Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violence: Influences from West to West Gujarat
Different accounts given by historians suggest that Mahatma Gandhi would have been inspired by Western traditions as well as traditions closer home
MK Gandhi, whose nonviolent political philosophy became a model for world leaders like Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, may have been influenced by western traditions as well as from his own backyard in Kathiawad - presently the western portion of Gujarat.
Different accounts given by at least two historians point in this direction.
David Hardiman in his book ‘The Nonviolent Struggle for Indian Freedom, 1905-1919’, released in 2018, shows that the first all-India Satyagraha led by Gandhi in 1919 drew from two main traditions that he fused together in a strikingly original way.
His methods were inspired by passive resistance that can be dated back to the nationalist struggle by the Hungarians against the Austrian empire and from the spiritual and moral tradition, developed in the USA by Christian dissidents and free-thinkers, and in Russia by Leo Tolstoy, it says.
Initially conceived as a practical strategy suited to situations in which the opponent commanded an overwhelming control of armed force, passive resistance was applied by the Irish in their fight for Home Rule, and then the Finns in their movement for self-determination within the Russian empire.
“The idea of nonviolence as a form of political strategy was theorised by Gandhi in India during the second decade of the twentieth century. The Oxford English Dictionary states that the first recorded usage of the word in its hyphenated form was in the nineteenth century: as a medical term describing either a certain type of surgical procedure (Britain) or the failure of the body to resist the violence that is inflicted on it by disease (USA). Only in 1914 did it appear in a political context when a Wisconsin newspaper contrasted ‘rumpus and riot’ with ‘the tenets of moderation, orderly thinking and non-violence.’ The next usage recorded in the dictionary was by Gandhi, who is quoted as stating in 1920: ‘I believe that non-violence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment’,” it says.
The author notes that while dictionaries often define “ahimsa” as a translation of the Sanskrit word for ‘non-violence,’ Gandhi emphasized its deeper significance as a philosophical principle rooted in ancient India. However, a 19th-century Sanskrit–English dictionary by Monier-Williams provides a more extensive interpretation, describing “ahimsa” as ‘not injuring anything,’ ‘harmlessness’ (a cardinal virtue in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions), and ‘security’ or ‘safeness.’ This suggests that “ahimsa” encompasses a broader concept than just ‘non-violence.’
“Gandhi only began to talk about ahimsa as an informing principle of his method of resistance after his return to India from South Africa in 1915. Although Gandhi had already forged his method of satyagraha, he had never previously described it as a form of either ahimsa or ‘nonviolence’. There has been some confusion on this matter, as the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi gives the impression that he deployed the concept when he launched his first campaign of passive resistance in 1906. In this source, Gandhi had allegedly asserted: ‘This is for us the time for deeds, not words. We have to act boldly; and in doing so, we have to be humble and non-violent’.”
In South Africa, rather than describe his method in such terms, Gandhi talked of ‘non-resistance’ and described the protestors as ‘nonresisters’, according to Hardiman. He had taken this from Leo Tolstoy, a figure whom he admired profoundly. Tolstoy, he claimed, had made him aware of ‘the infinite possibilities of universal love,’ says Hardiman in his book.
Tolstoy was also influenced by the American non-resisters William Lloyd Garrison and Adin Ballou. When he wrote to him in 1909, Gandhi stated that he and his fellow Indians were trying to put into practice ‘the doctrine of non-resistance to evil’ in the context of South Africa. He had already deployed the term earlier and in other contexts.
“Gandhi began to apply the term ‘ahimsa’ to his method of resistance—satyagraha—only after his return to India from South Africa in January 1915. He first did so in a speech that he gave three months after his arrival at St. Stephens College in Delhi—an Anglican institution where his friend C.F. Andrews had taught up until the previous year,” according to Hardiman.
Historian late Howard Spodek in a research paper titled ‘On the origins of Gandhi’s political methodology: the heritage of Kathiawad and Gujarat’ says that Gandhi would have been inspired from traditions closer home. He cites the tradition of ‘risaamanu’, indicating the temporary severing of relations between intimate friends or family members in order to emphasize one’s grievance which when applied to politics led to peaceful protest and petition. The paper was published in the Journal of Asian Studies in February 1971.
Gandhi, it seems clear, did call on Kathiawadi techniques of protest in formulating his political methodology, it says.
Kathiawad, a part of the Gujarati linguistic area that presently forms the western portion of Gujarat state, was ruled by a form of indirect rule through some 220 nominal princes.
Before the British had established their paramountcy in Kathiawad between 1802 and 1822, and even as late as the 1860’s and 1870’s when they institutionalized courts of law as the only sanctioned recourse to justice, Kathiawadis had employed the fast, self-punishment, passive resistance, and even a form of guerilla warfare as means of political leverage for use both by the government and against it, according to Spodek.
Occasionally, the peaceful methods of risaamanu (alienation) were used by groups as well as individuals.
The paper cites one of the most famous cases of ‘risaamanu’ that took place in December 1882, when Gandhi was already thirteen years old in Keshod, about sixty miles from Rajkot, where the incident occurred.
The Maiya caste of landholders were pitted against their Junagadh ruled in seeking the removal of a levy which the state had imposed upon them. Going just outside the Junagadh borders and jurisdiction, several hundred Maiyas climbed Kanera hill and waited for the Junagadh darbar to reach an agreement with them or for the British government to enforce a compromise.
“The tactic in this case failed. On the twenty-ninth day of the encampment, the Junagadh armed forces rode out and massacred them, killing seventy-one and wounding seven. The Maiyas did have a few weapons with them and they managed to wound seven Junagadh men, killing none,” it said.
The Maiya case of sitting dharna while in possession of some arms was transformed by eminent folklorist Jhaverchand Meghani into a tale in which the Maiyas rejected armed resistance on principle, preferring to be slaughtered with the name of the Lord Ram on their lips.
Citing Meghani’s story, Shambhuprasad Desai, a local historian has stated that this was an early instance of satyagraha, according to the paper.
Countering the idea of Gandhi’s singular contribution towards developing the theory of civil resistance in India, Hardiman in his book says that Aurobindo Ghosh was another notable figure in this respect.
“It is notable that both Ghose and Gandhi spent important formative years away from India—Ghose in Britain and Gandhi in South Africa—and this gave an international dimension to their thinking and writing on nationalist strategy,” the author says in his book.
