi” made by British moviemaker Sir Richard Attenborough. He spearheaded the Indian freedom movement which culminated in the independence of India on 15th August 1947. Gandhi was assassinated by Nathuram Godse on 30th January 1948. He was a follower of Veer Sarvarkar who led a Hindu fundamentalist organization that thought that Gandhi was pro Muslim.

The Evolution of Gandhian Concepts

Gandhi was a product of rural India which was remote and poor. He grew up among the traditions of Truth, Ahimsa, Simplicity, Sacrifice,Dharma, Non possession and Tolerance that had been passed on from generation to generation for centuries. He was imbued with the teachings of great sages like Buddha and Mahavira, a multitude of Gods and temples of many faiths and religions in every nook and corner. The Great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy who was his contemporary was also devoted to replacing violence for fighting tyranny or reforming by non-resistance also influenced Gandhi.
This is where Gandhi started veering to carve out his own road. He was not content with readings of Vedas, Gita and Ramayana. He depicted a great propensity to test the concepts and themes that were expounded by great sages and the holy books in real life situations. He experimented with celibacy, he tried smoking, he tried meat eating, he wore western clothes, he fasted to cleanse his body often, he practiced silence to relieve stress, he walked to exercise, he did not waste anything and wrote even on scraps of paper, he challenged others to become better human beings, cleaned the latrines of untouchables and practiced what he preached. Once when he went to see the King of England in London in a Langoti (loincloth) a newspaper reporter asked him, “Why are you so scantily dressed”, he replied that the King was wearing enough for both of them.

Nonviolence, Righteous Means and the Empowerment of the Local Institutions

Of many Gandhian concepts articulated above, the three that stuck with me were nonviolence, the emphasis on the employment of righteous means to achieve a goals and empowerment of local authorities in government. The reasons that these three stood out for me were:

• My study of Political Science which introduced to me Plato, Aristotle, Marx, Mao, Bentham, Rousseau, Locke Kautaliya and Machiavelli and many other political philosophers and philosophies. The comparisons with Gandhian concepts were striking and vivid.
• The repeated Hindu-Muslim rioting in India in the state of Gujarat and other parts of India always brought me back to Gandhi’s legacy.
• The Vietnam War, the bloodshed and the turmoil in United States. The movement against war.
• Indian fascination with Russian revolution and centralized planning. Also the acceptance of their propaganda that State is Supreme and the Individual must submit to it.

Concept # 1

Nonviolence

Where does Nonviolence come from?
The most visible and known Gandhian concept today is that of nonviolence. It has reverberated all over the world since Gandhi practiced it with success in South Africa and India. It provided an alternative and a viable method to politicians, sociologists, public administrators and others to resolve conflicts without killing innocent human beings, destroying institutions and infrastructure.

The evolution of Gandhi’s message of nonviolence and the development of methodology to use it as a tool could be traced back to the teachings of Buddha, Mahavira and King Ashoka who had renounced war after a bloody war.

This was as far as Gandhi would adopt the nonviolent traditionalism. He tweaked it and put his own stamp on it. This is very well explained by Richard G. Fox (2) in an article titled “Passage from India: How Westerners Rewrote Gandhi’s message” and published in www.neh.gov in 1998-01. Fox said that Gandhi departed from Hindu orthodoxy in two significant ways. He modified total Ahimsa and sanctioned humanitarian killings. He was alluding to rabid dogs in India and poisonous snakes on South Africa. He again alienated orthodox Hindus when he championed the cause of untouchables in India. When pressed by orthodox Hindus by referring him to Vedas and scriptures, he simply asserted that Hinduism needed to change.

Gandhi was not a dreamer but a realist. He understood that he was in politics and had to have success in his mission. He said that he was not in it to attain martyrdom but achieve the defeat of tyranny and independence of India. He converted nonviolence into a potent weapon that worked better than the conventional weapons of human destruction in many situations. He went on to explain that he was expounding a different idea than Pacifism which advocated passive resistance. He viewed it as one arising out of weakness. He called his nonviolence movement as Satyagraha. For Gandhi Satyagraha contained three important elements:

• Firstly, the nonviolence which Gandhi wanted to put up was informed and planned. It was built on moral grounds.
• Secondly, the nonviolence was through mass civil disobedience movements which disrupted the working of autocratic authorities.
• Thirdly, the participants in the mass civil disobedience movements had to be prepared for suffering courageously.

Nonviolence at Individual level

If non violence is not practiced at individual level, it cannot be translated to the higher levels. Gandhi believed that individuals can be trained for nonviolence. Gandhi also said the nonviolence is like charity. It begins at home. Living among decent people does not produce nonviolence. It is only when you meet resistance that nonviolence comes into play. Nonviolence equips individuals to disarm the opposition with love and not with violence.

How does Nonviolence work in real life and can it be replicated?

Gandhi explained that “I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life”.

How violence works at National and International level: Tyranny of Majority

Gandhi had raised his voice against the tyranny of majority which is one of the basic tenets of democracy. The idea of elections and democracy has been on the go in last century but has resulted in majorities that have inflicted tyranny on minorities. Gandhi viewed it as violence and advocated for Rule by Consensus. The idea of consensus had been initially rejected by nationalists but has been catching on in the current century. Many countries when they have multi party system are using the building of consensus for forming governments. The latest British election was a result of consensus building by Tories and Liberals. The decisions making at the United Nations is another example of replicability of Gandhi’s consensus building methods. In United States we witnessed the live consensus building when Obama wanted to go for Healthcare legislation. He consulted every segment of society and all those who had a stake in it. Gandhi is not suggesting identity of opposing opinions but reconciliation of the same.

Nonviolence at Community level: Decentralization and Local Government

Gandhi was a staunch supporter of decentralization as is reflected in his commentary on centralization. He said that centralization as a system is inconsistent with non-violent structure of society. Most governments in the world are based on system of representative democracy. As we can all attest with personal experiences that the idea of representative democracy has been turned into an election time encounter with your representatives? In real sense the government has become more and more centralized. Gandhi had expounded the idea of Gram Swaraj which is envisaged self sufficient and self reliant villages authorities known as Panchayats. The idea has been an ideal for most governments but has been difficult to achieve for lack of resources, industrialization, the economic realities and technological advances. Yet the romantic ideal of decentralized government stays alive in every field of public administration. In the United States the emphasis on states’ rights and less government is vaguely based on Gandhian ideas of local government.

Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela: Gandhi followers

Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela are the best known examples of leaders who found success in replication of Gandhian ideals in United States and South Africa in the current century.
Martin Luther King was a seminary student who was distressed with the unequal treatment of blacks. His readings of Gandhi formed the basis of the civil rights movement which he led in 1950s. He led many non violent marches and had to suffer hardships similar to Gandhi from white supremacists. King has been dubbed as the spiritual successor of Gandhi in the West. He was so obsessed with Gandhian philosophy that he went to India and sought guidance from Vinoba Bhave (3) who had inherited Gandhi’s spiritual mantle. King like Gandhi was assassinated at the young age of 39.

Nelson Mandela was another leader who was inspired by Gandhi and his ideals. Mandela who is 90 and living had led a heroic struggle against oppressive South African regime. He had based is movement on Gandhian principles and spent almost three decades in jail. Like Gandhi, Mandela warned his followers the long struggle they face and firmly advocated nonviolence. But like Gandhi, Mandela was a realist and wanted results for his efforts. Against the extreme violence of the South African government he retaliated with violence. His ideal of violence was however without loss of life. Mandela had later used Gandhian consensus building methods when he presided over a rare peaceful transition of power in South Africa. His joint government with De-Clerk, the other Prime Minister of South Africa was responsible for avoiding black and white conflict which has been rampant in Africa other parts of the world.

Concept # 2

Righteous Means: Means and Ends Dichotomy

This is the second Gandhian concept I chose to write on. The reason for this is my extensive interest and study of political philosophies. During Gandhi’s life span many major armed conflicts were taking place. The most important were the two World Wars and Vietnam War. These wars were raged on the ideals and philosophies which were directly opposed to Gandhian concepts of nonviolent resolution of individual, national and international conflicts.

Karl Marx the author of “Das Kapital” justified the use of violent force by masses to overthrow an autocratic government and authority. It had resulted in a bloody revolution in now defunct Soviet Union. Fredrich Hegel also glorified the power of the state over the individual when he said “State is the March of God on earth” (4) The English Utilitarian philosophers including John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham also advocated a philosophy in which good of the few could be sacrificed for the common good. Both of these philosophies were eulogizing the adoption of violent means to achieve their objectives. This meant that means held no importance as well as the objectives and goals were achieved. All of them along with Machiavelli and Kautaliya justified coercion in the name of a pre determined common end.

In contrast Gandhian concept of nonviolence rejects the adoption of means other than non violence to achieve goals. Gandhi believed that you cannot be violent for some activities and nonviolent for others. Gandhi was the lone voice in advocating the primacy of means over the ends. This was not a very popular idea in the age of raging and angry nationalism when the young people were sacrificing themselves in droves for their nations. Gandhi however stuck to his belief that means were more important on the following grounds:

• Gandhi wrote in Hind Swaraj on page 115 that “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 the end as there is between the seed and the tree”
• For Gandhi the phrase “As you sow so shall you reap” applied to the means and ends dichotomy. He believed that violence to achieve an end can never achieve a just end. Violence begets violence.
• Gandhi did not differentiate between means and ends. We always have control over means but not on the ends.
• Gandhi based his justification of righteous means to achieve a right end on the teachings of Bhagvad Gita which advocated only dispassionate action.
• Gandhi felt that Satya or Truth required no justification and every action must be in the framework of Truth and Ahimsa.
• The best writings on Means and Ends dichotomy came in the form of Gandhi’s introduction to John Ruskin’s book “Unto the Last”. “Neither the State nor any social organization can be allowed to flout with impunity , the sacred principle that everyman is entitled to his relative truth and no one can claim the right to coerce another to treat him as a means to his own end”

Applications in International, National and Individual Lives

In the international arena and at the national level the Gandhian concept of righteous means has virtually been ignored. The spectacular advances of capitalistic markets all over the world including India, Russia and China have produced the propensity to throw the adoption of just means out of the window. The ends justify the means is the current creed. Even the business schools at Harvard and Wharton only pay a lip service to use ethical or righteous means to achieve their ends. They make it a point to teach the students to focus at the ends and ignore means or righteous means if the situation needs. The most glaring example on the international level was the Iraq war. The Bush administration manipulated all intelligence and ignored all attention to means and threw the United States in a war that has cost us dearly.

On the other hand the Gandhian concept of adoption of righteous means in comparison to the sole focus on ends has been a great success on individual level. Most personal and self improvement gurus like Deepak Chopra and Stephen Covey have stressed the need to emphasize the adoption of righteous means as a great stress buster. It has been proved again and again that if the basis of an action is moral and based on satya and the end sought is nonviolent and based on Dharma, the individuals accomplish more and are viewed by society in a good light

Concept # 3

Empowerment of local government

This Gandhian concept was chosen by me as I have used and witnessed the utility of many of Gandhi’s empowerment ideas. I have been an Administrator of many large organizations and have used Gandhi’s ideas practically.

The chief thrust of Gandhi’s empowerment of local governments was at the village level and making them economically self sufficient units. Decentralized power and economic system at the village level was at the core of his ideas. Gandhi thought of India as a massive confederation of self governing and self sustaining villages.
This was an offshoot of Gandhi’s idea of “Swadeshi” which envisaged production of goods and services only to sustain the villages themselves. The objective of a self sufficient community of the village is only to sustain itself and not to trade and produce a surplus. The western ideas of mass industrialized industries which produced on the conveyor belt were opposed by Gandhi from the get go. He was trying to leave the Indian society undisturbed and in its original traditional mold.
The economic and administrative implications of Gandhi’s Swadeshi or local government ideas were:

• Sawadeshi wanted to do away with dependence on the import and export of goods and services outside the village.
• It would eliminate the need to develop ecologically destructive transportation system to transport the surplus goods and services.
• Sawadeshi according to Gandhi was a method that would eliminate the need of violence that rages on within the industrialized societies who are trying to sell their surplus goods and services.
• Sawadeshi was an objective to attain self sufficiency and promotes the spiritual need of truth.
• On the level of public administration it promoted an idea that would make the societies more ethical and possible for intense civic engagement. It would make the delivery of services by civil servants easy and available at home.

Applications of Gandhi’s Empowerment ideas based on Sawadeshi ideas

The engagement of public authorities with the people is the greatest challenge for governments. Gandhi’s devolution of authority to the very basic level of village spurs an active engagement of civil servants and people and ultimately results in better delivery of services. Many ardent and modern supporters of the civil servants engagement with people at the root level like Robert Denhardt, (7) who are also the inventors of New Public Administration, have espoused similar ideas.

Gandhi’s ideas about the devolution of authority to the village level have however met with a great setback all over the world with the onslaught of mass industrial and capitalistic national states. It started in India when Jawaharlal Nehru the first Prime Minister of India opted for centralized planning known as Five Year Plans. He also modeled Indian growth on highly end oriented and violence prone Russian model. The story of industrialized European and Asian giants like China and Japan has suffered the similar fate.

Despite these setbacks, Gandhi’s empowerment of people at the root level lives on. Progressive countries like Sweden, Norway and Denmark in North Europe. They have been using these ideas with success. The recent Tea Party movement in United States has been asking for less centralized at Federal level and return of power to people.

Conclusion: Successes and Disappointments

Individual

A Gandhian will lead a contented selfless and a nonviolent life. He would constantly improve and learn new things. A nonviolent and truthful life come from a great deal of practice and most human beings do not come up to the high standards needed of them. It is the same with religion which wants to provide a whole package arising out of goodness. The religion has been around for thousands of years and has failed to establish a nonviolent society. Yet Gandhian concepts have improved millions of lives by setting up goals that are worth striving for. Gandhi knew this and said striving for truth is the biggest truth of all. The biggest contribution of Gandhian ideas was in the area of individual improvement and becoming a better and involved citizen.

National and Community

With ever growing lethality of weapons available to nations and terrorists to destroy the world many times over, the relevancy of Gandhian nonviolence has multiplied greatly. Gandhi’s belief that violence begets violence has been proved over and over again in the last century. , With the world becoming small and the rapidly increasing population, we find nations and communities more and more diverse in faith and culture. Gandhian ideals could provide much relief to strife prone societies. His ideas of self government and devolution of power have been a great success and have been sought by most nations. (8)
Gandhian consensus building is one of the best concepts that Gandhi handed down to the proponents of Public Administration and decision makers. Mandela and Martin Luther King and many others have fought for rights of their nations nonviolently and succeeded.

Despite all the positive Gandhian guidelines and ideals available the world, the capitalistic systems have largely opted for massive bureaucracies and corporations who have no regard for the individuals. Capitalism dictated cycles of economics have also contributed to the viciousness of politics and highly centralized governments and organizations.

The Final Thought

Gandhi was a man of great discipline and integrity. He believed that people should have nonviolent values and live by those values. He lived at a time of great turbulence in India. He led many protests of civil disobedience also known as Satyagrah and fasted often. His movement helped India to gain independence from British rule. He was an inspiration for many other movements of independence. He did what he did for two main reasons:

First, because he believed that if something was unjust, it was incumbent upon those who felt strongly about to stand up and expose it.

Second, he believed that peace happens with every step. If you want peace , you have live peace. His greatest success was showing how one can live life with integrity, stand up for what you believe in, and resolve conflicts peacefully.His biggest failure was not standing up against partition of Muslims and Hindus which led to the formation of Pakistan. But those were difficult times, and like with many conflicts in today’s world, it was a culmination of a long and disturbing history. He will truly be remembered as a man who lived with integrity, something that is a rarity these days as Machiavellianism.has overtaken our politics.