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The Limits of Gandhian Non-Violence
The Limits of Gandhian Non-Violence
Karen Gabriel
Prem Kumar Vijayan2021, Countercurrents
This article is a brief analysis of the conditions under which the strategy of non-violent political protest can be effective, and the consequences of their absence.
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Political and social movements in South Africa, the United States of America, Germany, Myanmar, India, and elsewhere, have drawn inspiration from the non-violent political techniques advocated by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi during his leadership of the anti-colonial struggle for Indian freedom from British colonial rule. This course charts a global history of Gandhi's thought about non-violence and its expression in civil disobedience and resistance movements both in India and the world. Organized in three modules, the first situates Gandhi through consideration of the diverse sources of his own historical and ideological formation; the second examines the historical contexts and practices through which non-violence acquired meaning for him and considers important critiques; the third explores the various afterlives of Gandhian politics in movements throughout the world. We will examine autobiography and biography, Gandhi's collected works, various types of primary source, political, social, and intellectual history, and audiovisual materials. In addition to widely disseminated narratives of Gandhi as a symbol of non-violence, the course will closely attend to the deep contradictions concerning race, caste, gender, and class that characterized his thought and action. By unsettling conventional accounts of his significance, we will grapple with the problem of how to make sense of his troubled legacy.
European Journal of Sociology
Violence as a tactic of social protest in postcolonial india2019 •
In March 1974, trade union leader and Chairman of the Socialist Party of India, George Fernandes, formed a new independent trade union of railway workers and then led a massive nation-wide strike lasting about a month. Two years later— March 1976—Fernandes was arrested as the principal accused in the Baroda Dynamite Conspiracy Case, a plot to bomb strategic targets in New Delhi in resistance to Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian rule. How did George Fernandes’ political work change over these two years—from engaging in traditional trade union movement tactics during the Railway Workers’ Strike in 1974 to being the ringleader of a plan to bomb strategic targets in resistance to the postcolonial state? Why would an activist who advocated non-violent social movement tactics change strategies and end up leading a movement that primarily uses violent tactics? I argue that in its violent repression of the Railway Workers’ Strike and its illegal imprisonment of the strike’s leaders, Indira Gandhi’s administration demonstrated to Fernandes and other opposition party leaders that there was no room for a peaceful solution to the ever increasing social conflict of early 1970s India. Therefore, when Gandhi instated herself as dictator, longstanding advocates of satyagraha believed that symbolic violence against the state was the tactic most likely to lead to the restoration of democracy in India.
Non-Violent action and Resistance with special reference to Kashmir
Non-Violent action and Resistance with special reference to Kashmir2016 •
This study looks at the practice of Non-Violent Action in history with its implications in the practical world as well as its references in literature and philosophy. It then goes on to look at the Kashmir conflict as a special reference and analyze how similar practices have been used directly or indirectly over time to wage conflict non-violently. It takes into account the historical perspective and then looks at the various ways used to resist such as through forms of art, music and literary records.
Asian Journal of Social Science
Power As Subordination and Resistance As Disobedience: Non-Violent Movements and the Management of Power2006 •
Transstellar Journal
PRACTICES OF PUBLIC PROTESTS IN MODERN INDIA2019 •
The right to protest and express yourself freely is an important element of a Democratic Government, which every Indian has enjoyed since 1947. Really, this right enshrined in the constitution of India. But it comes with the responsibility that the protest action must be conducted in an orderly and peaceful manner and within the confines of the law. More importantly, those who protest must ensure that they do not infringe on other people' rights when they embark on protest action. Violence, destruction of private and public properties and looting have no place in this concerned. Overall, Gandhian tradition should be adopted for securing all demands in India. So, all aspects shall be explained in this regard.
2020 •
What happened in India in 2012 has obvious echoes in what has been happening in the United States in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by the police in Minneapolis. In this essay, I connect my book, Gendered Citizenship, to the current political moment to ask if protest can lead to a more equal and just society.
American Political Science Review
Another Realism: The Politics of Gandhian Nonviolence2012 •
Although Gandhi is often taken to be an exemplary moral idealist in politics, this article seeks to demonstrate that Gandhian nonviolence is premised on a form of political realism, specifically a contextual, consequentialist, and moral-psychological analysis of a political world understood to be marked by inherent tendencies toward conflict, domination, and violence. By treating nonviolence as the essential analog and correlative response to a realist theory of politics, one can better register the novelty of satyagraha(nonviolent action) as a practical orientation in politics as opposed to a moral proposition, ethical stance, or standard of judgment. The singularity of satyagraha lays in its self-limiting character as a form of political action that seeks to constrain the negative consequences of politics while working toward progressive social and political reform. Gandhian nonviolence thereby points toward a transformational realism that need not begin and end in conservatism, moral equivocation, or pure instrumentalism.
2020 •
The leader of the Indian independence movement, Mahatma Gandhi, left an invaluable legacy: he proved to the world that it was possible to achieve political aims without the use of violence. He was the first political activist to develop strategies of nonviolent mass resistance based on a solid philosophical and uniquely religious foundation. Since Gandhi’s death in 1948, in many parts of the world, this legacy has been received and continued by others facing oppression, inequality, or a lack of human rights. This article is a tribute to five of the most faithful followers of Gandhi who have acknowledged his inspiration for their political activities and in choosing nonviolence as a political method and way of life: Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Martin Luther King, Louis Massignon, the Dalai Lama, and Malala Yousafzai. This article describes their formative leadership and their significance and impact on regional and global politics and history.
I wrote this manuscript in the early 1980s, drawing both from my experience in the California anti-nuclear movement and my study of Gandhi. The book is a comprehensive critique of nonviolent theory.
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