M. K. Gandhi on Resistance

4. The means and the end are inseparable. Gandhi's most distinctive philosophical claim, developed further at topic 3.4.3. There is, he says, the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as between the seed and the tree. A just society cannot be reached by unjust means, so violence is excluded not merely because it is wrong but because it cannot produce what is wanted.

Why non-violence, on his own arguments

The moral argument. Violence injures the person it is aimed at, and it injures the person who uses it. It also assumes that the user is certainly right, and human beings are not entitled to that certainty when the cost of error is another person's life.

The argument from means and ends. A movement that wins by violence has trained itself in violence and will govern by it.

The practical argument, which is often forgotten. Non-violence deprives the government of the one thing it is best equipped to answer. A state has overwhelming superiority in force; meeting it with force plays to its strength and supplies it with the justification it needs. Meeting it with disciplined non-violence forces it either to concede or to be seen using force against people offering none.

Gandhi's chapter 16 is titled "Brute Force", and he treats history's record of violence as the record of what has failed to change anything fundamental. Later, writing about the book in 1921, he described it as teaching the gospel of love in place of that of hate, replacing violence with self-sacrifice, and pitting soul force against brute force, and said he withdrew nothing from it except one word.

The conditions Gandhi imposes on the resister

This is where his account is strictest, and an answer that gives the conditions distinguishes itself.

Truthfulness. The resister's case must be stated honestly, including the parts that help the other side. Satyagraha is from satya, truth.

Non-violence in act, word and thought. Not merely refraining from blows.

No hatred of the opponent. The object is to convert, not to defeat. Gandhi's opponent is to be won over and remains a person to be reasoned with.

Openness. Nothing secret. Notice given in advance, including to the authorities.

Acceptance of the penalty, cheerfully and without evasion, which is the definition above.

Self-purification and discipline, because a person who cannot control themselves cannot conduct a campaign that depends on absorbing provocation.

Willingness to suffer, and to lose. The resister must be prepared for the campaign to fail and to bear the cost anyway.

Exhaustion of other means. Petition, negotiation and arbitration first.

The criticisms

It requires a conscience in the opponent. Non-violent resistance works by appealing to something in the other side and in the watching public. Against a regime that is indifferent to opinion and prepared to kill without the fact becoming known, the method has nothing to work on. This is the criticism Mandela's chapter takes up directly.

It is slow, and the cost falls on the victims. The people who suffer are the resisters, who are usually the people already suffering.

It can be used by anybody. A technique of moral pressure is available to unjust causes too, and Gandhi's insistence on truth is a moral requirement rather than a built-in safeguard.

Ambedkar's objection, which an Indian answer should include. Ambedkar disputed both the method and the priority. He argued that for the most oppressed the problem was not a foreign government but the social order at home, that a technique of moral appeal to those who benefit from a hierarchy leaves the hierarchy's beneficiaries in charge of when to concede, and that legal and constitutional guarantees are a surer protection than another person's conscience. That disagreement is set out at topic 4.3.1 on the village, and it applies here too.

Its scale is uncertain. Gandhi's campaigns worked with mass participation, sustained organisation and a press that reported them. Whether the method transfers to conditions lacking any of those three is genuinely disputed.

A worked example

A municipality requires every street vendor in a market to obtain a licence, and then issues licences only to vendors who can produce ten years of documentary proof of trading, which excludes almost every woman vendor in the market because the receipts were always issued in a male relative's name.

Gandhi's analysis. The rule is repugnant to conscience because it takes a livelihood from people on a ground unconnected with anything they did. A vendor who complies, stops trading and goes home has not merely suffered the injustice; she has helped it work.

Body-force would be to occupy the municipal office and prevent it functioning, or to resist the officers who come to clear the stalls.

Soul-force is to continue trading without the licence, having written to the Commissioner in advance stating exactly what will be done and why, to offer no resistance when the stalls are removed or when arrests are made, to state the case truthfully in court, and to accept the fine or the imprisonment without seeking to avoid it.

Watch what the acceptance of the penalty does. It removes the accusation of self-interest, because the vendor is paying rather than gaining. It makes the injustice visible, because the spectacle is now of women being prosecuted for selling vegetables. And it keeps the movement inside a frame the public can support, which a riot would not.

And watch the conditions bite. If the vendors had first refused to negotiate with the Commissioner, Gandhi's requirement that other means be exhausted is not met. If the campaign hides its plans, the requirement of openness fails. If a vendor pays a bribe to avoid the fine, the method has been abandoned at the point where it does its work.

Distinctions that carry marks

What Gandhi is NOT saying

He is not saying disobey any law you dislike. The law must be repugnant to conscience, other means must have been tried, and the resister must satisfy every condition above.

Passive resistance is not passive. Gandhi disliked the English phrase for that reason and eventually preferred satyagraha. It is an active method that involves initiating a breach and bearing the consequences.

It is not a claim that suffering is good in itself. The suffering is instrumental: it communicates, and it excludes the suspicion of self-interest.

It is not compatible with escaping the penalty. A resister who evades arrest or pays a bribe has substituted evasion for soul-force, which is the one thing the method cannot survive.

Quick revision

1. The definition: "Passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms."
2. The distinction, in his own words: forcing repeal by violence is body-force; not obeying the law and accepting the penalty for its breach is soul-force, and it involves sacrifice of self.
3. Four propositions: a law's provenance does not settle its claim; obeying an unjust law is participation in it; the remedy is refusal plus suffering; and means and ends are inseparable.
4. Three arguments for non-violence: moral, the means and ends argument, and the practical one that force plays to the state's strength while non-violence removes its justification.
5. Conditions: truth, non-violence in act and word and thought, no hatred of the opponent, openness including notice to the authorities, acceptance of the penalty, self-discipline, willingness to lose, and exhaustion of other means.
6. Criticisms: it needs a conscience in the opponent and a watching public; it is slow and the cost falls on the victims; it is available to unjust causes; Ambedkar's objection that constitutional guarantees are surer than another person's conscience; and its dependence on scale, organisation and a reporting press.

Test yourself

1. Give Gandhi's definition of passive resistance and the distinction he draws with it. He defines passive resistance as a method of securing rights by personal suffering, and says it is the reverse of resistance by arms. The distinction is between two ways of not complying with a law one dislikes: if by using violence one forces the Government to repeal it, one employs what may be termed body-force; if one does not obey the law and accepts the penalty for its breach, one uses soul-force, and it involves sacrifice of self. The acceptance of the penalty is not a consequence of the method but is the method.

2. Why does Gandhi say obedience to an unjust law is not neutral? Because a law works only through the compliance of those subject to it. A tax paid funds the regime, a rule complied with is a rule that operates, and a person who quietly obeys has supplied the injustice with what it needs to continue. On this view the quiet citizen is a partner in the wrong rather than a bystander to it, which is what converts the question from what one may permissibly do into what one is already doing.

3. Set out Gandhi's arguments for non-violence. The moral argument, that violence injures both the person it is aimed at and the person who uses it, and presumes a certainty about being right that no human being is entitled to when the price of error is a life. The means and ends argument, that there is the same inviolable connection between means and end as between seed and tree, so a movement that wins by violence will govern by it. And the practical argument, that a state has overwhelming superiority in force, so meeting it with force plays to its strength and supplies its justification, while disciplined non-violence leaves it the choice of conceding or being seen to use force against people offering none.

4. What conditions must a Gandhian resister satisfy? Truthfulness, including about what helps the other side. Non-violence in act, word and thought. Absence of hatred, since the object is to convert the opponent rather than defeat them. Openness, with notice given in advance to the authorities. Acceptance of the penalty without evasion. Self-purification and discipline, since the method depends on absorbing provocation. Willingness to suffer and to lose. And the exhaustion of petition, negotiation and arbitration first.

5. State the strongest criticisms of Gandhi's method. That it depends on a conscience in the opponent and on a watching public, so it has nothing to work on against a regime indifferent to opinion and able to kill unobserved. That it is slow and loads the cost onto the resisters, who are usually those already suffering. That it is a technique available to unjust causes as much as just ones, truthfulness being a moral requirement rather than a safeguard built into it. And Ambedkar's objection, that a method of moral appeal leaves the beneficiaries of a hierarchy in charge of when to concede, so that legal and constitutional guarantees are a surer protection for the oppressed than another person's conscience.