Nonviolence terms and concepts

The distinction, “work” vs. work is necessary to stress that the beneficial results of nonviolent action often lie in the future. “Work” means the immediate and obvious effects, while work without quotes designates the resulting underlying and fundamental shifts brought about by nonviolence. In other words, it means not “got what we wanted,” “does good work.” All action has consequences on various levels. A nonviolent actor always takes into account the intended long-term objectives and consequences and not just the more expedient or visible results. Because nonviolence can take time to address root causes of violence or injustice, people seeking immediate objectives often reject it on the grounds that nonviolence doesn’t “work”. Often they embrace violence because it satisfies an immediate need. Unfortunately, ignoring the long-term adverse consequences of violence leads to lurching from crisis to crisis instead of steady improvement.

One can characterize this concept as follows:

Violence sometimes “works” but never works, while nonviolence sometimes “works“ and always works.

Gandhi’s Salt Satyagraha of 1930 is a classic example of this concept. At the cost of much suffering, the campaign produced virtually no change in the hated salt laws but historians have identified it as the turning point that lead to the independence of India 17 years later.

Resources:

The Search for a Nonviolent Future, Michael Nagler, New World Library, Novato CA, 2004, Chap. 4.

The “200-year present” is a term coined by peace research pioneer & sociologist Elise Boulding. It describes a way thinking of the fleeting present moment with full awareness of the effects of past actions and of our present actions on the future. If one considers the life spans of the oldest and the youngest individual alive at any given time one gets a period across the “past,” “present,” and “future,” of approximately 200 years. This perspective encourages a long-term commitment to all of life in which we acknowledge that the past is still with us in its effects and that all aspects of the present moment — all our thoughts and actions — will determine the future.

When Martin Luther King, Jr. admonished us to “rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented culture to a person-oriented culture,” he hit upon the essence of the 200-year present, which demands that we shift from a materialist view of human beings to a consciousness-based view that embraces the unity of life across time.

Ahimsa (the ‘m’ is nasal, like dans in French, the ‘a’ is long) is the ancient Sanskrit term usually translated as, and possibly the model for, ‘nonviolence.’ The translation is unfortunate, however, in that such negative compounds in Sanskrit were more positive in effect than the corresponding, literal translations in English. Abhaya, for example, literally ‘non-fear’ actually was the word for ‘courage.’ This has caused endless confusion in English, where ‘nonviolence’ or worse, ‘non-violence’, is already mistaken for a negative — the absence of violence — where it really stands for ‘love in action.’

Equally important, it is likely that the word himsa, built on the Sanskrit root √han ‘strike, slay’ was what linguists call a ‘desiderative.’ That would mean that ahimsa should actually be translated something like ‘the force unleashed when desire to harm is eradicated.’ Of course, ‘nonviolence’ is handier! And that’s fine, as long as we realize its limitations.

Ahimsa as explained in “Gandhi the Man” by Eknath Easwaran. Ahimsa, nonviolence, was the noblest expression of Truth for Gandhi–or, properly speaking, the way to Truth.

“Ahimsa and Truth are so intertwined that it is practically impossible to disentangle and separate them. They are like the two sides of a coin, or rather a smooth unstamped metallic disc. Who can say which is the obverse and which the reverse? Nevertheless ahimsa is the means; Truth is the end.”

Ahimsa is the bedrock of [[satyagraha]], the “irreducible minimum” to which satyagraha adheres and the final measure of its value.

In the traditional lore of India there is a story about an old sannyasi, a Hindu monk, who was sitting on the bank of a river silently repeating his mantram. Nearby a scorpion fell from a tree into the river, and the sannyasi, seeing it struggling in the water, bent over and pulled it out. He placed the scorpion back in the tree, but as he did so, the creature bit him on the hand. He paid no heed to the bite, but went on repeating his mantram. A little while later, the scorpion again fell into the water. The monk pulled him out and set him back in the tree and again was bitten. This little drama was repeated several times, and each time the sannyasi rescued the scorpion, he received a bite.

It happened that a villager, ignorant of the ways of holy men, had come to the river for water and had seen the whole affair. Unable to contain himself any longer, the villager told the sannyasi with some vexation:

“Swamiji, I have seen you save that foolish scorpion several times now and each time he has bitten you. Why not let the rascal go?”

“Brother,” replied the sannyasi, “the fellow cannot help himself. It is his nature to bite.”

“Agreed,” answered the villager. “But knowing this, why don’t you avoid him?”

“Ah, brother,” replied the monk, “you see, I cannot help myself either. I am a human being; it is my nature to save.”

Ahimsa is usually translated as “nonviolence,” but as we have seen, its meaning goes much beyond that. Ahimsa is derived from the Sanskrit verb root san, which means to kill. The form hims means “desirous to kill”; the prefix a- is a negation. So a-himsa means literally “lacking any desire to kill,” which is perhaps the central theme upon which Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist morality is built. In the Manu Smriti, the great lawbook of Hinduism, it is written, “Ahimsa paramo dharma”: ahimsa is the highest law. It is, as Gandhi puts it, the very essence of human nature.

“Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law-to the strength of the spirit.”

The word nonviolence connotes a negative, almost passive condition, whereas the Sanskrit term ahimsa suggests a dynamic state of mind in which power is released. “Strength,” Gandhi said, “does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” Therein he found his own strength, and there he exhorted others to look for theirs. Latent in the depths of human consciousness, this inner strength can be cultivated by the observance of complete ahimsa. Whereas violence checks this energy within, and is ultimately disruptive in its consequences, ahimsa. properly understood, is invincible. “With satya combined with ahimsa,” Gandhi writes, “you can bring the world to your feet.”

When Gandhi speaks of ahimsa as a law, we should take him at his word. Indeed, it was a law for him like gravity, and could be demonstrated in the midst of human affairs. Gandhi even characterized his practice of ahimsa as a science, and said once, “I have been practicing with scientific precision nonviolence and its possibilities for an unbroken period of over 50 years.” He was a precise man, meticulous and exacting, fond of quoting a Marathi hymn that goes, “Give me love, give me peace, O Lord, but don’t deny me common sense.” He valued experience as the test of truth, and the nonviolence he pursued and called “true nonviolence” had to conform to experience in all levels of human affairs. “I have applied it,” he declares, “in every walk of life: domestic, institutional, economic, political. And I know of no single case in which it has failed.” Anything short of this total application did not interest Gandhi, because ahimsa sprang from and worked in the same continuum as his religion, politics, and personal life. Daily practice could determine its value, “when it acts in the midst of and in spite of opposition,” and he advised critics to observe the results of his experiments rather than dissect his theories.

“Nonviolence is not a cloistered virtue to be practiced by the individual for his peace and final salvation, but it is a rule of conduct for society. To practice nonviolence in mundane matters is to know its true value. It is to bring heaven upon earth. I hold it therefore to be wrong to limit the use of nonviolence to cave dwellers [hermits] and for acquiring merit for a favored position in the other world. All virtue ceases to have use if it serves no purpose in every walk of life.”

Gandhi’s adherence to nonviolence grew from his experience that it was the only way to resolve the problem of conflict personally. Violence, he felt, only made the pretense of a solution, and sowed seeds of bitterness and enmity that would ultimately disrupt the situation.

One needs to practice ahimsa to understand it. To profess nonviolence with sincerity or even to write a book about it was, for Gandhi, not adequate. “If one does not practice nonviolence in one’s personal relationships with others. one is vastly mistaken. Nonviolence, like charity, must begin at home.” The practice of nonviolence is by no means a simple matter, and Gandhi never intimated that it was. As a discipline, a “code of conduct,” true nonviolence demands endless vigilance over one’s entire way of life because it includes words and thought as well as actions.

“Ahimsa is not the crude thing it has been made to appear. Not to hurt any living thing is no doubt a part of ahimsa. But it is its least expression. The principle of ahimsa is hurt by every evil thought, by undue haste, by lying, by hatred, by wishing ill to anybody. It is also violated by our holding on to what the world needs.”

Alay dangal, a Filipino term for active nonviolence, means, “to offer dignity.” Although the expression only came into limited use during the Philippines People Power Movement, many of the movement’s actions were quite representative of this ideal. Filipinos who led the uprising treated dictator Marcos’ soldiers as fellow human beings suffering under the same oppressive regime. The People Power Movement offered the soldiers food and water and pleasant conversation, exemplifying the nonviolent drive to connect with the dignity of the “other.” This action culminated in the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (nonviolent moment).

Since times immemorial in India (with parallels in other monastic traditions), spiritual communities have gathered around a spiritual teacher in intentional communities to carry out strenuous practices (a-shram comes from a root meaning exertion) under ideal conditions. Gandhi founded four such intentional communities throughout his career that also served as training grounds for those preparing themselves for spiritually based activism and as “home base” for activists when Satyagraha campaigns were underway. When he began referring to these communities as “ashrams,” upon his return to India in 1915, he was essentially acknowledging that he considered his activism to be spiritual in nature, rather than merely political.

Badshah Khan, also written Bacha Khan, full name Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988) was a Muslim follower of Gandhi and a major contributor to the freedom struggle of the 1930s. He was from the Pakhtun (Pashtun, Pakhtoon) area of what was then the North West Frontier Province of India. This devout Muslim raised a nonviolent “army” of 80,000 violence-wearied Pashtuns — the same people who wore down the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and from whom the Taliban are recruited today. Revered as a spiritual leader of his people, this nonviolent giant proved that, as Gandhi said, the bravest people make the best nonviolent fighters, and that nonviolence is effective against ruthless opposition, and is fully compatible with the ideals of Islam.

Resources:

Eknath Easwaran, Nonviolent Soldier of Islam

Gandhi, Rajmohan, Nonviolent Badshah of the Pakhtuns

Mukulika Banerjee (2000) The Pathan Unarmed Opposition & Memory in the North West Frontier (School of American Research Press)

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1969) My life and struggle Autobiography of Badshah Khan (as narrated to K B Narang) Translated by Helen Bouman Hind Pocket Books New Delhi)

Note: the Wikipedia article on Badshah Khan is very useful.

The Bhagavad Gita appears as a section of 700 verses within the ancient Indian epic the Mahabharata, where the warrior prince, Arjuna, collapses in dismay at the prospect of going into battle against his own relatives. He is admonished and encouraged by his charioteer Krishna (none other than an incarnation of Vishnu), and the dialog between the two amounts to a discussion of the nature of human action and human duty, and what constitutes dharma, basically, appropriate human action. Arjuna is a warrior, and as such his duty is to fight, but he is reluctant to carry out his duty, swadharma, for reasons of personal attachment: those he must kill are his relatives. Krishna’s task is to lead Arjuna to understand that he must carry out his duty, setting aside even the most powerful of personal attachments.

Gandhi called the Gita his ”mother,” and his “spiritual reference book.” It seems contradictory to many that a scripture that affirms the duty to kill is the basis for Gandhi’s nonviolence. But Gandhi explained that the story should not be taken literally. It means that to reach self-actualization, we must “kill” what is most dear to us, our personal attachments. Ultimately this means the extinguishing of the ego. So the story of Arjuna on the battlefield is the story of our own inner struggle to overcome selfish impulses like anger, fear, and greed. This is the struggle from which nonviolence springs. Gandhi further pointed out that Arjuna is not against killing on principle, but only recoils from killing his own relatives. The Gita lists ahimsa as the first of virtues, affirms the unity of life everywhere so that the yogi feels another’s joys and sorrows as his own, and explains in detail how and why to practice meditation.

References:

Bhagavad Gita, (1985) Translation by Eknath Easwaran (Nilgiri Press, Tomales, CA)

A term coined by Kenneth E. Boulding (1910-1983) in his 1972 classic, Stable Peace. Boulding was an economist, poet, peace research pioneer and husband of Elise Boulding (1920-2010) the peace sociologist and revered author. The slightly ironic law states:

“If something exists, then it must be possible.”

The intention is to point up the casual dismissal of peace possibilities even when they have already occurred. For example, many routinely argue that nonviolence “would never have worked against the Nazis,” even though it did work brilliantly the one time it is known to have been tried on a fairly large scale, namely in the Rosenstrasse Prison Demonstration of 1943.

Brahmacharya is an ancient Sanskrit term that identifies one of the major yamasor norms of restraint for spiritual aspirants cited in the Hindu scriptures. It literally means God-conduct, but is normally applied to the vow or practice of celibacy. Gandhi, while still in South Africa in 1906, decided to take this vow. He understood there was no deeper source of power in the human psyche than the sexual drive and knew that he would need all of his power focused to overcome the tremendous challenges he faced in rousing an entire nation to nonviolent resistance. Mastering it, which took him many years, proved to be a source of “a joy and a sense of wonder in the power of nature that [he] had no power to describe.”

The charkha, or spinning wheel, was the physical embodiment and symbol of Gandhi’s constructive program. It represents Swadeshi, self-sufficiency, and at the same time interdependence, because the wheel is at the center of a network of cotton growers, carders, weavers, distributors, and users. It also embodied the dignity of labor, equality, unity, as all volunteers were to spin each day, and finally independence, as British control of India was rooted in control of indigenous industries such as textiles. For this reason, Nehru called khadi the homespun cloth “the livery of our freedom.”

Spinning formed the “sun” in the “solar system” that was Gandhi’s Constructive Programme. Almost every person, regardless of age, social class or gender, was involved in spinning and sometimes elsewhere in the chain of cloth production, from sowing the seeds of cotton to wearing khadi. Spinning was both symbolic and quite real, as it gave employment to millions and produced a basic need of Gandhian economics.

What would be the charkha of our movement today? Meditation can be regarded as our inner charkha and its expression is the raising of the human image. The Metta Center Roadmap is designed to facilitate finding constructive activities that would unite and represent our movement as brilliantly as charkha did in India. This is why the Metta Center logo is derived from the charkha.

Civil Disobedience (CD) is the deliberate, open violation of a law held to be unjust and the willing acceptance of the prescribed punishment. CD can also be referred to as Nonviolent Direct Action when the action taken is considered to be illegal or challenges a law. Civil Resistance is used interchangeably with CD by some who see a law as being in violation of a more fundamental “higher” law. Civil resistance is therefore not so much a matter of “disobedience” against a law but of following a higher or more natural law.

Those engaged in CD are not against the rule of law, which guides and protects members of the society. Rather, they are exercising their responsibility to challenge a specific law. Their intention is to correct an injustice after other efforts of persuasion have failed to achieve the desired results. It follows that the resistance must be civil in the sense that it is not disrespectful of any person. As with all nonviolence, this technique can only properly be applied in a just cause.

Henry David Thoreau developed the idea of CD in his famous essay of 1849 which presented the concept within the context of American Transcendentalism. Gandhi did not learn how to undertake civil disobedience from Thoreau’s essay, but he did find the terminology developed by Thoreau to be useful.

A common example of civil disobedience is the risking of arrest through trespassing, blocking entrances or otherwise stopping business as usual. The School of Americas Watch has been using civil disobedience for over a decade when protestors “cross the line” onto the Ft. Benning US military base. By doing this they demonstrate their opposition to the military’s instruction of Latin American soldiers in inhumane interrogation techniques.

See Henry David Thoreau, “On Civil Disobedience.”

Civilian-based defense (CBD) is a nonviolent form of defense against invasion or revolutionary overthrow of a government. This technique has been well documented and made somewhat known to the public by Gene Sharp in his books The Politics of Nonviolent Action (3 vols. 1973) and Civilian-Based Defense: A Post-Military Weapons System (1990). In CBD citizens organize nonviolently to resist an invasion or revolution by means such as strikes, civil disobedience, defiance of military orders, and fraternization. CBD works well when citizens can distinguish their opponents as people from the actions of their opponents, accepting and seeking to win over the former while resisting the latter — if necessary, to the death.

The best known modern example of CBD is the Prague Spring, when from January to August of 1968, Czech citizens resisted a Warsaw Pact invasion aimed at suppressing the liberalizations of the popular president Alexandr Dubček. The Czechs used fraternization, humor, and mild forms of sabotage such as painting over or turning road signs to mislead troop movements. In the end the CBD was overcome, but at a great propaganda cost to the Warsaw Pact.

Some now regard CBD, along with Third Party Nonviolent Intervention, as a nonviolent answer to war.

Coercion vs. persuasion is a term used to compare tactics. It is the description of two possible means to an end. Ideally, nonviolence works by opening the heart of the opponent, in other words, by persuading them to voluntarily change their belief or action.

Coercion on the other hand, employs threat power so that one person feels they have no option but to surrender. Although the process of persuasion may take more time, it is less likely to lead to a cycle of retaliation or revenge. By using persuasive means instead of coercive ones, the positive effects of a nonviolent action are much more durable. When bullied into submission, it is human nature to fight back at the earliest opportunity.

There are times in a nonviolent campaign, however, when it is not realistically possible to persuade because the perpetrator has been unmoved by persuasive appeals. This was the case in the struggle against the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. It is unlikely that he would have ever been persuaded to voluntarily give up power. In the end, it was through the popular demand for elections that the Chilean people were finally able to oust Pinochet and end the junta in 1988.

Collateral healing is a term coined by Michael Nagler as a counter to the euphemism “collateral damage” used by the military to refer to civilians who are killed or injured in increasing numbers in modern armed conflict. Collateral healing refers to the fact that because nonviolent action injects positive energy into a situation it will always produce positive results of some kind, although we cannot always tell exactly what these results will be. So unlike collateral damage the results of collateral healing will be constructive.

An example of collateral healing occurred when 35,000 Americans sent letters to the White House requesting the President to “feed your enemy” when during the Korean War there was a severe famine in China. There was no reply at the time but it was revealed much later that those 35,000 messages moved President Eisenhower to deny a request by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to commence bombing beyond the Yalu River, in China. The letters did not work to feed the Chinese, but “worked” to stop the proposed escalation of the war (see work vs. “work”).

Whether a nonviolent action succeeds or fails in the short term with respect to explicit goals it always induces positive changes, or collateral healing.

Collective intelligence refers to the capability of a group to collaborate in order to achieve goals that an individual, even the most gifted, would not be able to accomplish alone.

On a strictly behavioral level (excluding the symbolic layer of culture), collective intelligence communities are not exclusively human. They are observed within many social animal species. From the anthill to the wolf pack and the fish shoal, the group is manifestly “smarter” than its individual components. From a nonviolent activist perspective, it is important that groups can collectively solve problems without a leader (for example, to evacuate patients from a hospital after Katrina). Just as mob violence can be encoded in cultural forms, leading to scapegoating and war (see the work of René Girard), the human collective capacity for good could be developed and encoded to bring about a peaceful society and world.

For a review of the concept, see Collective Intelligence: The Invisible Revolution.

The traditional concept of national security dates back to the 1648 Treat of Westphalia’s formalization of the nation-state (or some would say, ‘national security state’) in Europe. It defines ‘security’ narrowly, as the deterrence of external military threat, and, most damaging of all, buys such security as it possesses at the expense of others: a costly ‘zero-sum’ model. Thus we have a potent “buzz word,” security, used to justify endless sacrifices of treasure and democratic rights, with at best a highly unstable and unsatisfactory result.

In recent years a number of alternatives have arisen to replace that narrow and outmoded concept. There is human security, that the proper referent for security should be the individual rather than the state; total security, aimed at security not merely from military attack but through sufficiency of food, clothing, healthcare and shelter and all the necessities of a decent life for all; and perhaps most importantly common security, which recognizes that the only way to be truly secure for any nation or individual is with others, not against them. Common security consists of acknowledging that the safety of a nation is determined by the safety of all, including the fundamental rights to safety and security of every nation, even those of political antagonists (member states of the European Union have banished the death penalty in the interest of fundamental rights to all).

Common security practices are rooted in cooperation and trust among nations, including cultural exchange programs and economic incentives, with an emphasis on arms reductions and nuclear disarmament. The traditional concept of ‘security’ is based on threat power while these alternatives are based on integrative power: in a word, they are nonviolent in conception.

Alternative security is a portmanteau term for these complementary approaches.

Common Security is a term that describes the fact that individually, a nation, or for that matter any individual or group, cannot be secure without all other nations, groups, or individuals enjoying security at the same time. An opponent who is unable to attack you may make you somewhat secure, but an opponent who does not want to attack you because it is secure in itself makes you secure in a more meaningful, deeper and reliable sense. Common security is based on the much deeper security that comes from not having enemies, as opposed to the conventional competitive concept of keeping them in check. This is of course part of the positive-sum approach to conflict so characteristic of nonviolence. Compare Emma Goldman’s observation that “the freedom of each is rooted in the freedom of all.” Along with total security and the idea of human security it constitutes the nonviolent approach to the universal need to be secure.

Constructive program (CP) is a term coined by Gandhi. It describes nonviolent action taken within a community to build structures, systems, processes or resources that are positive alternatives to oppression. It can be seen as self-improvement of both community and individual. CP often works along side obstructive program, or Civil Disobedience, which usually involves direct confrontation to, or non-co-operation with, oppression. Constructive program is doing what one can to imaginatively and positively create justice within one’s own community.

Confrontations — whether violent or nonviolent — can capture attention, intrigue the media, and catalyze fledgling movements. However, by themselves even poignant instances of nonviolent resistance cannot build or sustain movements. Gandhi understood that CP, at its core a positive principle, would draw many people to a program of principled nonviolence. Moreover, there is a special power and directness in improving oneself and one’s community rather than, or alongside, trying to change an oppressive system (see swadeshi).

Gandhi defined Constructive Program quite early in his career and coined the term to denote the myriad of activities that he felt were prerequisite to carrying out the more overt and confrontational modes of nonviolent action. For example, he established four ashrams in the course of his long career where satyagrahis, nonviolent actors, could live a nonviolent, creative life that was largely self-sufficient and sustainable. As Constructive Program took on more and more importance over the course of the Indian freedom struggle, the charkha or spinning wheel became its symbol. By using the spinning wheel to create home-spun cloth, each Indian could participate in the struggle to build a sustainable economy separate from the British textile industry. Spinning enabled every Indian to engage in the ‘bread labour’ of fulfilling a basic need, gave employment to millions of idled workers, and allowed all Indians to participate directly in freeing India from England’s economic domination. The spinning wheel became the ‘sun’ in the ‘solar system’ of many other projects.

Many modern nonviolent movements pay little or no attention to Constructive Program. Instead they focus all of their energy on non-cooperation and civil disobedience. Activists are tempted to reason that they can build a new society after the present regime is gone. Gandhi argued that the reality was reversed, and that the chances for permanent change were less without CP. Recent events seem to bare this out. While nonviolent insurrectionary movements in the second half of the 20th century have successfully liberated people from repressive regimes in South Africa, the Philippines, Poland, the Czech Republic, Serbia, and many other places, in almost all cases the same problems of poverty and other forms of structural violence have returned to undermine the gains of the nonviolent program. This is not because nonviolence doesn’t work but because nonviolence without Constructive Program is incomplete.

The first Palestinian Intifada (1987-1991) is a notable example of a powerful application of Constructive Program. The Palestinians, along with protesting the policies of the Israeli government, planted community gardens, purchased only their own products, taught in neighborhood schools, established women’s groups and other social networks, and focused on making themselves self-reliant and self-sufficient even during intense repression and without a recognized national government. These activities provided tangible sustenance for the people, as well as cohesiveness and psychological well-being. Although the Intifada did not “work,” to gain the Palestinian’s their freedom, their CP worked by building a more resilient community (see “Work” vs. Work).

Dehumanization is seeing an individual or a group as lacking human qualities. Dehumanization occurs when an individual or group establishes in their belief system that another individual or group is inferior. While no one can clearly define all the reasons for violent action, most sociologists and historians believe that dehumanization is a clear antecedent to violence. Humans do not persecute groups or individuals they perceive as equal. Thus, dehumanization is the first, crucial link in the long and barbarous chain of violent action, that can only be overcome by rehumanization.

Resources:

See: Why being human matters: for the people of Gaza and the world, by Stephanie Van Hook

For the growing consensus amongst the academic community, see the Dehumanization Wikipedia entry.

According to the Gita Theory of Action, the philosophical basis of Gandhi’s approach to nonviolence, inaction is not possible for the human being as our thoughts themselves are actions. In effect, the decision not to act is a kind of action in itself. Since inaction is impossible, human beings must focus on how to act in any given situation. They must choose not just what actions to undertake, but with what attitude or mindset. Actions that are motivated by personal gain (phalam, fruit) will always be of lower quality than those where the motive is selfless. We can become attached to the fruit of our actions not only in terms of the concrete outcome but also in terms of the fame, or social standing that we personally gain. On the contrary detached action is undertaken in service of a selfless goal and without entanglement in subtler personal benefits.

Detachment, along with renunciation, may be the most important concepts in the Gandhian approach to nonviolence. The only way to break the pervasive power of violence is to be willing to suffer the consequences of an opponent’s violence with neither retaliation nor acquiescence. This sometimes requires an extreme capacity for endurance (tapas) and single-minded focus on the goal no matter the personal adversity as a result, up to and including the ultimate sacrifice. Naturally, this leaves no room for attachment to personal gains, or, paradoxically, even for attachment to victory, because even that will compromise the quality of one’s otherwise selfless action. Both Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. warned against triumphalism, for this reason. In practical terms, lack of detachment at the point of success can antagonize one’s opponents, whereas the true goal of nonviolence is to win over the opponent.

Dharma is a Sanskrit word, based on the root √dhŗ, (uphold, support), and can be defined as the law, duty, religion, responsibility, path, or nature, which upholds the underlying order of the universe. Sri Eknath Easwaran has defined it, intriguingly, as “that which makes us secure.” Dharma is a key component of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, and in one form or another the underpinning of all major religious systems. Gandhi believed, and there are passages to this effect even in the earliest Upanishads, that by applying the natural laws of dharma directly, unjust man-made laws can be overcome.

The Indian worldview has a unity-in-diversity structure. Thus there is one overriding law that governs all life, expressed as ahimsa paramo dharma, (nonviolence is the supreme law). As life evolves from unity to diversity there are what might be called sub-dharmas that guide the evolution of creatures through the divisions of space and time, all of them remaining in consonance with the supreme law of nonviolence. In the phenomenal world, individuals have their swadharma (own-dharma), to discover and fulfill, which is the purpose of life. Central to the idea of nonviolence is that no one’s swadharma is in real conflict with that of another. Indeed, the diversity of humanity supports the path of each individual. Martin Luther King gave a vivid expression to this principle, “I can’t be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be; and you can’t be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.”

Sub-dharmas include:

• Yuga Dharma: ‘Dharma of an age.’ According to Gandhi and others, the dharma of our age is Truth.

• Nimisha Dharma: ‘Dharma of the instant.’ Every moment there is a choice to follow dharma or adharma, anything else.

• Varna Dharma: ‘Dharma of a community’ (varna, literally ‘color,’ was the term for caste)

• Swadharma: ‘One’s own dharma.’ The articulation of your capacities with the needs of the world in which you find yourself. Gandhi realized his swadharma when he was thrown out of the train at Pietermaritzburg station for being an Indian riding in the first-class carriage even though he held a valid ticket. He realized that it was his path to find the underlying causes of racial discrimination so that he could put a stop to it in South Africa – a path that developed into the struggle for a Free India.

Effervescence of the crowd is a term used to describe the tendency of people to feed off of a momentary sense of excitement, taking to the streets and appearing briefly to be mobilized for a cause, only for the initial excitement to wear off and for the energy to dissipate (or worse, degenerate into violence and vandalism). This can be related to the yogic idea of a rajasic state, in which apathy has been overcome to reach a state of arousal and activity, but this activity lacks clear, purposeful intention towards a goal.

At the height of the Philippines People Power movement in 1986, approximately two million people converged on Epifanio de los Santos Avenue in Manila to protest a stolen election. This was the culmination of years of training, strategy, preparation, and consciousness-raising by and among the Philippine people, including the consultation of outside experts such as Hildegard and Jean Goss-Mayr. When the dictator Ferdinand Marcos ordered air strikes on the soldiers who had defected to the side of the people, the pilots found themselves unable to pull the trigger. In this nonviolent moment, all of the forces of the people were lined up against the military might of the regime – and the military conceded.

Exchange power is the second of Quaker peace theorist and economist Kenneth Boulding’s “three faces of power.” Exchange Power comes into play in most of our every-day actions, for example, economic transactions when we say, “I will give you Y, if you perform or yield X.” Exchange Power may or may not be coercive, so in terms of violence it can be positioned between Boulding’s two other faces of power, Threat Power and Integrative Power.

In terms of approaches to conflict, Boulding and most recently Johan Galtung have noted that Exchange Power often merely delays conflict, offering instead, a compromise whereby neither party is happy, but content to resolve the issue for the present time.

Fasting in Satyagraha is a hunger strike undertaken in protest. It is not a fast undertaken for purification, penitence or health. The goal of this type of fast is to persuade rather than coerce. Among the tools of the Satyagrahi, Gandhi considered fasting the ultimate, and one that should not be entered upon lightly. Gandhi carried out about a dozen fasts. He did not consider a fast successful unless it changed the disposition of the people, not simply their behavior.

In the course of his writings and practice, Gandhi outlined the following five principles for a successful fast:

1. The Satyagrahi undertaking a fast must be willing and able to carry it out to its stated conclusion. In the case of a fast unto death, for example, one must really be capable of laying down one’s life if the demands are not met.

2. The people to whom the fast is directed must be in some way part of one’s own community. Gandhi actually said they must be a “lover.” The act loses its meaning if the person to whom it is directed feels no such bond. Throughout his career Gandhi fasted against the British, and also to awaken his fellow Indians.

3. The fast must be the last resort.

4. The goal of the fast must be reasonable. During the Cold War two Americans fasted “against Eisenhower and Khrushchev” to make them stop the arms race. That fast failed on all counts.

5. The fast must be consistent with the rest of one’s campaign, if not one’s life. Irish revolutionists who fasted while in Long Kesh Prison did so only because they could not use their usual violent tactics. Tragically, some of them were simply allowed to die.

Resources:

Cf. M.K. Gandhi, Fasting in Satyagraha, Its Use and Abuse, Compiled by R. K. Prabhu and Ravindra Kelekar (Ahmedabad, Navajivan Pub. House, 1965).

Michael Nagler’s Nonviolence Handbook: A Guide for Practical Action

Gandhian economics is a term coined by J. C. Kumarappa for Gandhi’s approach to meeting material human needs. It is used as an umbrella term for the following related concepts in Gandhian thought. Namely these principles are:

An economy based on needs rather than wants

Swadeshi (in the economic sense, localism and material self-sufficiency at the village level)

Economic decentralization

The value of cottage industry and the interdependence of small, local producers rather than dependence on mass production

Bread labor

Simplicity

Self sufficiency

Trusteeship to the spiritual idea of non-possession

Trusteeship of the natural functioning environment

Understanding material things to be in three classes: 1) food, clothing, and shelter the rights to which are guaranteed to all 2) the tools one keeps in order to do ones work, which are one’s personal responsibility to obtain, and which one should hold with an attitude of trusteeship, and 3) all other material things, which are considered to be extra, that is, in the realm of ‘wants,’ rather than needs, and therefore inessential.

Resources:

E.F. Schumacher Society

Ruskin, John, Unto This Last

Principles to Practice, Gandhian Economics

The Gita Theory of Action, derived from the ancient Indian spiritual text the Bhagavad Gita, is Gandhi’s approach to nonviolent action in a nutshell. The basic formula for selfless action is: choose the right goal, use the right means, and leave the results to God. The right goal is unity, or reconciliation, rather than winning or conquering. The right means is nonviolence. And you must be detached from the results or fruits of your action. Gandhi once eloquently paraphrased this formula when he replied to an English Quaker who was complaining about being ignored by the media, “Throw the right stone into the right pond, let the ripples take care of themselves.”

Heart unity is a critical pillar of Gandhi’s system that holds out the vision of unity-in-diversity. Gandhi recognized and cherished unity at the heart or spiritual level of being. He equally valued diversity on the surface level, in differences of race, gender, worldview, and even of status, wealth, and power. This valuation of surface diversity differentiates the spiritually based system of principled nonviolence from more politically grounded approaches to justice that attempt to reach unity by the leveling of such surface differences.

Practically speaking, one achieves heart unity with another when wishing fulfillment and happiness to the other despite, or indeed partly because of, any surface differences. Underlying this state of mind is the belief that there is in fact a solution to all problems that meets the real needs, if not the conditioned wants, of all parties. As Martin Luther King said, “I cannot be what I ought to be unless you are what you ought to be, and you cannot be what you ought to be unless I am what I ought to be.”

Together with her husband Jean, Hildegard Goss-Mayr provided significant nonviolent training and organizational expertise to the Philippines People Power movement and nonviolent campaigns throughout Latin America. She is a member and former president of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and a Gandhian, principled nonviolent activist/trainer. She has written important books about nonviolence and her own experiences, and is seen by many as an important leader in the creation of a growing nonviolent culture.

Integrative power is the third and least understood of Quaker peace theorist and economist Kenneth Boulding’s “three faces of power.” Integrative power can be articulated as “I will take positive action to represent the truth as I see it, and I have faith that in the process we will draw closer in our relationship.” Boulding argued that neither of his two other faces of power, threat power nor exchange power produced a lasting peace. Instead, Boulding contended that Integrative Power calls on each party to follow what they believe to be true, maintain an open mind, and trust that this interaction would produce a result that is mutually respectful of all parties’ human needs and dignity. Integrative Power is principled nonviolence in action.

Henry Hodgkin, a British Quaker, and Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze a German chaplain to the Kaiser founded The International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) on the eve of World War I. These men refused to let the impending hostilities threaten their friendship. Their Christian opposition to war and desire to build a new and better world launched the IFOR that has worked for peace and nonviolence around the world for over 90 years. It has many international chapters that have played prominent roles in nonviolent campaigns, including the U.S civil rights movement and training and support for the Philippines People Power movement. In the 1940s, IFOR member André Trocmé helped save thousands of Jews from the Nazi Holocaust.

Resources:

The International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR)

Fellowship of Reconciliation USA

In third party nonviolent intervention, interposition is the act of literally getting in between conflicting parties to deter them from using violence against one another. Commonly, it is assumed that interposition owes its effectiveness to the conflicting parties’ unwillingness to harm an innocent bystander. However, there is also a more subtle and compelling reason for why it works. This is because violence against another human being depends on the ability of the perpetrator to dehumanize the intended recipient of the violent act. Because nonviolent interveners are seen as innocent, they are humanized in the view of the conflicting parties. This makes proceeding with violence much less likely.

Interpretation is when nonviolent actors assist the media by explaining nonviolence, nonviolent events, and nonviolent social movements. Nonviolent actors must interpret their actions to the media, by explaining exactly what happened and its significance so that the chances of public sympathy with the goals of the nonviolent movement are increased. For example, without the interpretation of nonviolent advocates the media claimed that the Philippine People Power movement was in a “category all by itself,” when clearly it was connected to and an outgrowth of Gandhi, King, and previous movements around the world. More recently, when Serbia’s Otpor Uprising overthrew the notorious dictator Slobodan Milošević, the New York Times reported “a mob descended on Belgrade.” This report was published despite a campaign that took months of careful planning and strategic organizing, including a well-organized nonviolent moment.

For nonviolence to spread, the nonviolent participants must find ways to have the media describe how nonviolence actually works, or risk having their successes and their work misunderstood, overlooked, misrepresented, and marginalized. Interpretation leads to greater understanding, appreciation, and proper evaluation of nonviolence.

Karma is the Sanskrit word for action. Because thought is an action, karma includes our thoughts and actions and their collective effect on us. This is known in psychology as our conditioning. Everything that is experienced, including thoughts, leaves a kind of mark on us, a fact now borne out by modern neuroscience. These experiences affect our future thoughts, impulses, and experiences. We can overcome the negative burden of this conditioning, our karma, by performing selfless action and ultimately by transcending our narrow, private personality so that all conditioning drops away. Karma yoga, the path of selfless action, is one of the four paths to self-realization described in the Bhagavad Gita. When self-realization is achieved the chain of causality is broken and our conditioning no longer controls us. This is accomplished through life-long selfless service and the practice of detached action. Gandhi is a wonderful example of a person who walks the path of karma yoga.

Karma yoga is the path of detached, selfless action. In yogic tradition, it is one of four paths to self-realization—along with bhakti, devotion or selfless, detached love, jnana, wisdom or intuitive awareness of the real, and raja, the royal path, a blend of the other three based on the practice of meditation. Gandhi was a supreme practitioner of karma yoga who followed that path to its complete realization. Notably, he was far from lacking in devotion or in wisdom, saying, “All my actions have their root in my insatiable love of mankind.” His predominant characteristic was his inexhaustible work for the benefit of all. As he said, “My real politics is work.”

Mahatma Gandhi defined the Law of Progression during his early years in South Africa. In his own words:

“My experience has taught me that a law of progression applies to every righteous struggle. But in the case of Satyagraha the law amounts to an axiom. As the Ganga advances, other streams flow into it … . So also as a Satyagraha struggle progresses onward, many another element helps to swell its current, and there is a constant growth in the results to which it leads. This is really inevitable, and is bound up with the first principles of Satyagraha…. The Ganga does not leave its course in search of tributaries. Even so does the satyagrahi not leave his path, which is sharp as the sword’s edge. But as the tributaries spontaneously join the Ganga as it advances, so it is with the river that is satyagraha.” (M. Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, 1928, Navajivan, Ahemabad, India p. 173)

According to Gandhi, nonviolence has a magnetic quality that draws more people to it through its implications for action instead of passivity and appeal to people’s basic compassion and respect for life. The Law of Progression partly explains why large numbers of participants are not essential in Satyagraha because if a satyagrahi remains true to nonviolence principles, numbers and other kinds of strength will flow into the movement as needed.

The Law of Suffering was defined by Mahatma Gandhi as the necessity of the nonviolent actor to voluntarily endure suffering as a mechanism for transforming an opponent. The law rests on Gandhi’s observation that, “Real suffering bravely borne melts even a heart of stone. Such is the potency of suffering or tapas. And there lies the key to Satyagraha” (Satyagraha in South Africa, p. 18). In other words, the law does not apply to just any suffering, but to suffering borne voluntarily and without hatred against the opponent. In effect, the satyagrahi deliberately takes on suffering that is already inherent in the situation in order to rouse the conscience of the opponent. As Martin Luther King put it, this kind of “unearned suffering is redemptive.”

Gandhi established the Law of Suffering early in his career and clearly formulated its definition in Young India in 1931. In Gandhi’s own words:

“The conviction has been growing upon me, that things of fundamental importance to the people are not secured by reason alone, but have to be purchased with their suffering. … Suffering is infinitely more powerful than the law of the jungle for converting the opponent and opening his ears, which are otherwise shut, to the voice of reason. Nobody has probably drawn up more petitions or espoused more forlorn causes than I, and I have come to this fundamental conclusion that, if you want something really important to be done, you must not merely satisfy the reason, you must move the heart also. The appeal of reason is more to the head, but the penetration of the heart comes from suffering. It opens up the inner understanding in man. Suffering is the badge of the human race, not the sword.” (Young India, 5-11-1931)

Meditation is the method of training the mind. The classical definition of meditation, dating to the time of the Buddha, is “the obstruction of thought waves in the mind.” According to this definition, written by the sage Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras, a “thought wave” is any mental event: not only a linguistic thought, but also a feeling, an image, a desire, etc.

Nonviolence depends essentially on one’s ability to overcome the tendency to be driven into action by negative thoughts, anger, and fear. Meditation is a tool used for the “inner work” of nonviolence practitioners to gain self-control of their thoughts and actions. Self control enables one to use energy aroused by a negative drive in a constructive way, rather than automatically going into the fight or flight response.

An uncontrolled or untrained mind, on the other hand, poses a liability in a situation where there is violence. This is because human beings will tend to act on impulse unless prepared for the reactions they might experience in the face of an extreme threat.

The Buddha states in the Dhammapada, (Trans. Eknath Easwaran, Nilgiri Press, 2007) “More than those who hate you, more than all your enemies, an untrained mind does greater harm. More than your mother, more than your father, more than all your family, a well-trained mind does greater good.”

Meditation, of one form or another, is practiced almost universally throughout the world’s religions. Regardless of the specific tradition followed or method employed, a common feature of meditation is that it must be practiced rigorously and with great self-discipline in order to train the mind and control attention. As Meister Eckhart, the 13th century German mystic wrote:

“This [meditation] needs prodigiously hard work… A man must be closeted within himself where his mind is safe from images of outside things… Second, inventions of the mind itself; ideas, spontaneous notions or images… he must give no quarter to on pain of scattering himself and being sold into multiplicity.”

Resources:

Meditation Instructions from Sri Eknath Easwaran (the ‘grand-founder’ of the Metta Center)

Words and the Mind: Thoughts on an Ancient and a Contemporary Technique of Meditation, by Michael Nagler

A Love Beyond Supreme: A Tribute to METTA

by Thien Huu Nguyen.

Since I started walking the Buddhist path, the practice of metta (loving-kindness) has become more and more an important part of my life. If there were one practice that I would say is the most far-reaching practice for me, it would have to be the meditation on loving-kindness. The benefits of this practice become clearer the more you deepen your understanding and practice of it. Metta has become a small but powerful revolution for me. Metta gives me another option, another way to respond, to people, situations, events, myself. It is something practical that I can develop and mobilize for the war within my mind. Too often our minds are flooded by impatience, frustration, and judgment, or even worse, sadness, anger, ill will, hatred, rage. Metta is often the only protection against these roots of suffering, and it is so much more: A haven of hope, good medicine, a reminder to be lovingly mindful, and a blessing.

But to alleviate suffering and nourish happiness is not only a blessing, it is the actual lived experience of liberation. Because metta gives us another way of think, it therefore gives us another way to act and live, both individually and collectively. This way is immensely positive, loving, and hopeful. Metta then can be a source of joy and a contribution to personal and social justice. It is such a contrast to a way of life and a human world that is often dominated by the negative, hateful, and hopeless, not to mention the brutal. In the midst of this situation, metta is the concrete act of training our minds to be more loving and expressing this loving-kindness. The positive benefits of this simple act I believe are boundless and immeasurable.

So what exactly is metta? Metta is defined as is the strong wish for the happiness, welfare, and liberation of all living beings, starting first and foremost with yourself, and the capacity to act on this wish. The wish for your own happiness and welfare is not only the foundation for the practice of metta, and the Buddha’s path, it is the basis for your happiness and all positive actions you do for the world. At the heart of the practice is the strong wish for the happiness and welfare of others AND the concrete act of promoting their happiness and welfare. Metta is thus very different from our conventional Hollywood understanding of love, which is typically bound up in lust, desire, possessiveness, conditionality, and self-interest. And unlike “respect”, which is so conditional and relative, it is both unconditional and constant. Metta is in fact radically different from anything most of us are used to. It is a love that is boundless and not based on relationships, identity, or conditions. You don’t radiate metta only to people of a particular gender, race, class, personality, or life situation; you radiate it to ALL living beings without distinction. It can be described as a universal unconditional love since it seeks the happiness of literally all living beings throughout the universe without seeking anything in return and without limit.

Just ask yourself when was the last time you even considered the happiness and welfare of not just your family, friends, partner, but ALL living beings? Metta is this all-encompassing loving thought cultivated and repeated over and over again; it is the continuous training of our minds and the expansion of its capacity to be more loving and kind. Consider just how powerful of an act this can be. More and more, the importance of deeply expressing a positive and loving attitude in all that we do and all times and at all places, is becoming clearer to me. The practice of metta meditation must be a continuous expression and force if you really want to benefit all living beings, or at least the ones around you. At the most fundamental level, sometimes the most positive thing you can do is to cultivate an attitude of warmth, friendliness, and loving-kindness and radiate this all around you, and to practice metta at every available opportunity. And during those times when it is most challenging and most difficult to practice it, for example, when we are in the midst of anger, frustration, fear, these are the times in which we need to practice it the most.

In our lives moment-by-moment, we have a choice to either be a living expression of our negativity and suffering, or an expression of our positivity, joy, and loving-kindness. I wish I could begin to describe just how liberating this practice can be, and why I have so much faith and confidence in it as a means to transform our lives. I strongly believe that by flooding our minds with loving-kindness, we can flood the world with loving-kindness, for the benefit of ourselves, our loved ones, and all living beings.

May you and all beings everywhere know happiness, freedom and peace.

The Milgram studies were a series of psychological studies conducted by Stanley Milgram beginning in the 1950′s to determine the influence of authority on people’s willingness to commit acts that harm another human being. Researchers were particularly interested in how ordinary people were led to commit atrocities in the authoritarian Nazi regime as a result of “obeying orders.”

In a typical experiment, a teacher (test subject) would be asked to help teach another person (actually a confederate of those conducting the study) a task. The teacher and the learner were placed in separate rooms so that the teacher could not see the learner, but could hear the learner over an intercom system. The teacher was then instructed to use a dial and switch to deliver an electric shock to the learner whenever the learner made an error. The researcher (authority figure) in the room with the teacher instructed the teacher to gradually turn up the dial to increase the voltage and therefore the severity of the electric shock. If the teacher showed reluctance, the authority figure assured the teacher that it was okay to do so. This lifted the burden of responsibility for causing suffering or harm away from the teacher and onto the researcher. As the experiment progressed the teacher could hear via the intercom supposed cries of pain from the learner in the other room. Using this dynamic, some ordinary college student subjects, though not all, were willing to inflict, based on the sounds from the intercom, suffering to the point of agony on the learner. Many subjects saw themselves as not responsible for their own actions as long as the authority figure assumed the responsibility, by assuring the teacher that it was okay to continue.

So, the Milgram studies showed that normal people could be induced to believe that they are not responsible for their actions. This acting as if not responsible is tied to the false idea that something other than our own personal capacity for choice can or should determine our actions. This nonresponsibility is closely linked to the use of violence. Nonresponsibility arises when we do not recognize our duty to disobey authority when obedience would violate our individual conscience. Nonresponsibility can also occur when we adhere to a deterministic view of the universe that does not allow for individual choice.

This idea of nonresponsibility is closely related to the idea in psychology of internal versus external locus of control. A person’s awareness that the choices they make affect their reality and outcomes is known as an internal locus of control, while the belief that outcomes are determined by external circumstances that are beyond our control is known as an external locus of control. Nonviolence effectively depends on an internal locus of control. There can be no nonviolence without personal conscience and choice, such as the choice to disobey a harmful order, or the choice to overcome our flight or fight response and engage with a difficult situation creatively.

Mirror neurons in the brain fire not only when an animal acts, but also when an animal observes another animal act. Brain scientists at the University of Parma discovered these neurons in the late 1980′s. The discovery was made using new, non-invasive technologies that enable scientists to detect the activity or firing of single neurons in brains, in this case the brains of monkeys. By now mirror neurons have been well documented in humans as well, leading one researcher, Dr. Marco Iacoboni of UCLA, to state that we are “wired for empathy,” because our central nervous system is fine-tuned to mirror the intentions of others.

The significance of mirror neurons for nonviolence should not be underestimated. Michael Nagler writes in The Search for a Nonviolent Future, “when in the live confrontation of an oppressor’s wrong with forgiving love [but firm nonviolent resistance] the oppressor can be momentarily awakened and quickened in justice.” In other words in a nonviolent moment, we now know that the opponents do not need to think about what they are witnessing, because the nonviolent actor is actually creating a response in the opponent’s central nervous system. If, as Gandhi insisted, nonviolence is a science, we have now opened a window onto its physiology — into our evolutionary inheritance of compassion.

Resource:

Mirroring People, by Marco Iacoboni.

Literally “New Education,” one of the eighteen projects in Gandhi’s constructive program. The Gandhian approach to basic education is a holistic one, where all aspects of the individual—intellectual, physical, social, and spiritual—are cultivated in a curriculum that integrates learning with hands on work that prepares young people for their life in the world, rather than containing them and separating them from the “real” world and surrounding community.

Nai Talim is conceived as a “craft-based” education in which practical skill serves as the center and foundation of an individual’s spiritual, cultural, and social development and in which skills such as literacy and mathematics are learned in context with and in service to their craft. In this approach to schooling, academic subjects are taught in an interdisciplinary way and never separated from their practical application in the world. The craft-centered approach instills the dignity of labor, the value of self-sufficiency (swadeshi), and strengthens local culture.

Not surprisingly, a nonviolent approach to socialization is integral to Nai Talim, stressing personal responsibility and inculcating self-discipline rather than reliance on external authority, with the teacher role-modeling the values and qualities that the students are meant to learn to embody themselves.

Gandhi also believed that an essential part of education was the “reverent study of all religions,” with the insight that ahimsa (nonviolence) is the basic truth contained in all of them.

It should be stressed that Gandhi’s model for education was meant to be adapted appropriately for each location and cultural context, and that the specific example of his educational philosophy he created was necessarily geared towards his own particular place and time; for example, Nai Talim in Gandhi’s conception only included free and compulsary education up to age 14.

A state in which there is not – or not yet – open conflict between state actors. All the tensions that break out in open conflict may still exist in such a state, which many people unfortunately confuse with ‘peace,’ just as nonviolence is often confused with non-violence or the mere absence of open conflict among sub-state actors.

A classic example of negative peace was afforded by the U.S. Navy some years ago, which defined ‘peace’ as “perpetual pre-hostility.”

The principle called No Fresh Issue states that in order to ensure a nonviolent movement “succeeds” in its objectives and works to heal relationships, the movement’s objectives must be presented clearly, in the beginning, and not altered simply because the resistor has attained a “position of advantage.” Resisting the temptation to “move the goal posts” and take advantage of your opponent’s weakened position supports an over-all goal of clarity of objectives and building of trust with your opponent. Finally, nonviolence is a conversation, not a power struggle. If we keep pouring on fresh issues when we obtain power, that’s what it becomes.

The purpose of maintaining this discipline is threefold: First, if we can show our opponents that our aim is consistent from the beginning and will not fluctuate with our position of power, then we can demonstrate the sincerity of our goals, the determination of our will, and the firmness of our resolve. Second, never wavering on our goals when we grow in clout clarifies our objectives for both the supporters and the opponents of the movement. Third, the steadiness of our demands yields trust; if we never waver our opponents begin to believe in the sincerity of our demands.

A historical example of a violation of No Fresh Issue occurred when Poland’s Solidarity trade union movement, on the brink of negotiating an agreement, added the demand of amnesty for political prisoners. Having lost faith in Solidarity’s integrity, the communist regime pulled back and negotiations fell apart, setting the movement back 10 years. However, when a regime (for instance) passes new repressive laws while the movement is still gathering momentum, repeal of those laws must sometimes be added to the list of the movement’s demands.

According to Gandhi, “Non-co-operation implies withdrawing cooperation from the State [or other power] that in the non-cooperator’s view has become corrupt.” The non-cooperator must be prepared to renounce the benefits and the conveniences provided by the system in question, and by this renunciation, along with the acceptance of punishment (as in all Civil Disobedience) can begin to undermine the system’s authority over the individual. Draft resistance has been a prominent form of non-cooperation throughout history.

When even one person is empowered to act against an unjust system and decides no longer to cooperate with it, with its duties, titles and honors, she or he gains a form of integrity and power that draws in others who share the weight of that oppression and eventually can awaken the opponents.

Non-co-operation with evil is, however, incomplete without co-operation with good. For instance, in Gandhi’s India, non-cooperation in the form of boycotting British cloth was balanced by the daily application of the charkha, or spinning wheel, to make one’s own cloth through cottage industry and indigenous Indian networks.

Source: M.K. Gandhi Nonviolent Resistance–Satyagraha, p. 4.

Non-embarrassment is a nonviolent strategic principle employed by Gandhi. “Embarrassment,” in this context refers to the alternate definition of embarrass, “to confuse, flummox.” The principle states that one should never persist actively in a nonviolent resistance campaign towards an opponent while that opponent is distracted. There are two main reasons, both derived from the intention that a nonviolent campaign works as a conversation (primarily through acts rather than words) in which you persuade your opponent of the legitimacy of your position. The first reason is that it is not effective to continue the conversation while your opponent is distracted, because they are not listening to you. The second is that it is an act of good will to allow them time to attend to these other matters, which are unrelated to your cause, since to persist while they are weakened by another challenge would indicate an opportunistic attempt to take advantage of their compromised position in order to defeat them through coercion, rather than your intention to persuade them to the justice of your cause. An example of how Gandhi applied this principle was in 1919 when he called off satyagraha for the duration of the British rail strike; he later called a halt to the movement during each of the World Wars for the same reason.

Nonviolence is a force in human consciousness that Gandhi called a “living power” and a scientist today would likely call a form of “subtle energy.” It can be engaged, with suitable training, by individuals or groups of individuals to exert positive changes on people and society, including epochal changes like dislodging a dictator or (as in India) ending the colonial era. It can take constructive or obstructive forms, i.e. ‘cooperating with good’ or ‘non-cooperating with evil,’ often an effective combination of both. Its effects are always positive. Gandhi called it “a method of carrying conviction and of converting by appeal to the sympathetic chord in human beings. It relies upon the ultimate good in every human being” and therefore improves both those offering it and those to whom it is offered, whose humanity is affirmed even when their behaviors have to be changed.

Nonviolence is a science in the sense that its operations obey laws that can be discovered by study and practice, and science as we know it today has begun to verify its operations and its presence throughout history, indeed throughout evolution. It can be considered in fact not just a but the driving force in evolution, which becomes accessible by conscious choice when we enter the human context. Gandhi did not hesitate to call it “the law of the humans.”

Coined by Yehudhah Mirsky, a nonviolent moment is a climactic event in a campaign when all of the resistors’ forces are pitted against all of the oppressor’s forces in an open confrontation. The oppressor has two choices: escalate the oppression in a way that is repugnant to the rest of humanity, or back down and concede. Historical examples include the Dharasana Salt Raid during India’s anti-colonial struggle, the EDSA confrontation during the Philippines People Power movement, and Dr. King’s Selma march. Whether or not a nonviolent moment succeeds depends on numerous factors, some of which can be learned and practiced, such as the strategic efficacy of the resistors. However, not all factors are controllable and sometimes you can miscalculate, as in the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Obstructive Program is the use of civil disobedience to change an unjust or oppressive social order. Obstructive program together with constructive program make up the two branches of Gandhi’s Satyagraha. This term was coined by Michael Nagler.

Oceanic circle describes Gandhi’s vision of social organization. Gandhi believed that for a nonviolent society to achieve a lasting peace, it must be organized in a decentralized way. In Gandhi’s own words:

“Independence must begin at the bottom. Thus, every village will be a republic or panchayat having full powers. It follows, therefore, that every village has to be self-sustained and capable of managing its affairs even to the extent of defending itself against the whole world. It will be trained and prepared to perish in the attempt to defend itself against any onslaught from without.

Thus, ultimately, it is the individual who is the unit. This does not exclude dependence on and willing help from neighbours or from the world. It will be free and voluntary play of mutual forces. Such a society is necessarily highly cultured in which every man and woman knows what he or she wants and what is more, knows that no one should want anything that others cannot have with equal labour.

In this structure composed of innumerable villages, there will be ever-widening, never-ascending circles. Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom. But it will be an oceanic circle whose centre will be the individual always ready to perish for the village, the latter ready to perish for the circle of villages, till at last the whole becomes one life composed of individuals, never aggressive in their arrogance, but ever humble, sharing the majesty of the oceanic circle of which they are integral units.

Therefore, the outermost circumference will not wield power to crush the inner circle, but will give strength to all within and derive its own strength from it. I may be taunted with the retort that this is all Utopian and, therefore, not worth a single thought. If Euclid’s point, though incapable of being drawn by human agency, has an imperishable value, my picture has its own for mankind to live. Let India live for this true picture, though never realizable in its completeness. We must have a proper picture of what we want before we can have something approaching it. If there ever is to be a republic of every village in India, then I claim verity for my picture in which the last is equal to the first or, in other words, no one is to be the first and none the last.” (Harijan, 28-7-1946, p. 236)

Resources:

Was Gandhi and Anarchist? From Peace Power Magazine.

Gandhi and Society

The Starfish and the Spiderby Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom

Otpor (resistance) was a student-led Serbian uprising, which led to the overthrow of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević in 2000. The Otpor campaign of civil disobedience was carefully planned with assistance from Gene Sharp and his colleagues. Otpor used nonviolent tactics including a long-term consciousness raising effort with graffiti, flyers, billboards, a rock concert, trade union organizing, preparations to combat electoral fraud, and nonviolent direct action including a massive strike. It ended with a convergence by hundreds of thousands of protestors on the Serbian capitol building. Based on the actions captured on video the movement was one of strategic nonviolence, rather than principled nonviolence, because the actions were focused on gaining political power and deposing the regime by any nonviolent means necessary rather than winning over the opponent. Otpor led to other similar campaigns in Eastern Europe, such as Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. Uniquely, the leaders of Otpor have formed an organization called CANVAS to export lessons learned in Serbia to other would-be nonviolent revolutionaries.

Resources:

Film:“Bringing Down a Dictator”

“Paradigm shift” is a term coined by Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) to describe how a prevailing paradigm (set of unconscious assumptions that guide our thinking about reality or model) breaks down and is replaced by an emerging paradigm. The term quickly spread beyond the history of science.

Paradigm breakdown begins when people encounter anomalies, data that cannot be explained by the prevailing assumptions, in their understanding of reality. When these anomalies pile up and can no longer be discounted, a crisis is created in which the entire prevailing paradigm is called into question. At this point a new paradigm begins to take shape, and takes hold when, to use Malcolm Gladwell’s term, a “tipping point” is reached. The shift from Newtonian physics to quantum physics, and much earlier the shift from paganism to monotheism are examples of paradigm shifts.

In his essay, Peace as a Paradigm Shift, Michael Nagler makes the argument that we are on the brink of a shift in human culture, which will delegitimize war and violence and move us to a culture of nonviolence. This shift from a materialistic worldview based on separateness and scarcity to one based on the unity of life and sufficiency is similar to the switch from material, Newtonian, physics to quantum physics. As long as material, Newtonian, physics prevailed, it influenced people to hold a materialistic, mechanistic worldview geared toward scarcity and uniformity, which breeds competition and violence. The paradigm shift to quantum physics has made it more acceptable to speak of the nonmaterial as equally real and the universe as one entity.

When repression becomes so oppressive that it forges its own demise, we arrive at the paradox: use of violent repression can contribute to the instability of the regime that sponsors it.

Repression is an invasive force that has the potential to occupy every corner of civic and political space. It is a total system, whose rules, mandates, and customs can corrode or even dominate nearly every facet of human existence. Herein lies a glaring weakness: repressive systems can only become more dominating, and eventually, so unbearable as to provoke increased resistance against it. As Professor Michael Nagler notes:

“Once a state commits itself to a repressive posture, it’s going to have to intensify the violence and repression in order to uphold it, and at some point the repression will reach an intolerable level.”

In the context of a nonviolent struggle, the Paradox of Repression often plays out when a regime cracks down on a nonviolent movement, and as a result the nonviolent movement gains in strength as many more civilians rally to its cause. For instance, Gandhi’s campaign for Indian civil rights in South Africa gathered exponential momentum when the regime passed dehumanizing anti-Indian laws known as the Asiatic Registration Act or Black Act in 1907.

It is important to note that repression doesn’t always undermine the state’s position. The dedication and careful strategy of the actors in the movement must be sufficient to successfully make the repression rebound. After the Sharpeville massacre committed by the state against civilians in 1960, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa lost much of its momentum and largely abandoned nonviolence. The more the nonviolent individuals and movement can anticipate the repression, devise careful strategies, and withstand punishment, the more surely the paradox will, in time, come into play. (The successful use of the paradox to increase the strength of a nonviolent movement has also been called “political jiu-jitsu.”)

Parallel institutions are one of the most crucial forms of constructive program. They are the social, cultural, and governance structures that a nonviolent movement builds of its own accord without reference to or even as a comprehensive replacement for the often oppressive existing institutions. Examples include: alternative governments, media, unions, agriculture, clubs, professional associations, civic organizations, and religious organizations. These institutions are vital to creating organizational space for the entire nonviolent campaign to coalesce. Some nonviolence theorists such as Gene Sharp believe these should be built at the end of a campaign, but Gandhi claims that what for Gene Sharp is step four in the campaign should in fact be step one.

The Patna Surrender was an event that took place during the time from 1922 to 1924 when Gandhi was in prison. A disagreement among Congress Party members over how to proceed in his absence led to a split that threatened to divide the party. Gandhi surrendered to the opposing side’s views in order to keep the party together, even though it meant letting go of a position he believed was correct.

The issue was spawned when the British set up local councils that the Indians were invited to join, but which had no real governing authority. Some in the Congress party, including Nehru, believed that cooperating with the British by joining the councils might lead to political gains. Gandhi was steadfast against joining because the invitation to join the councils was mostly for show and did not give them any meaningful participation in government. In the absence of Gandhi’s active leadership, the Party was threatened with destabilization and division, with some supporting Nehru’s position and others, the so-called “No-Changers,” supporting a continuation of Gandhi’s policy to refuse the councils.

Learning of the split from prison, Gandhi surrendered his position, thereby releasing his supporters to join with Nehru’s plan, thereby keeping the Congress Party from collapse. Gandhi still warned that he felt joining the councils was a poor strategic choice. Gandhi was subject to intense criticism for the compromise, as many saw it as a defeat and selling out of his principled position. Gandhi, however saw a higher priority in keeping the Party’s unity. He correctly understood that his opponents were unlikely to be pushed into agreement with him at that particular moment. By stepping back he opened a space for them to be pulled toward his position gradually. As the situation evolved over time and it became clear that the British were not offering them any concrete gains, Gandhi’s position became that of the majority of the Congress Party. Of his detractors who did not understand the strategy, Gandhi said, “People see the fighter in me, but they miss my capacity to surrender, from which my power springs.”

A Peace Team is a group of local people trained in peaceful conflict resolution methods who promote friendship, solidarity, social justice, and alternatives to violence in the local community. Peace teams, when requested can provide service outside their local communities. Peace teams have been developed as responses to war and conflict much the same as that of the localized Gandhian Shanti Sena in India. Many times they are a response to potential violence in a community supported by training committed volunteers in the principles of nonviolence strategies and mediation skills.

People power is a term coined during the 1986 uprising of the Filipinos that culminated in the nonviolent moment at Epifanio de los Santos Avenue. It is used to describe movements that mobilize large numbers of people against a repressive regime. It is closely linked with the notion of consent based power, in which nonviolence, is conceived to work through large numbers of people withdrawing their support from a repressive regime, thereby causing the regime to fall. It is also closely related to person power.

Wikipedia defines permaculture as “an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in natural ecologies.” It is in this sense a special biomimicry ― a human designed ecological system based in a model of natural synergy, where harmony is maintained between the production of food, stewardship of the natural habitat, and the cultivation of the earth.

Permaculture is both an ecological and a pragmatic social human ethic. It is ecological in so far as its aim is the preservation of our natural environment through the cultivation of care and respect for the delicate balance of nature. At the same time, it is a pragmatic ethic because it encourages and generates cooperative relationships between people, as well as between people and the natural ecosystems where they live. The term originally stood for permanent agriculture but has come to mean permanent culture. Some permaculture activities include rainwater harvesting, the creation of local gardens with perennial plants, and not growing cash crops that do not nurture the life of the community.

Permaculture is a nonviolent solution to the crisis of human food and resource scarcity that threatens the extinction of many species. As more conflicts come about worldwide because of poverty and resource scarcity, permaculture offers a nonviolent solution. Insofar as it can bring independence from globalization, permaculture is a way to support swaraj (self-rule) through swadeshi (localism).

Resources:

Holmgren, David, Permaculture, Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, Holmgren Design Services, 2002.

Hopkins, Rob, The Transition Handbook, Chelsea Green Publishers, 2008

Perpetration Induced Traumatic Stress (PITS) is a term coined by peace psychologist Rachel MacNair. It describes incidents of post traumatic stress disorder resulting from the trauma of having committed a violent act oneself, as contrasted with trauma caused by witnessing or being the recipient of a violent act. The fact that human beings experience psychological damage by committing violent acts is evidence that violence is at odds with healthy human behavior, and therefore it goes against our nature as human beings.

Resources:

PITS: What is it? Rachel MacNair

Person power is a term coined by Michael Nagler to describe the core energy at the heart of any nonviolent social movement. Nonviolence begins with an individual’s conversion of a negative drive to a positive drive. When one person transforms fear, anger, or aggression, into universal love, compassion, and resilience, nonviolence is born. According to Cardinal Jaime Sin, even though two million people were in the streets of Manila during the Philippines People Power movement, that movement ultimately consisted of “two million individual decisions.”

Scholars of strategic nonviolence such as Gene Sharp describe people power as the key factor in nonviolent events ― with enough people together on the streets anything is possible, although a lack of discipline can result in an unhelpful mob mentality known as the effervescence of the crowd. The term person power was coined to account for the fact that people power’s focus on numbers fails to recognize the importance of the individual in revealing nonviolent truth. Both terms are contrasted with and often stand in opposition to state power.

Phalam is a Sanskrit for fruit, and is the word used in the Bhagavad Gita to describe the personal gains acquired as the result of human action. According to the Gita theory of action, one should strive to be detached from these fruits. The goal is to learn to act selflessly and according to one’s duty rather than for personal gain.

Positive psychology refers to the scientific study of the emotions and states of mind that contribute to human empathy and community, as opposed to the one-sided emphasis on mental illness and dysfunction that have long prevailed in psychology.

Principled nonviolence is not merely a strategy nor the recourse of the weak, it is a positive force that does not manifest its full potential until it is adopted on principle. Often its practitioners feel that it expresses something fundamental about human nature, and who they wish to become as individuals. (See strategic nonviolence.)

To adopt principled nonviolence is not a quick and easy decision one can make through logic but a slow, perhaps lifetime endeavor. Nonetheless, we focus on principled nonviolence because we think it has the potential for creating permanent, long-term change. Ultimately it can rebuild many of our institutions on a more humane and sustainable foundation. In the long run nonviolence is, as Gandhi said, an “experiment with truth.” We have all to experiment with nonviolence in the way that seems best to us, because in the end the world will need all our experiences to arrive at a new order based on nonviolence.

Probably the most important lesson to learn from Gandhi is that nonviolence is a positive force. It is a way to alter violent situations and influence others by persuasion rather than coercion, and a way to resolve differences so that all parties grow in the process as human beings and become more open to each other.

What differentiates a principled nonviolence campaign from a power struggle is the recognition that “the ends don’t justify the means” and that the path to change is a mutual learning process. Gandhi explained that, “Means are ends in the making.” By this he meant that the kind of means we use – violent or nonviolent, secret or transparent, democratic or authoritarian, deceitful or truthful – are already building the foundations for the change we desire. While some say means are simply ways to an end, Gandhi said, they are everything. In the case of a revolutionary struggle, for example, he held that “violent revolution will bring violent swaraj [independence].” Nobel Prize-winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel was just as emphatic when he said, “Nonviolent action implants, by anticipation within the very process of change itself, the values to which it will ultimately lead … it does not sow peace by means of war.”

Radical pacifism refers to a particular nonviolent movement in the United States in the 1940s and 50s of conscientious objectors (CO’s). These men, who refused to fight in any war and took active steps to undermine the war system, were mostly from the Christian Peace Churches and also were influenced by Gandhi. Radical pacifism began in opposition to World War II, when A.J. Muste, David Dellinger, John Yoder, and others refused to fight in “the good war.” Some objectors believed it was acceptable to serve in an ambulance corps, others refused to take part in the war system in any way and instead requested an alternative service assignment. Alternate service consisted of being held indefinitely, without pay, in special camps for CO’s that often provided a miserable existence and meaningless hard labor. Some refused to comply even with the requirement to register for the draft, choosing prison rather than the alternative service.

While in jail, Dellinger and others were successful in a strike that resulted in desegregation of their prison years before the advent of the Civil Rights Movement. CO’s also worked to reform the dehumanizing psychiatric hospital system where some were placed for their alternate service. Participants in these early nonviolent experiments went on to apply their considerable experience in the Civil Rights Movement. For example they participated in the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, a forerunner of and template for the later Freedom Rides of the 1960s and by becoming founding members of the influential Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Later, radical pacifists took action against the Vietnam War.

Resources:

Film: “The Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It”

Reference public is the term used to describe those who stand to have their views on a given issue influenced through witnessing a nonviolent struggle. It is particularly used in relation to the paradox of repression, when witnesses are liable to take the side of the nonviolent activists they see suffering escalating violence from the authorities.

Rehumanization is the nonviolent process of rekindling the sense of empathy. A growing, and already abundant body of scientific evidence establishes beyond doubt that the natural condition of human beings includes, perhaps primarily, a large capacity for empathy and mutual identification. Human beings can, however, mentally dehumanize others by denying that the other is also human. This process, which one scientist has called pseudo-speciation, is a dangerous enabling condition of violence. One of the great strengths of nonviolence, conversely, is that we humanize and dignify ourselves, and rehumanize others, recovering our natural sense of identity with one another in the process. This reinforces the belief of many nonviolence proponents that the capacity to offer nonviolence is an essential part of what makes us human.

Rehumanization is an indispensable part of the nonviolent toolkit. It calls for a creative mind, enduring patience, and an open heart. When we rehumanize, we are reinforcing our deep faith in nonviolence, as well as strengthening our ability to persuade with satyagraha, by regarding the opponent as fully human even while resisting an unjust agenda.

Renunciation is the translation of the Sanskrit term aparigraha, (non-grasping). Renunciation was one of the cardinal principles for residents of Gandhi’s ashrams. This attitude of renouncing personal attachment to anything — an object, another person, even an idea or opinion — is the key to self mastery, and also the spiritual key to freedom from coercion by others. If you desire something for yourself alone, that desire will control you, and others will be able to control you by threatening to withhold or take what you desire. If you renounce the desire, you unleash your own capacity to act in freedom, including the capacity to act nonviolently. This dynamic can be paraphrased as ― ask yourself what they are holding over you; renounce that, and you are free.

As an example, when Daniel Ellsberg was deciding what to do with the Pentagon Papers, he was at first paralyzed by anxiety about what would happen to him if he made them public. At some point it occurred to him to ask himself, If I were willing to go to jail, what might I do with them? He realized the answer to his question was that by renouncing his own freedom he would then be free to release the papers.

In the extreme, if you renounce attachment to your physical body, the threat of violence loses its power. To quote Albert Szent-Gyeorgyi, “[Gandhi] taught the world that there are higher things than force, higher even than life itself; he proved that force had lost its suggestive power.”

Restorative justice is an approach to criminal justice (or disciplinary issues, in schools) that aims to rehabilitate offenders through having them take responsibility, reconciling with victims, and repairing the harm experienced by people, relationships, and the community. It’s often contrasted with a retributive justice, which emphasizes punishment over rehabilitation. Retributive justice is based on a behavior change logic that argues that people will choose not to engage in a behavior that is associated with a harsh consequence, in a word, deterrence.

Restorative justice is based on a number of inter-related behavior change logics that argue that people will not engage in a behavior based on an array of conscious and subconscious processes including, in part, perceptions that the behavior will threaten a relationship they value, that there may be other more adaptive ways to meet needs, that with learning new social skills alternative ways of behaving may be possible, etc. Because restorative justice contends with a wider array of behavior change mechanisms that more comprehensively represent the human experience, it is considered a more humanistic approach to justice. While restorative justice is spreading, being far less costly in human and financial terms, many civic systems continue to employ retributive practices because of their relative simplicity and the superficial appeal of ‘getting even’ which is part of the Old Story.

In practice, restorative justice is often accomplished through a cooperative process that enables all willing stakeholders to connect and communicate about experiences, needs, feelings, and thoughts related to a harmful incident. Together, the group strives to identify needs, obligations, and responsibilities to establish accountability and repair harmful impact associated with the behavioral incident, thus rehabilitating the offender and restoring relationships across the community.

Summing up the difference between the two models of criminal justice, Bo Lozoff, a prominent activist in the field, has stated that while our present system says to an offender, “Hey get out of here!” a restorative justice system would say, “Hey, get back in here!”

Both restorative justice and principled nonviolence align with a core belief in the potential for all humans to experience personal transformation and their innate desire for connection. Many organizations within justice, education, and other community systems are moving this forward across the world, often with indigenous justice systems as a model.

Reverse strike is an action that is both constructive and resistant at the same time. Danilo Dolci, sometimes called the Sicilian Gandhi, used the term “strike in reverse” to describe an action undertaken by the citizens of Partinico Sicily.

The citizens of the town needed a road as an exit from their poverty. The local government, controlled by the mafia refused to help. So the people seized the land needed and built their own road. When finished they shared use of the road with everyone in the community including the mafia. This is a true model of nonviolent direct action of the highest order.

The sacrifice trap is a term coined by peace researcher Kenneth Boulding. It describes a situation, often in war, in which a decision maker does not withdraw from the situation because of the sacrifices already made for the cause. The US involvement in Vietnam continued for years because of the sacrifice trap.

Sarvodaya is Sanskrit for “universal uplift of all beings.” Sarvodaya was one of the three goals, along with moksha (self-realization) and swaraj (self-rule) of Gandhi’s spiritual approach to social change.

Gandhi used the Sanskrit word Satyagraha, meaning “clinging to truth,” in reference to his campaigns in South Africa and India, such as the famous Salt Satyagraha march of 1930. Satyagraha can be understood as the vast inner strength or “soul force” required for nonviolent acts. Gandhi never defined nonviolence as passive resistance because he saw nothing passive about what he was doing. He believed that a dedicated adherent to nonviolent resistance by taking authentic action to represent truth and working to uphold a just cause would inevitably reach the heart of the oppressor. Satyagraha is a positive and spiritually based form of resistance that starts in the heart of the resister and inevitably produces creative action.

The term is used today to mean both (1) the general principle of “clinging to truth” which is necessary for nonviolence work, and (2) direct resistance in the form of obstructive program and constructive program as in Gandhi’s campaigns in South Africa and India. Practitioners are known as satyagrahis.

A satyagrahi is a person who is dedicated to truth (sat, or satya), or more specifically one who offers satyagraha or participates in a satyagraha campaign.

The requirements Gandhi laid down for his satyagrahis include:

Having a firm commitment to nonviolence, simplicity, honesty, chastity, and self-discipline in thought, word, and deed.

Holding firmly to the truth (Sanskrit a-graha), that all life is interconnected.

Rejecting violence in any form, including humiliation of opponents, accepting humiliation of oneself, or the violence toward oneself implied in the use of intoxicating substances.

Forgoing material comforts for the greater good of all beings.

Relying always on soul-force when it is necessary to resist another’s behavior.

Satyagrahis trust that the opponent can be awakened to compassion, and cultivate an unwavering faith in the goodness of humanity, constantly separating person from deed.

In 1986 a commission of social scientists from the international community authored the Seville Statement on Violence. The Statement addresses five key scientific misconceptions that form the basis for the “theory of innate aggression,” the once popular and still influential argument that sought to confirm, through inaccurate use of biological research, that human beings are violent by nature. The Seville Statement on Violence states categorically that:

“It is scientifically incorrect to say that we have inherited a tendency to make war from our animal ancestors.”

“It is scientifically incorrect to say that war or any other violent behavior is genetically programmed into our human nature.”

“It is scientifically incorrect to say that in the course of human evolution there has been a selection for aggressive behavior more than for other kinds of behavior.”

“It is scientifically incorrect to say that humans have a ‘violent brain’.”

“It is scientifically incorrect to say that war is caused by ‘instinct’ or any single motivation.”

Since 1986 many branches of science have discovered evidence that the Statement is correct. Interestingly, mirror neurons were discovered two years after the Statement was published. The fact is that humans are, as neuroscientists have shown, wired for cooperation and empathy, to the extent that we are wired for anything. The large amount of violence seen in societies today is caused not by our evolutionary inheritance but by our cultural conditioning.

Resources:

The Seville Statement on Violence – UNESCO

Shanti Sena, or peace army, was Gandhi’s proposed solution for the management of conflict through nonviolence, as opposed to the more traditional “threat power” employed by officers of the law and the State. His idea was to have trained volunteers living in the communities they would serve acting as trusted third parties. The volunteers could, for example, abate rumors that often exacerbate conflict and if necessary carry out what is today known as interposition between conflicting parties. The Shanti Sena concept is crucial to the development of world peace because any truly free society must be able to manage conflict in its midst, neither resorting to violence nor fear, lest it become beholden to a military class.

In the Harijan, for March 26, 1938, Gandhi wrote:

“The Congress should be able to put forth a non-violent army of volunteers numbering not a few thousands but lakhs [tens of thousands] who would be equal to every occasion where the police and the military are required. Thus, instead of one brave Pashupatinath Gupta who died in the attempt to secure peace, we should be able to produce hundreds. And a nonviolent army acts unlike armed men, as well in times of peace as disturbances. They would be constantly engaged in activities that make riots impossible. Theirs will be the duty of seeking occasions for bringing warring communities together, carrying on peace propaganda, engaging in activities that would bring and keep them in touch with every single person, male and female, adult and child, in their parish or division…”

A shanti sena is usually comprised of well-trained volunteers, sometimes receiving subsistence pay, whose mission is to provide constructive, creative avenues for violence prevention and control. Beyond the intention to replace a more traditional police force, which is as far as Gandhi went with the idea, others have seen that a shanti sena could also be used in international conflicts. An example is Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, sometimes called the “Frontier Gandhi,” leading nearly 100,000 devout Muslim Pathans, as the world’s first historical nonviolent army. With a promise of simplicity, nonviolence, and respect, this Pathan shanti sena obstructed the violence of the colonizing British forces in India’s North West Frontier Province, now within Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 1957, In another example, Gandhi’s disciple Vinoba Bhave established a shanti sena in India whose numbers rose to 6,000. This group was of some service during the Chinese Border war of 1962. Unfortunately Bhave’s group broke apart in the 1970’s due to political divisions within the group.

In other parts of the world, dating from the early 1980’s, other groups similar to shanti senas have come to life to support Gandhi’s dream. These include Peace Brigades International, Witness for Peace, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Volunteers for International Solidarity, and Nonviolent Peaceforce, which in spring, 2010 had peace teams in four countries. What these groups do is called peacekeeping, and the peacebuilding activity was known as Third Party Nonviolent Intervention but is now known as Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping.

A Sicilian, also known as “Lanza del Vasto,” who worked with Gandhi and was granted the name “servant of peace.” He attempted to organize a Gandhian ashram-like community in 1948, and was finally successful in his efforts to start a self-sufficient community in 1963 known as “La Communauté de l’Arche” at la Borrie Noble. In 1971, he became involved in the Larzac struggle to preserve farmlands from encroachment by the French government’s military agenda. His education and first-hand experience with Gandhi made him a key figure in the movement as an outsider with expertise. The Larzac Satyagraha was one of the few post-Gandhi campaigns of principled nonviolence and involved civil disobedience, demonstrations, hunger strikes, and constructive program. It was ultimately successful in preserving the farmlands.

Strategic nonviolence refers to the kind of commitment that regards nonviolence as a strategy, to be adopted because it is thought to be more likely to “work” than violence (see “work” vs. work) or because violence is not a practical possibility. Strategic nonviolence, for example, still presupposes that the means can justify the ends, whereas for Gandhi, “Means are ends in the making.” Those adopting nonviolence in this way often reserve the right to go back to violence if they do not meet with success, and some theorists believe this limits their effectiveness. Strategic nonviolence is a better choice and requires more courage than violence. It can cause problems, however, if people think that this is the only form of nonviolence. Then if it does not “work” they are left only with the recourses of violence or submission. Principled nonviolence is not only more effective in the short term but can move humanity toward a new paradigm of nonviolence.

The term structural violence was coined by Johan Galtung to articulate the hidden violence in our midst, built into the structure of society itself and therefore more difficult to pinpoint and eradicate. It causes much suffering and can lead to conflict, war, and genocide. While direct, physical violence gets much more attention, the injustice that is built into almost all social systems can cause equal or greater harm.

As Gandhi said, “It little matters to me whether you shoot a man or starve him to death by inches.”

Structural violence is part of society. It is easy for those who benefit from unjust social structures to ignore the harm they are doing unless they are shown in a forceful way the results of their actions on other people. This awakening is often the job of nonviolent resistors. Poverty, for instance, is a manifestation of a violent class system. Bell Hooks describes the intersection of the hegemonic, institutional, and violent structures of race, class, and gender in society as the “white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy.” This interlocking oppressive structure is what we want to transcend by practicing nonviolence.

The old ironic saying that “the law is impartial: both rich and poor are forbidden from sleeping under the bridge” is an implicit recognition of structural violence and the ability of society to both create and ignore it. Constructive Program can effectively counter structural violence in most cases.

The word swadeshi derives from Sanskrit and is a conjunction of two Sanskrit words. Swa means self or own and desh means country. So swadesh means own country. Swadeshi, the adjectival form, means of one’s own country, but can be loosely translated in most contexts as self-sufficiency.

Like many of Gandhi’s terms, swadeshi can be used to describe the state of an individual or a community. In the case of an individual, swadeshi means acting from a position of strength to solve problems, by drawing on one’s own capacities, and addressing one’s own weaknesses. One person cannot solve another person’s problems and proposed solutions must be made based on personal experience.

In the other, more common usage, swadeshi is the focus on acting within and from one’s own community, both politically and economically. In other words, it is the interdependence of community and self-sufficiency. Gandhi believed this would lead to independence (swaraj), as British control of India was rooted in control of her indigenous industries. Swadeshi was the key to the independence of India, and was represented by the charkha or the spinning wheel, the “center of the solar system” of Gandhi’s constructive program.

Gandhi said of swadeshi:

“The cleanest and the most popular form of Swadeshi is to stimulate hand-spinning and hand-weaving and to arrange for a judicious distribution of yarn and cloth so manufactured.”

“Swadeshi is an eternal principle whose neglect has brought untold grief to mankind. It means production and distribution of articles manufactured in one’s own country… Swadeshi is a constructive program.”

“Swadeshi is that spirit in us which restricts us to the use and service of our immediate surroundings to the exclusion of the more remote… In the domain of politics, I should make use of the indigenous institutions and serve them by curing them of their proved defects. In that of economics, I should use only things that are produced by my immediate neighbours and serve those industries by making them efficient and complete where they might be found wanting. It is suggested that such Swadeshi, if reduced to practice, will lead to the millennium, because we do not expect quite to reach it within our times, so may we not abandon Swadeshi even though it may not be fully attained for generations to come.”

It seems that Gandhi’s prediction is becoming a reality. Swadeshi is what the progressive movement of today is calling, think globally act locally. Swadeshi is a call to the consumer to be aware of the violence caused by supporting industries that result in poverty and harm to workers and environmental degradation. In a world moving towards decentralized, localized organization, we might adapt Gandhi’s strategy, replacing mass production and consumerism with community, and then form the community of communities: the Earth Community.

Resources:

The Gospel of Swadeshi, by Mohandas K. Gandhi

YES! Magazine: Go Local!

In the Indian spiritual tradition, dharma means the way, literally law or duty. Everything and everyone in existence has its own dharma — its essential way of being in the world — that is in harmony with the overriding dharma of nonviolence that applies to all life (ahimsa paramo dharma). Thus a person’s swadharma (swa, own, and dharma, duty) is their own unique role in life or way of being in the world, which it is their duty to realize and fulfill. Swadharma is not destiny, which would deny the reality of human choice, but rather a set of capacities that when fully developed allow us to take our place in the world. The Gita warns strongly against attempting to live out the dharma of another, but discovering our own capacities and using them in selfless service is described as the goal of human life.

Swaraj is an ancient Sanskrit term, composed of the particle swa (or sva), which means self, or one’s own, and raj, which means rule. Swaraj then is self-rule or self-restraint. It is the basis for human liberation from the influence of outward control over the mind, as well as the starting point for nonviolent coexistence in society at large. The premise is that when a person is able to control thoughts and desires, the inherent sense of connectedness or unity will be free to operate. Then that person will spontaneously act in ways that are more beneficial personally and for others. Like most of Gandhi’s key terms, swaraj was applied on various levels. Thus, in addition to the traditional, personal, level, he used it to mean India’s political independence from foreign rule.

One of Gandhi’s seminal works, Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule, was written in Gujarati, in 1909, aboard a ship traveling from South Africa to India. Later it was translated into English, to boost Gandhi’s independence movement. In this widely regarded classic, Gandhi describes his ideal form of self-rule and his wish for the people of India, noting, however that, “I would warn the reader against thinking that I am today aiming at the Swaraj described therein. I know that India is not ripe for it. It may seem an impertinence to say so. But such is my conviction. I am individually working for the self-rule pictured therein.” By this he meant that change to be profound and lasting, must come from within, as it did, for India, 38 years later. To Gandhi swaraj is our birthright and responsibility and, “any other rule is foreign rule.”

The Patna Surrender (1922-1924) was Gandhi’s response to a split in the Congress Party based on whether or not to take part in local councils set up by the British. On one side was Nehru and his supporters, convinced that Indians should participate in the councils even though they were largely symbolic and wielded very little concrete power. On the other side was Gandhi, who believed that for Indians to join ineffective councils was to take part in a political lie, ultimately at their own expense.

Gandhi finally gave up and yielded to Nehru — what made him cave in and surrender his position?

If we stop and look at this question, we can see that the language used is not neutral, certain terms connote weakness:

‘Give up’

‘Yield’

‘Cave in’

‘Surrender’

What happens when we look at these words afresh, can we break free of our habitual understanding and in this, can we reconceive Gandhi’s decision? Gandhi himself saw the Patna surrender as a victory, an expression of strength. How could this be?

Professor Nagler explains that ‘caving in’ for Gandhi is in fact a source of power; caving in creates space. In a conflict, when one party gives up something, whether a physical position or a demand, that act of letting go makes more room for both sides. This room in turn allows for movement, the possibility that opposing parties might come together and move forward united towards a larger, common goal. In this, Gandhi’s decision to give up/yield/cave in/surrender might be seen as an instance of Boulding’s ‘integrative power’ in action.

Yielding thus need not be understood as a sign of frailty nor does it entail abandoning principles — quite the contrary! Gandhi’s view suggests that surrendering is an act of creation which gives something to both sides. It reflects the wisdom found in a wider perspective, an awareness of our shared humanity, which is always there, underlying all our relationships, even if temporarily masked by the narrow parameters of an immediate conflict.

Haemon, in Sophocles’ Antigone expresses a similar point when talking to his father who rigidly clings to his position in opposition to his niece. Haemon encourages King Creon to be flexible, to adapt and bend, making space for Antigone’s position. In the end, far from expressing weakness, nature itself reveals this kind of expansive action to be a way to survive and grow.

Please don’t be quite so single-minded, self-involved, or assume the world is wrong and you are right. …it’s no disgrace for a man, even a wise man, to learn many things and not to be too rigid. You’ve seen trees by a raging winter torrent, how many bend and sway with the flood and salvage every twig, but not the stubborn—they’re ripped out, roots and all. Bend or break.

Third Party Nonviolent Intervention (TPNI) is the term that has arisen for the age-old practice of an outside party intervening in a conflict in an effort to open the space for reconciliation and peacemaking. Some services of TPNI actors can include witnessing, accompaniment, monitoring, interposition, offering good offices, and rumor abatement. Because nonviolent interveners are not members of either party to the conflict, they are seen as trustworthy and are not normally targets of violence. Even the most rabid militants often hesitate to inflict violence on a member of the international community, as attacks could generate unwanted media attention. Also, the unexpected presence of a third party helps to break up the inevitable polarization of self and other that conflict causes and on which it depends. Perhaps most importantly, by risking life and comfort to protect an intended victim of violence, the third party helps to rehumanize that victim in the eyes of the would-be attacker.

In the modern period, TPNI emerged from Gandhi’s shanti sena, peace army, and increasing numbers of human rights and humanitarian interventions that have gained momentum since the 1980s. Peace Brigades International, founded in 1980 has played an important role, along with Christian Peacemaker Teams, Witness for Peace, and Michigan Peacemaker Teams. Today Nonviolent Peaceforce is building TPNI into a global entity. TPNI has been practiced with varying degrees of success in places like Michigan, Colombia, Palestine, the US/Mexico border, and Sri Lanka. TPNI stands in contrast to the standard U.N. armed peacekeeping model. In fact, some practitioners of TPNI state that nonviolent interposition can act as a full replacement for armed peacekeeping. TPNI is supported in legal frameworks by the concept of droit d’ingérence, the right to intervene. Many feel that, alongside the related Civilian-Based Defense, TPNI shows that there is a nonviolent alternative to war.

Threat Power is one of three forces identified by Kenneth Boulding, Quaker peace theorist and economist that play roles in human interaction. Underlying Threat Power is a simple equation: Unless you perform or yield X, I will do Y. Y almost always involves violence, whether physical, emotional, psychological or structural. Threat Power has attained a tragic prominence in our culture. The diplomatic actions of most industrialized countries, for example, operate on the assumption of Threat Power.

See also:

Exchange Power

Integrative Power

The three gunas of the Yogic tradition are the three energy states of the phenomenal world, tamas, rajas, and sattva. Tamas is a state of apathy and inaction, rajas of excitement and activity, and sattva meaning law or balance, is a state in which detachment, or selfless action is possible. Tamas describes people who respond to oppression with apathy, inertia, and a sense of powerlessness. Rajas describes people whose passions have been aroused and for which action is possible, but where there is not necessarily a clear coherent goal or way forward and the possibility of violence exists. (See also effervescence of the crowd.) Sattva describes people who respond with nonviolent action. This is not simply action that lacks violence but creative action towards greater integration, unity, and reconciliation.

The three gunas suggest the spiritual states of cowardice, violence, and nonviolence. It is not possible to move directly from a state of tamas to a state of sattva, without passing through the rajasic state. This explains why often an oppressed group must overcome internalized oppression, the belief that they are powerless or that they somehow deserve their situation. To end this tamasic state they must pass through a phase of passion or anger where they are capable of violence and then on to a sattvaic nonviolent response. As Gandhi said, “I can make a satyagrahi out of a violent person, not out of a coward.”

Total security, also called human security, is the concept that the true security of a state, person, or group is much more than simply freedom from violence. The Palestinian Hannan Ashrawi defines total security in this way, “…they [the Israeli govt.] define security as only military. We define security as human security – not just personal, but territorial, economic, geographic, historical, identity, existential, there are all sorts of different aspects to human security.” Along with common security this concept constitutes the security vision of the nonviolence worldview or paradigm.

Trusteeship is a key component of Gandhian economics that could be called the nonviolent equivalent of ownership. Gandhi borrowed the concept from English law. It means that one is the trustee, not the owner, of one’s possessions, or ultimately one’s talents or capacities. All must be used for the good of society as a whole, which ultimately includes one’s own welfare. Under this system, material goods are not status symbols adding to our individual worth. Trusteeship is an effective way to combat over-consumption. Trusteeship could rebalance the economy and put it in the service of real needs. For Gandhi, owning more than necessary inevitably means taking necessities from others. He wrote, “There is enough in the world for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.”

People can, in course of time, be educated about trusteeship and persuaded to adopt it, but they should not be coerced into doing so if we want the change to last. The beauty of trusteeship as a tool for change is that it gives us a way to rebalance the economy without forcibly expropriating wealth.

Ultimately trusteeship means that one regards life and all the necessary things needed to sustain it as a trust, not to be used for oneself alone but for the good of the human family. When the economic system functions with detachment, it works hand in hand with the spiritual. As Michael Sonnleitner has shown in Gandhi’s Vocabulary, this is typical of all the Mahatma’s main operational concepts.

A Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is a form of restorative justice aimed at the healing of a community broken apart by violence and oppression. The Commission hearings create a safe space where perpetrators and sufferers of that violence can meet safely and discuss the violent actions. By meeting face to face with the sufferers the perpetrators can begin to be restored to full standing in the society. The establishment of a commission encourages a belief that “the truth will set us free.”

A TRC is theoretically based in the awareness that the events of the past will haunt the present and the future until injustices are brought to light, in an atmosphere in which reconciliation is at least theoretically possible. When grievances are addressed in this way, ventilating the need for vengeance and to some degree healing the alienation caused by the hostilities, a community may succeed in breaking the cycle of violence. The commission interrupts the potential for future instances of similarly motivated violent acts.

The first widely known instance of a TRC was set up in South Africa to address the enormous violence that had been carried out in the name of racial segregation under the infamous apartheid regime. Since then, it has had diverse incarnations throughout the world, including Rwanda, where it is drawing upon a pre-existing indigenous system of courts called Gacaca, Liberia, Canada, Chile, and the United States. The effectiveness of TRC to advocate for oppressed groups is debated because some think that restorative action, not just expression of remorse, is necessary to effect real reconciliation. But TRC’s can manage to avoid retribution and encourage basic principles of nonviolence, such as rehumanization, the power of Truth, forgiveness, and returning good for evil.

Unity in diversity refers to the idea that rather than uniformity, diversity is a unifying principle. Diversity is essentially the underlying principle of life, and the shift towards biology as a prevailing scientific discipline is leading to an increased appreciation of diversity as a necessary measure of the health, vibrance, and success. This is in contrast to older views that valued uniformity and mechanization as measures of human progress, which taken to an extreme tend towards a militaristic and fascist social structure.

Unity in diversity resonates with Gandhi’s principle of satyagraha, or heart unity. As Martin Luther King put it, “I can’t be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can’t be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.” At Metta, we speak of “diversity at the surface level, unity at the heart level.” We celebrate the tremendous diversity of humankind in race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, language, beliefs, professions, interests, etc. and understand our shared existence as living beings, and appreciate that outer diversity is part of what holds us together as a culture.

The vedanta is the ancient worldview that underlies all systems of Indian philosophy. A primary source for this worldview is the Upanishads. The Upanishads were handed down by tradition at the end of the Vedas, and Vedanta literally means “end of the Vedas.” This foundation of Indian spiritual thought, with its insistence on the underlying unity of all life and the possibility of realizing that unity through selfless service to all was the basis for Gandhi’s approach to spirituality and nonviolence. In one Upanishad, for example (the Brihadaranyika, I.1.14) we are told that “by means of this dharma even the weak man can prevail over a king.” In the Chandogya Upanishad (VIII.1.5) we read that “here in this world people do what they are told, so they become dependent on… the desires of another, … and their works come to nothing, either in this world or the next.”

Vegetarianism is the belief in a diet based on plants. Gandhi, who was a vegetarian all his life said that “all science based on the shedding of innocent blood was without consequence.” This theme has been taken up by many today who would replace, for example, dissection of animals with computer simulation.

Many feel that true nonviolence cannot stop at the human community only, and indeed philosophers in the Ancient world, both Greek and Roman, pointed out that cruelty to animals was only a prelude or enabling factor to cruelty to one’s fellow humans. Unfortunately, the pursuit of animal rights today is not always carried out by nonviolent means. Gandhi decried the killing of Muslims because of their killing of cows just as we should protest the violence of some animal rights organizations.

For Gandhi, vegetarianism had the added purpose of helping to control the palate, which he knew was a valuable aid to the control of the mind. Vegetarianism is additionally beneficial because of its health benefits and low environmental impacts and sustainability of producing a plant based diet.

Vinoba Bhave (1895-1982) was widely regarded as Gandhi’s spiritual heir. The Mahatma appointed Vinoba to be a “Satyagraha of one” in 1940. At the time Gandhi wanted to show the British raj that he was still in open resistance to its rule but did not feel it was proper to launch full-scale Satyagraha because the British were preoccupied by the world war. (This strategy was an example of an important Gandhian principle known as non-embarrassment.) After Gandhi’s assassination in 1948, Vinoba’s permission was sought by key figures in Indian political life to undertake important actions. For instance in the 1970’s Jayaprakash (JP) Narayan wanted to launch Satyagraha against the Indira Gandhi government but was told no by Vinoba.

Vinoba was a great scholar and interpreter of spiritual classics. His commentaries on the Gita, delivered while in prison for his part in the independence movement is considered a classic to this day. He is best known for the Bhoodan (land grant) movement that he launched after Gandhi’s passing. Using highly traditional Indian models of gift giving to sages, Vinoba walked the length and breadth of India getting wealthy landowners to donate part (usually a fifth) of their land to poor Harijan (untouchable) families. Five million acres were collected and redistributed. Some landholders were so taken up by enthusiasm for Bhoodan that they carried out Gramdan, the wholesale gift of entire villages to the sage for his redistribution. Gramdan is a concept akin to the Jubilee year or periodic forgiveness of debts in ancient Jewish practice.

Vinoba also played a major role in the development of the Shanti Sena. He once persuaded a whole clan of dacoits (brigands) to turn themselves over to the authorities in order to avert a bloody confrontation with the Indian army — perhaps a model for counter-terrorism today!

Known for his asceticism, taking the vow of bramacharya at an early age, and the utter simplicity of his material life, it is said that the young Vinoba, incensed by the injustices of British rule, was contemplating either running off to the Himalayas or becoming a terrorist when he fell under Gandhi’s influence and took up nonviolence.