An Examination of the Evolution of Gandhi’s Principles of Non-Violence and an Ethical Exploration into the Ideals of Pacifism
Almost everyone reading this will know the general story of Gandhi and his peaceful mission to liberate India. Of course there is a lot more to the man and the story than just that. For instance, it is a lesser known fact that Gandhi was a Sgt. Major in the British Army. It may also surprise some to learn that he achieved this rank by helping suppress a native rebellion in imperially controlled South Africa.
This essay examines, briefly, the lesser-known history of Gandhi as a stage for exploring the ethical question of whether or not his non-violent ideals were morally correct.
The History of Gandhi Becoming Committed to Non-Violence
Gandhi was born October 2, 1869 to an upper-middle class family in Gujarat India, then under British rule. In 1888 he became a law student at University College in London. After a brief stint as a lawyer in India, he was hired to as a legal consultant to an Indian Merchant firm, Dada Abdulla & Co., in South Africa, to where he travelled in 1893. [1]
It is here in South Africa that Gandhi’s evolution to a civil rights leader perhaps took its sharpest turn, though the effects of the change were perhaps not noticeable in the immediate years to come. In South Africa, Gandhi was discriminated against as a lesser being. He was thrown off a train for refusing to leave first-class, even though he held a first-class ticket. He was then beaten on a stage-coach for refusing to give his seat to a European. He was discriminated against in a variety of other ways, such as being barred from various hotels.
In 1899 the second Boer War broke out. This was a war between the British and the Dutch to bring Dutch regions of what is now South Africa under British control. Despite the abuse Gandhi had been subjected to, he openly and freely supported the British effort and helped to organize a corp of stretcher bearers to serve the British Army.
A few years later, Gandhi became involved in the Zulu War of 1906. After two British tax-collectors were killed there by native Zulus, he actively began recruiting Indians for the British efforts to squash the Zulu Kingdom. Although the Indians were refused as officers, some were again used as stretcher bearers, which Gandhi actively recruited and commanded. At the time Gandhi wrote “If the Government only realised what reserve force is being wasted, they would make use of it and give Indians the opportunity of a thorough training for actual warfare.” [2]
Interestingly, 1906 was also the year that Gandhi began using peaceful action to instigate change. “The Boer War had not brought home to me the horrors of war with anything like the vividness that the [Zulu] ‘rebellion’ did. This was no war but a man-hunt, not only in my opinion, but also in that of many Englishmen with whom I had occasion to talk.” [3] In Transvall, now a recent British colony of South Africa, a law was enacted requiring the registration of each Indian in the population with the government. On September 11th, 1906 at a mass demonstration against the act, Gandhi promoted for the first time his ideals of non-violent protest. He urged Indians to defy the law and suffer the consequences for doing so. Many indeed did, and paid the price. Over the following years, thousands of Indians were jailed or worse. Gandhi himself was jailed twice. In 1909 the law was repealed. [4]
By the start of World War I, Gandhi had returned to India, his pacifist ideals not fully cemented. Gandhi again recruited Indians for the war, this time not just ambulance corpsmen, but also combatants.[5] Although Gandhi himself did vow not to kill, certainly this time illustrates a grey area in Gandhi’s transition to a fully committed pacifist.
Perhaps the largest turning point toward peaceful non-cooperation for Gahndi was at Champaran and Kheda, where he led poor farmers to peacefully protest the increase of taxation of their rented farmland. In 1914 Gahndi travelled there and organized mass protest against the landowners. He was subsequently arrested and jailed. This only supported his cause as hundreds of thousands protested for his release, which was eventually granted. After more strikes, the additional revenue collection was suspended and other protesters that had been jailed were released. This entire episode not only brought Gahndi from the status of well known to world famous, it also marks a point in his history that he became fully committed to completely non-violent means.
Was Gandhi Right?
Gandhi led not only India, but the world, in a movement of non-violence. To most, if not almost all, his ideals were noble, just, and worthy of admiration and inspiration. Yet there is a question of non-violence that is not so clear – is pacifism always moral?
Instead of pacifism, Gandhi used the word satyagraha, which loosely translates to “truth force”. Gandhi defined himself not as a pacifist so much as a follower of the truth. “… the doctrine came to mean vindication of truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on oneself.” This is an important distinction when asking the question if Gandhi’s principles were morally correct.
There are similarities between pacifism and satyagraha. Neither means non-action. The definition of pacifism as per a dictionary is “opposition to war or violence of any kind.” That may be an unfair distinction though, as historians of pacifism Peter Brock and Thomas Paul Socknat defined pacifism “in the sense generally accepted in English-speaking areas” as “an unconditional rejection of all forms of warfare”. [6]
Although the strict definition of pacifism does not directly include action, satyagragha is quite to the contrary in so much that Gandhi believed strongly in taking action. Certainly, pacifism does not imply non-action either. Pacifism comes from the root of the Latin word pācificus or peacemaking, while passive has the root of passivus “capable of feeling or suffering.” It is important to realize that pacifism and passive do not share root words or meanings.
Having covered the definition of pacifism, and the fact that Gandhi did not distinctly define himself as a pacifist, let us venture to note that although Gandhi did not define himself as a pacifist, he is generally considered as such. Pacifism is much more broad than the philosophy of Gandhi and does not in its definition include the force of truth. Yet Gandhi did state “There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for”.[7] This being said, for all intents and purposes, Gandhi was a pacifist himself, even if his philosophy allowed room for violence in others that may have found it to be part of their truth.
This brings us back to the question. Is pacifism moral?
On July 6, 1940, Gandhi published an article in Harijan which applied nonviolent philosophies to the question of British involvement in World War II. Homer Jack notes in his reprint of this article, “To Every Briton” (The Gandhi Reader) that, “to Gandhi, all war was wrong, and suddenly it ‘came to him like a flash’ to appeal to the British to adopt the method of non-violence.” In this article, Gandhi is quoted as stating, “I appeal to every Briton, wherever he may be now, to accept the method of non-violence instead of that of war, for the adjustment of relations between nations and other matters […] I do not want Briton to be defeated, nor do I want her to be victorious in a trial of brute strength […] I venture to present you with a nobler and braver way worthier of the bravest soldier. I want you to fight Nazism without arms, or, if I am to maintain military terminology, with non-violent arms. I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these but neither your souls, nor your minds. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them […] my non-violence demands universal love, and you are not a small part of it. It is that love which has prompted my appeal to you.” [8]
In his 1949 “Reflections on Gandhi,” George Orwell, regarding the late war, wrote that “One question every pacifist had a clear obligation to answer was: ‘What about the Jews? Are you prepared to see them exterminated? If not, how do you propose to save them without resorting to war?'” Orwell recorded Gandhi’s answer, which was: German Jews should commit collective suicide.
What is Morality?
To detemine whether pacifiicim is moral one must determine exactly what morality is. That, of course, has been, and perhaps always will be, open to debate for as long as humanity exists. A large school of seemingly generally accepted philosophy in the Western world is described well by some of Kant’s work; namely the idea of categorical imperative and duty as necessity to morality, including the necessity to “Act so that your action might be applied as a law of the world.” [9]
Anecdotally, it seems clear that the morals of the Western world would dictate non-violence in the face of Nazi occupation would, in fact, be immoral. If all humans were to take on the duty and act on the ideal to physically defend the persecuted, than it seems obvious the world would be a more perfect place. On the other hand, if all humans were to take the stance that violence is never acceptable, than the atrocities of Nazi occupation would have never happened. It therefore seems that both stances are in fact moral, and that neither stance could be considered immoral. This isn’t a very helpful answer for someone seeking a definitive answer on how to go about one’s life. Is one stance more moral than the other? Having taken a peek at Gahndi’s life and history, it may be some relief that he too struggled with this moral conundrum.
In Conclusion
For what it’s worth, my own conclusion is this: Every moral person must work to create a nonviolent world. Violent defense of oneself and of other persecuted people is morally acceptable only in pursuit of a more peaceful world, yet not morally required. Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine the precise consequences of one’s actions before taking them, and the results of violence are indeed often less than good. Could it be that had Nazi occupation been confronted with pasificm that less death and suffering would have resulted in the long-run? In the short-term it seems almost undisputable that violent resistance saved lives and resulted in less suffering. In the long-run, factoring humanity as a whole and not just as single individuals or generations, it seems impossible to know. What would happen if humanity were to adopt nonviolence en mass? Would it be a revolution of peace, or would it be an open door for those in favor of fascism? I tend to agree with Orwell’s 1942 essay “Pacifism and the War” that:
“Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one.”
Although I generally agree with Orwell’s sentiment regarding the short-term notion of pacifism being a prop of fascism, the belief that being pacifist automatically equates to being pro-fascist may be short-sighted, which is not at all at odds with Orwell’s quote. It is obvious that pacifism must exist on both sides of conflict for the result to be non-violent. The other possibility Orwell does not seem to take into account in this quote, nor the essay from which it is derived, is the possibility that violence may lead to the complete extermination of the human race. After all, this essay was written in 1942, before an atomic bomb had been detonated. There is a massive amount of moral ground humanity must cover in order to prevent itself from utter destruction. It very well may be that the adoption of pacifism en mass may be requisite to the continued existence of humanity. In my opinion, the jury is still out as to whether pacifism is more moral than violent defense of self and the persecuted. As things stand, there may be no one left to hear the verdict. If we are to destroy humanity with violence, it would be difficult to argue a moral fault in pacifism.
[1] http://gandhism.net/sergeantmajorgandhi.php[2] http://www.gandhism.net/sergeantmajorgandhi.php
[3] http://www.mkgandhi.org/autobio/chap102.htm
[4] http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/gandhi/timeline.html
[5] http://wikilivres.ca/wiki/The_Story_of_My_Experiments_with_Truth/Part_V/Recruiting_Campaign
[6] https://books.google.com/books?id=05O59Ro-Oz4C
[7] http://sfr-21.org/gandhi-nonviolence.html
[8] https://books.google.com/books?id=Wwkt5TX623UC
[9] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/
[10] http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/pacifism/english/e_patw