Gandhi on resisting oppressors
Even the most brutal ones
Mohandus Gandhi, the leader of the resistance that gained Indian independence from the English, influenced many, including Martin Luther King, Jr. King included him in those “who greatly reveal the working of the Spirit of God” and described his understanding of non-violent resistance as “the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.” Here he responds to his friend, the poet Rabindranath Tagore, explaining his belief in “non-co-operation.” Tagore, he writes, “fears it is a doctrine of separation, exclusiveness, narrowness, and negation.” This appears in his “Reply to Tagore,” found in Selected Writings of Mahatma Gandhi.
I still believe that man not having been given the power of creation does not possess the right of destroying the meanest creature that lives. The prerogative of destruction belongs solely to the creator of all that lives.
I accept the interpretation of ahimsa, namely, that it is not merely a negative state of harmlessness but it is a positive state of love, of doing good even to the evil-doer. But it does not mean helping the evil-doer to continue the wrong or tolerating it by passive acquiescence.
On the contrary, love, the active state of ahimsa, requires you to resist the wrongdoer by dissociating yourself from him even though it may offend him or injure him physically. Thus if my son lives a life of shame, I may not help him to do so by continuing to support him; on the contrary, my love for him requires me to withdraw all support from him although it may mean even his death.
And the same love imposes on me the obligation of welcoming him to my bosom when he repents. But I may not by physical force compel my son to become good. That, in my opinion, is the moral of the story of the Prodigal Son.
Non-cooperation is not a passive state, it is an intensely active state — more active than physical resistance or violence. Passive resistance is a misnomer. Non-co-operation in the sense used by me must be non-violent and therefore neither punitive nor vindictive nor based on malice, ill-will or hatred.
General Dyer ordered the “Massacre of Amritsar,” when he ordered his troops to block the one exit from the Jallianwala Bagh, a large courtyard, and fire upon a crowd, mostly of women, children, and the elderly, in 1919. The troops killed at least 379 (the official English estimate) and wounding over 1,200, about 200 seriously. As the nickname “the butcher of Amritsar” suggests, Dyer was in our terms a war criminal.
It follows therefore that it would be sin for me to serve General Dyer and co-operate with him to shoot innocent men. But it would be an exercise of forgiveness or love for me to nurse him back to life, if he was suffering from a physical malady.
I would co-operate a thousand times with this Government to wean it from its career of crime, but I will not for a single moment co-operate with it to continue that career. And I would be guilty of wrong-doing if I retained a title from it or “a service under it or supported its law courts or schools.”
Better for me a beggar’s bowl than the richest possession from hands stained with the blood of the innocents of Jallianwala. Better by far a warrant of imprisonment than honeyed words from those who have wantonly wounded the religious sentiment of my seventy million brothers.
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