Author: Awadhesh Narayan
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: February 21, 2003
In Gandhian literature, non-violence
has been enunciated as a positive virtue in negative form, signifying the
greatest love for the greatest number. It is said to be the weapon of the
strong. Yet non-violence posited by the weak is cowardice, and cowardice
is worse than violence. Weakness is a precursor to violence, which it invites
and perpetuates in society.
Mahatma Gandhi devised a method
of fighting British imperialism: Satyagraha. It envisaged peacefully demanding
justice from the British, without harbouring ill-will towards them. Instead
of inflicting injury on the adversary, it implied self-suffering and the
refusal to be provoked even when the gravest provocation existed. This
instrument was three-pronged: Truth gave strength to the satyagrahi; non-violence
disarmed the adversary whose pulverisation of the defenceless brought about
moral repugnance; self-suffering invoked the sympathy of the third party-the
world community-for the satyagrahi's cause.
Gandhiji launched three big satyagraha
movements in India: Non-Cooperation, 1921, the salt satyagraha, 1931, and
the Quit India Movement, 1942. These movements did mobilise the masses,
but all were suppressed. None bore fruit in the sense of throwing the British
out of India. Two years after the end of World War II, India gained independence
only after unprecedented bloodshed and an almost unanticipated traumatic
vivisection of the country.
Gandhiji was full of goodwill for
the Muslim community and consideration for MA Jinnah. He was initially
dead against partition. But even the apostle of non-violence could not
prevent India's division and had to throw his weight behind Nehru and Patel
in the stormy session of the All India Congress Committee which gave its
final assent to partition. It has to be admitted that Gandhi's non-violence
could neither win over Jinnah, nor induce the Muslim League to desist from
its demand for a separate homeland.
Likewise, satyagraha as a weapon
did not win freedom. As the eminent intellectual, Raghupati Sahai Firaq,
said in a symposium organised at the Allahabad University in the early
1950s, the political contours of the postwar world had so changed that
the British were obliged to liberate the country. Some claimed the British
considered it economically imprudent to maintain their rule on account
of the tough fight put up by the Indian National Congress and later the
mutiny in the Indian navy. Gandhiji himself never claimed all credit for
India's emancipation.
There is a theory that violence
begets violence, since it leaves behind a rancour in the heart of the vanquished
which sets off a chain reaction. This is not always the case. When violence
is used for the good of the greatest number, and not as an instrument of
an exaggerated sense of ego, there is no rancour and therefore no cause
and effect. Lord Rama killed Bali and Ravana. He did not do so on account
of territorial ambitions, but for the sake of a righteous order. Might
did not rule over right; rather, right had might at its command, to relieve
people from tyranny.
Use of force to rid society of subversive
and anti-social elements acts like the surgeon's knife. So long as human
nature is vulnerable to avarice and arrogance of power, so long as the
strong forget the moral impulses of strength and oppress the weak, such
elements will have to be subdued by the judicious and disinterested use
of force. This is perhaps why non-violence is defined as the greatest love
for the greatest number and not unconditional love for all people at all
times.
