Orissa Review * September-October - 2008

Non-Violence for Freedom and Peace

Dr. Atul Chandra Pradhan

With Mahatma Gandhi as the leader the Indian of the weak. The resistance that was offered was National Congress launched the non-violent mass not quite the resistance Gandhiji wanted us to offer. movement for liberation from colonial rule. To The people had faith in him and followed him. many non-violence was a convenient technique Nevertheless the battle we fought under Gandhiji's for a weak country to liberate itself from a mighty leadership was only a haphazard manifestation of imperialistic power. But to Gandhi non-violence non-violence. We had ill will in our hearts and was a creed or a fundamental principle without outwardly affected a non-violent posture. Swaraj which freedom was meaningless. Attainment of was gained as a consequence, but there was no freedom, he held, was proportionate to the conviction that it had come through non-violence. attainment of non-violence.1 According to him to So the joy of Ahimsa was denied to us. We had practise non-violence one must have extra- a glimpse of the power of non-violence, but it did ordinary courage and discipline. As observed by not blossom in our hearts."5 Sarvapalli Radha Krishnan, Gandhi's non-violence Non-violent, non-cooperation was an "is based on the higher aspects of human nature effective technique "which rendered all the which rebel against tyranny, injustice and weapons of the British ineffective."6 No authoritarianism" and "involves an inner war which government, however mighty, can function without 2 requires us to defeat fear, greed, anger and guilt." people's cooperation. If a government ruthlessly He considered non-violence a basic principle in suppresses non-violent agitators, it loses its moral the evolution of human civilization : "Violence is authority to rule and if the non-violent agitators the law of the jungle and love is the law of the are able to convince the authorities, the latter will 3 human species". He pleaded for the extension of redress the wrongs. Did India become free this principle, so far confined to inter-personal through Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent 4 relations, to national and inter-national arenas. movement ? There were movements, based on Did Gandhi's followers show the courage violence and other forces at work. Men like and discipline which he sought to inculcate in them. Subhas Chandra Bose in Congress and Bhagat On this question, his closest associate Vinoba Singh outside Congress disowned the method of Bhave holds the following view : "We did not non-violence. Some people hold that Mahatma practice the non-violence of the brave, but the Gandhi's non-violent movement was based on his non-violence we showed was the non-violence faith in British sense of justice and fair play, that

24 Orissa Review * September-October - 2008 the British were unusually humane and generous not by pressure or force. As Gandhi said, "I hold towards Gandhi and his followers,7 and that they that democracy cannot be evolved by forcible left India when they felt that "the moment for methods. The spirit of democracy cannot be political decolonisation had arrived."8 But this imposed from without it has to come from theory of British generosity and "political realism" within."10 is counter-balanced by the expression of gratitude In the post-independence scenario we find to Mahatma Gandhi by well-meaning Englishmen some instances of voluntary action for public for making peaceful and dignified transfer of power cause like the efforts of Jayaprakash Narayan to possible. Thus holds Harold Wilson, who was turn the dacoits of the Chambal Valley from erring Britain's Prime Minister in 1960's. ways, Baba Amte's fight against Leprosy, the "It was through Mahatma Gandhi's Chipko activists' activities to conserve forests in insistence on non-violence and upon what he the Himalayas, Smt. Ela Bhatt's struggle against fervently believed to be the right means to attain exploitation of women workers. On the dark side his goal that the freedom of India was achieved of the scenario we see communal riots, socio- with the full consent of both parties to the contract, economic unrest caused by poverty, disparity and that there was no sense of triumph and defeat, exploitation and ever-exploding slum population that Britain too felt happy at the settlement and in urban areas. Our polity has also had military eager to welcome this great new partner into the encounters with two neighbours - Pakistan and commonwealth of Nations."9 China. Can we meet all these challenges by only Besides making peaceful transfer of power government agency, police or military ? Police or possible non-violence has undoubtedly been an military action is a palliative. The ultimate solution important factor in preventing disunity and lies in the application of "moral courage of the disintegration. Gandhi not only used non-violence highest type." So far as the international arena is against the British government, which he called concerned, non-violent cooperation is the only "non-violence of the weak" but also tried to use it path for the future generation, because no nation in quelling Hindu-Muslim riots till the end of his can be completely independent in a world of life and envisaged "exercise of non-violence" interdependence. As Werner Heisenberg says, against external invasion. "..... in the future world, independence will be limited, and will be replaced by some kind of Non-violent movement against an unjust interdependence between all nations ..... I cannot government needs to be reinforced by the doubt that Gandhi's most important contribution constructive work of the Satyagrahis. Before in this sense was his idea of non-violence."11 independence liberation from foreign rule was the thrust of Gandhian movement and constructive References and Notes work had been given lesser importance under the 1. Ishwar Topa, Ethos of Non-violence, Navajivan then prevailing circumstances. Now in democratic Publishing House, Ahmedabad, 1964, p.99. society non-violent Satyagraha should be carried 2. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan (ed), Mahatma Gandhi on not only for maintaining harmony among : 100 years, Gandhi Peace Foundation, New different sections of society but also for promoting Delhi, 1968, p.9. alround development of society. Democracy can 3. Quoted in Ibid, P.81. grow only through voluntary efforts of people and 4. Harijan, 7 January 1939.

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5. Kanti Shaha (ed.), Vinoba on Gandhi, Sarbaseva his own. Gandhi made it impossible for the British Sangha Prakashan, Varanasi, 2000, p.86. to go on ruling India but at the same time he made it possible for us to abdicate without 6. Ibid, p.84. rancour and without dishonour. He made it 7. Horace Alexander says, "It is also suggested possible for the government of India to pass that the British were unusually humane in their back out of British into Indian hands without treatment of the leaders of non-violent mutual bloodshed and for the Indian and the resistance. Many governemnts would have British peoples to become friends, after parting cheerfully shot Gandhi, Nehru and the rest." company with each other politically on a footing "Mahatma Gandhi's Legacy of Non-violence" of equality the natural human relation between in Radhakrishnan (ed.) op.cit. Mahatma Gandhi fellow human beings but a relation which can : 100 Years, p.13. not be established so long as people are 8. Father Dominique Pire says, "... the success of implicated with each other in the artificial and Gandhi's non-violence depended on the sporting estranging relation of rulers and subjects." Ibid, instinct of the English and also on their cold p.375. realism, feeling that the moment for political de- 10. Dhirendra Mohan Dutta, The Philosophy of colonization had arrived ...." Ibid, p.287. Mahatma Gandhi, Calcutta University, 1968, p.155. 9. Ibid, p.391 Like Harold Wilson, another prominent 11. Mahatma Gandhi : 100 years, p.114 Englishman, Arnold Joseph Toynbee who is a great historian has expressed gratitude to Mahatma Gandhi in the following words : "I am conscious of the possibility that I may be prejudiced because in my judgement Gandhi was Dr. Atul Chandra Pradhan lives at MIG-68, Baramunda as great a benefactor of my country as he was of Housing Board Colony, Bhubaneswar-751003.

Hon'ble Chief Minister Shri Naveen Patnaik receiving the Draft for Chief Minister's Relief Fund from Secretariat Data Entry Operators' Association on 26.9.09

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