Since the only way for Gandhi getting to the truth is by nonviolence love , it follows that Satyagraha implies an unwavering search for the truth using nonviolence. Gene Sharp did not hesitate to define Satyagraha simply as "Gandhian Nonviolence. Today as Nagler would say, when we use the word Satyagraha we sometimes mean that general principle, the fact that love is stronger than hate and we can learn to use it to overcome hate , and sometimes we mean more specifically active resistance by a repressed group; sometimes, even more specifically, we apply the term to a given movement like Salt Satyagraha etc.
It is worthwhile looking at the way Gandhi uses Satyagraha. Satyagraha was not a preconceived plan for Gandhi. Event in his life culminating in his "Bramacharya vow", 11 prepared him for it. He therefore underlined:. Events were so shaping themselves in Johannesburg as to make this self-purification on my part a preliminary as it were to Satyagraha.
I can now see that all the principal events of my life, culminating in the vow of Bramacharya were secretly preparing me for it. Satyagraha is a moral weapon and the stress is on soul force over physical force.
It aims at winning the enemy through love and patient suffering. It aims at winning over an unjust law, not at crushing, punishing, or taking revenge against the authority, but to convert and heal it.
Though it started as a struggle for political rights, Satyagraha became in the long run a struggle for individual salvation, which could be achieved through love and self-sacrifice.
Satyagraha is meant to overcome all methods of violence. Gandhi explained in a letter to Lord Hunter that Satyagraha is a movement based entirely upon truth. It replaces every form of violence, direct and indirect, veiled and unveiled and whether in thought, word or deed.
Satyagraha is for the strong in spirit. A doubter or a timid person cannot do it. Satyagraha teaches the art of living well as well as dying. It is love and unshakeable firmness that comes from it. Its training is meant for all, irrespective of age and sex.
The most important training is mental not physical. It has some basic precepts treated below. There are three basic precepts essential to Satyagraha: Truth, Nonviolence and self-suffering. These are called the pillars of Satyagraha. Failure to grasp them is a handicap to the understanding of Gandhi's non -violence. These three fundamentals correspond to Sanskrit terms:. Satyagraha as stated before literally means truth force.
Truth is relative. Man is not capable of knowing the absolute truth. Satyagraha implies working steadily towards a discovery of the absolute truth and converting the opponent into a trend in the working process.
What a person sees as truth may just as clearly be untrue for another. Gandhi made his life a numerous experiments with truth. In holding to the truth, he claims to be making a ceaseless effort to find it. Gandhi's conception of truth is deeply rooted in Hinduism. The emphasis of Satya-truth is paramount in the writings of the Indian philosophers. Reaching pure and absolute truth is attaining moksha.
Gandhi holds that truth is God, and maintains that it is an integral part of Satyagraha. He explains it thus:. The world rests upon the bedrock of satya or truth; asatya meaning untruth also means "nonexistent" and satya or truth, means that which is of untruth does not so much exist. Its victory is out of the question. And truth being "that which is" can never be destroyed. This is the doctrine of Satyagraha in a nutshell. Ahimsa: In Gandhi's Satyagraha, truth is inseparable from Ahimsa.
Ahimsa expresses as ancient Hindu, Jain and Buddhist ethical precept. The negative prefix 'a' plus himsa meaning injury make up the world normally translated 'nonviolence'. The term Ahimsa appears in Hindu teachings as early as the Chandoya Upanishad. The Jain Religion constitutes Ahimsa as the first vow. It is a cardinal virtue in Buddhism. Despite its being rooted in these Religions, the special contribution of Gandhi was:. To make the concept of Ahimsa meaningful in the social and political spheres by moulding tools for nonviolent action to use as a positive force in the search for social and political truths.
Gandhi formed Ahimsa into the active social technique, which was to challenge political authorities and religious orthodoxy. It is worth noting that this 'active social technique which was to challenge political authorities', used by Gandhi is none other than Satyagraha. Truly enough, the Indian milieu was already infused with notions of Ahimsa. Nevertheless, Gandhi acknowledged that it was an essential part of his experiments with the truth whose technique of action he called Satyagraha.
At the root of Satya and Ahimsa is love. While making discourses on the Bhagavad-Gita, an author says:. Truth, peace, righteousness and nonviolence, Satya, Shanti, Dharma and Ahimsa, do not exist separately. They are all essentially dependent on love.
When love enters the thoughts it becomes truth. When it manifests itself in the form of action it becomes truth. When Love manifests itself in the form of action it becomes Dharma or righteousness. Most intellectuals not only in the West but in India would have endorsed her verdict. It does not seem to have occurred to them that Gandhi may have been thinking ahead of his time.
It was only in the latter half of the twentieth century that Gandhi's methods came to be invoked across the globe, in Asia, Africa, America, and Europe. In South Africa, the African National Congress carried on non-violent agitation and passive resistance for nearly forty years. Chief Albert Luthuli, the president of the ANC and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, belonged to the Zulu warrior tribe, but was inspired by Gandhi's writings and became a champion of non-violence. The ANC was, however, unable to sustain its non-violent struggle in the face of ruthless oppression by the apartheid regime.
After the massacre of Sharpeville and until the release of Nelson Mandela, the major liberation movement in South Africa took to guerilla warfare. However, the armed struggle would have been much more difficult and prolonged had not students, industrial workers, religious leaders, youth, and women's organizations joined in non-violent resistance to the racist regime on such issues as rent, consumer embargoes, and bus boycotts.
Thus the liberators of the blacks in South Africa were not only the guerilla fighters, but hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, shop assistants, and workers living in shanty towns who consciously or unconsciously adopted methods which Gandhi would have approved.
King championed the non-violent method as a practical alternative not only to armed conflicts within a country but between countries. It is either non-violence or non-existence. The last two decades of the twentieth century witnessed some spectacular demonstrations of 'peoples' power' to non-violently resist colonial rule.
In the Czech Republic and Poland, the Baltic States, the Philippines, and several other countries, unarmed men and women collectively dared to defy the might of the modern state. In Poland, Lech Walesa, the leader of the 'Solidarity' movement, acknowledged that he derived his insights from his study of Gandhi's campaigns.
He skilfully alternated disciplined and peaceful strikes with negotiations. He was one of the first to be clapped into prison from where he sent out earnest appeals to his countrymen to retrain from violence.
His struggle had its vicissitudes, but by Poland became the first country in eastern Europe to free itself from Soviet domination. In Czechoslovakia a massive non-violent protest in fizzled out, but twenty one years later, on 17 November , a spontaneous upsurge against Soviet occupation turned into the largest demonstration in the history of the country. Hundreds of demonstrators were injured when the security forces charged the crowd. Over a hundred thousand marchers gathered in Wencelas Square in Prague, sat down on the road, and sang nursery rhymes.
They held candles and waved flags. Their leader Vaclav Havel, speaking in virtually the Gandhian idiom, exhorted them to refrain from violence. A 'Civic Forum' emerged, which incorporated all opposition groups and avowed its commitment to non-violence. Havel paid a tribute to the students of Czechoslovakia who had thrown themselves into 'the non-violent struggle for giving this revolution a beautiful, peaceful, dignified, gentle, and I would say, loving face, which is admired by the whole world'.
This was, he declared, 'a rebellion of truth against lies, of purities against impurities, of the human heart against violence'. The Prague demonstration had a chain reaction across the country.
Protests and participants grew daily. Thousands of strike committees were formed. Peaceful crowds holding nothing but candles and flowers, were beaten up by truncheon wielding police.
In the words of Mary E. On 7 December the Prime Minister of the Communist government resigned. On 10 December a government of 'national understanding' was announced. By the end ofthe December , the Soviet-dominated regime had surrendered and the Federal Assembly had elected Havel, as the president of Czechoslovakia.
Another striking victory of non-violence was witnessed in Philippines as a result of which the despotic and corrupt regime of President Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown. Marcos threw into the prison one of the protagonists of democracy and his chief rival, Senator Beniquo Acquino.
In prison Acquino pored over the Bible and the writings of Gandhi and was converted to the creed of non-violence. When he returned home after three years of self-exile, he was assassinated.
His death galvanized the country and paved the way for a non-violent struggle. Gandhi was assassinated on January 30, , almost five months after India gained independence, but his ideals of truth and non-violence still remain relevant in the 21st century. Gandhi believed that truth is the relative truthfulness in word and deed, and the absolute truth - the ultimate reality.
This ultimate truth is God and morality, and the moral laws and code - its basis. According to Gandhi, non-violence implies uttermost selflessness. It means, if anyone wants to realise himself, i. To him, non-violence was not a negative concept but a positive sense of love.
He talked of loving the wrong-doers, but not the wrong. He strongly opposed any sort of submission to wrongs and injustice in an indifferent manner. He thought that the wrong-doers can be resisted only through the severance of all relations with them. During the freedom struggle, Gandhi introduced the spirit of Satyagraha to the world. Satyagraha means devotion to truth, remaining firm on the truth and resisting untruth actively but nonviolently. According to Gandhi, a satyagrahi must believe in truth and nonviolence as one's creed and therefore have faith in the inherent goodness of human nature.
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