Gandhi,
Nonviolence
and the Struggle Against War
By
Richard Falk
TFF Associate
January 28, 2004
Gandhi's Call
As early as 1931 Gandhi articulated his view that
change, to be beneficial, needed to be achieved by
nonviolent struggle: "I personally, would wait, if need
be, for ages rather than to seek the freedom of my
country through bloody means." Gandhi added some
optimistic words, declaring, "I feel in the innermost
recesses of my heart that the world is sick unto death of
blood-spilling. The world is seeking a way out, and I
flatter myself with the belief that perhaps it will be
the privilege of the ancient land of India to show the
way out to the hungering world." (1) Of course, from the
perspective of 2003 this would seem to be a prime
instance of false prophesy. This essay argues that
although Gandhi's literal coordinates of time and place
were mistaken, we may yet be approaching a Gandhian
Moment where there occurs a worldwide revulsion against
war and violence. Perhaps, "the world is seeking a way
out," but that the translation of this sentiment into
political reality, given the emotional and material
forces arrayed against it, was gravely underestimated by
Gandhi, but nevertheless his prophetic insight was valid
then, and if anything, is far more so today.
But should this hopeful possibility be actualized in
the time ahead, it will almost certainly be a result of
that other side of Gandhi's vision, the struggle against
the evils of oppression. In Gandhi's words, the
responsibility to act is a human duty in such
circumstances, not a mere political choice. On this
occasion already in 1921 Gandhi was addressing his
remarks to the "freedom" associated with British colonial
rule: "We seek arrest because the so-called freedom is
slavery. We are challenging the might of this Government
because we consider its activity to be wholly evil. We
want to overthrow the Government. We desire to show that
the Government exists to serve the people, not the people
the Government." (2) Elsewhere, Gandhi frequently makes
clear that to achieve such ends of true freedom, whatever
the context, no price is too great, including death, as
well as the related insistence that nonviolent struggle
requires the greatest personal courage.
So when awaiting a Gandhian moment we must grow
sensitive to both potentialities of the human spirit: the
renunciation of violence as a political instrument and
the engagement in struggle for the sake of justice.
Neither without the other is tenable.
At this time in human history, it would seem that the
glass is neither full, nor empty. But the passions that
rage on the planet suggest an impending encounter between
those destructive forces that see the glass totally
empty, and those that believe it is almost full, between
the extremists, whether religious or secular locked in
total war, and the visionary warriors that constitute
global civil society who believe in a future based on
peace, justice, and sustainability. Looking back in time,
we can understand that it is an error to be too literal
in anticipating the Gandhian Moment, but it would be a
greater error to dismiss the possibility, and reconcile
ourselves either to endless and escalating cycles of
violence or to the "unpeace" of injustice and
oppression.
Revived Gandhiism of the
1990s
A series of developments, especially in the 1990s,
created an impression that a new era of peaceful change
and global justice was displacing war and violence on the
world stage. The earliest indications of this trend can
be connected with the rather remarkable Iranian
Revolution in 1978-79 that toppled from power the
military regime of the Shah on the basis of a massive
popular movement that refused to rely on violent tactics
in its mounting its struggle for change. Somewhat later,
a similar phenomenon was evident in The Philippines where
Ferdinand Marcos, a longtime corrupt dictator, was driven
into exile by the People Power movement that was also
nonviolent in means and ends. Other pro-democracy
movements were evident in a series of Asian countries
including China, Nepal, Indonesia, Burma, Taiwan,
Thailand, and South Korea. And then in the late 1980s,
encouraged by the new governing style in Moscow
associated with Mikhail Gorbachev's leadership,
impressive mobilizations of popular opposition occurred
in a series of countries in East Europe, culminating in
the breaching of the Berlin Wall in late 1989. Two years
later the Soviet Union collapsed, and the internal empire
run from the Kremlin disintegrated, again without notable
violence.
These developments reached their climax in some ways
when the white leadership in South Africa decided to find
a way to end its racist regime based on apartheid so as
to avoid isolation on an international level and civil
strife at home. To achieve this transformation of a
country so long governed by an oppressive white minority
depended most of all of Nelson Mandela's ability to step
out of jail after 27 years of confinement, and assume the
leadership of the black African majority's struggle for a
constitutional democracy that was willing to accommodate
itself, despite massive impoverishment, to the
entrenched, yet exploitative, economic interests of the
white minority. Somehow, Mandela's spirit of
reconciliation and moral radiance was able to guide this
transition, avoiding the strong temptations to demand
social justice alongside of political justice, an
admittedly high price for adherence to a nonviolent
approach to conflict resolution. These various moves were
reinforced by a disillusionment with military approaches.
Neither revolutionary warfare of the sort that existed in
a series of Asian countries, nor oppressive government
seemed able to achieve stability. In world politics, the
nuclear standoff symbolized the growing realization that
war was no longer a viable instrument of policy in
relations among major sovereign states, and yet there
remained an acute fear that an unintended breakdown of
the precarious stability achieved by deterrence would
produce catastrophic results. (3)
The 1990s witnessed also a powerful global justice
movement unprecedented in history that appeared to
complement this willingness to limit challenges directed
at the political status quo by renouncing violence. (4)
There were several different dimensions of this turn
toward global justice: a series of initiatives associated
with reparations for victims of the Holocaust; a greatly
increased emphasis on adherence to human rights as the
foundation of political legitimacy; serious inquiry into
such historic injustices as the dispossession and
destruction of indigenous peoples, colonialism, and
slavery; the United Nations seemed ready to act with the
support of the United States and other leading countries
to prevent, or at least mitigate, humanitarian
catastrophes by accepting a responsibility to protect;
and greatly enhanced efforts to impose individual
criminal accountability on political leaders and military
commanders guilty of Crimes Against Humanity. (5)
Although none of these initiatives were directly
focused on nonviolence, there overall effect was to
suggest to all sides of political controversy that
peaceful means based on the rule of law was the only
acceptable way to resolve grievances.
Of course, not everything was rosy in the 1990s. There
was evident in many parts of the world, especially in
sub-Saharan Africa and the Balkans, instances of civil
strife exhibiting extreme forms of indiscriminate
violence. The world watched as genocide unfolded in
Rwanda. The Asian democracy movements either crashed or
achieved only minimal results. The cold war ended without
the nuclear weapons states moving to negotiate a
disarmament treaty or at least proclaim a regime
proclaiming the prohibition of all weaponry of
mass destruction. The negative effects of globalization
that were causing growing disparities in wealth and
income, environmental decay, and a pervasive disregard of
human suffering cast a dark shadow across the
achievements of the decade. And so a mixed picture
existed as to future prospects, but there were hopeful
developments underway that have now, temporarily, at
least, been eclipsed by a return to an apparent
preoccupation with war and its avoidance as a consequence
of the events surrounding and following upon the
September 11 attacks. Despite such an adverse turn, there
are signs that we may surprisingly yet be approach the
moment where the world will finally heed Gandhi's call to
nonviolence.
The Uncertain September 11
Effect
It is difficult to think about Gandhi's legacy for the
21st century without re-setting the global context
associated with the impact of both the September 11
attacks on the United States and the American response.
Both al Qaeda and the United States seem committed to
waging borderless wars on a global scale. Both sides deem
their opponent to be the embodiment of unconditional
evil, outside the framework of diplomacy, with the only
acceptable outcome being victory for one side and defeat
for the other through the medium of pure violence. (6)
Neither adversary is a sovereign state in the normally
understood sense, nor are the opposed antagonists engaged
in a civil war for control of a state or are they waging
some sort of self-determination struggle. Al Qaeda is an
amorphous, dispersed, secretive network that is operative
in as many as sixty states, while the United States is a
kind of global state that claims command of the oceans
and space, as well as maintaining military bases in more
than sixty countries.
Such an unprecedented conflict, repudiating the
restraints of international humanitarian law, is without
precedent in the annals of world history. Al Qaeda
proudly proclaims that all Americans are enemies who can
be killed to fulfill the goals of jihad, thereby
repudiating the fundamental precept of the law of war
that only military personnel and targets are subject to
attack. The United States, on its side, targets for death
civilians suspected of terrorist links in foreign
countries and denies captured al Qaeda fighters prisoners
of war status. It is a war, more than most wars, in which
the idea of limits seems alien. Such an assessment should
not be understood as romanticizing the relevance of law
to the conduct of past wars, but it is an important
rupture with the attempts in both world wars to avoid
superfluous suffering by finding common interests, such
as protection of prisoners of war and wounded combatants,
and sparing civilians so far as possible.
In such an atmosphere it might seem foolish to assert
the relevance of the Gandhian legacy of radical
nonviolence. Indeed, even the Dalai Lama, the most
prominent living advocate of nonviolent approaches to
conflict resolution, now entertains doubts about whether
the renunciation of violence is sustainable in the face
of this radical "terrorist" challenge. (7) The Dalai Lama
was quoted as saying that "[t]errorism is the
worst kind of violence, so we have to check it, we have
to take countermeasures," coupling this assertion with a
refusal to join other religious leaders in criticizing
the American military approach generating the wars
against Afghanistan, and especially the war against Iraq.
The leader of Tibetan Buddhism did go on to say that "the
real antidote" to terrorism was a reliance on
"compassion, dialogue - peaceful means. We have to deal
with their motivation." (8) It should be noted that this
admirable religious figure succumbed to the mainstream
trap of associating "terrorism" exclusively with
anti-state violence, and exempting "state terrorism" from
scrutiny. (9) Even worse, such a venerable figure calls
this non-state violence "the worst kind of violence" in
the face of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and more
surprisingly, the terrible violence used by the Chinese
government to crush Tibetan resistance back in the 1950s.
What is significant here is that the radical nature of
the struggle taking place is having a disorienting effect
on settled categories of assessment, including those that
proceed from the most principled of Gandhian views that
any reliance on violence is degenerative and
ineffectual.
At the same time, a kind of secular Gandhiism is
becoming visible in unexpected places. The Prime Minister
of Malaysia, Mohamed Mahathir, delivered a stirring
anti-war address to open the XIIIth Summit Meeting of the
Non-Aligned Movement in Kuala Lumpur on February 24,
2003. (10) Mahathir acknowledges that world order, as
understood in modern times by reference to state
sovereignty, has been undermined by both sides. A
perceptive passage is worth quoting in full:
We may want to remain uninvolved and to avoid
incurring the displeasure of powerful countries. But
our people are getting restless. They want us to do
something. If we don't then they will, and they will
go against us. They will take things into their own
hands. Unable to mount a conventional war they will
resort to guerrilla war, to terrorism, against us and
against those they consider to be their oppressors.
They cannot be ignored any longer. We cannot
incarcerate them all for we do not always know who
they are or where they are.
September 11 has demonstrated to the world that
even acts of terror even by a dozen [sic]
people can destabilize the whole world completely, put
fear into the hearts of everyone, make them afraid of
their own shadows. (11)
As with the Dalai Lama, Mahathir is also complicit in
the statist logic of associating terrorism exclusively
with non-state actors, but he at least condemns both
sides in this bloody encounter. His words directed at the
response of the United States, without naming, also is
notable for its lucidity. Mahathir says that the
provocations of September 11, and before and since, "have
also removed all the restraint in the countries of the
north. They now no longer respect borders, international
laws or simple moral values. They are even talking of
using nuclear weapons." The Malaysian leader goes on to
insist that the American response "is no longer just a
war against terrorism. It is in fact a war to dominate
the world, i.e. the chromatically different
world…the most important threat that we face now is
the tendency of the powerful to wage war when faced with
opposition to the spread of their dominance," and he
significantly adds, "[w]e cannot fight a war with
them." (12)
Then, in language unexpectedly echoing Gandhi,
Mahathir notes that "[f]ortunately many of their
people are also sick of war. They have come out in their
millions to protest the warlike policies of their
leaders. We must join them. We must join their struggle
with all the moral force that we can command." The goal
is also clearly expressed: "War must be outlawed. That
will have to be our struggle now. We must struggle for
justice and freedom from oppression, from economic
hegemony. But we must remove the threat of war first."
Mahathir proposes in this most importance speech that
"[w]ar must..be made illegal" and the enforcement
of this illegality entrusted to "multilateral forces
under the control of the United Nations. No single nation
should be allowed to police the world, least of all to
decide what action to take, when." (13) There is a final
element here in this conception of how to cut the Gordian
Knot of political violence. Mahathir asks the assembled
representative of the great majority of the world's
peoples a rhetorical question, receiving according to
press accounts, thunderous applause: "When Japan was
defeated, it was allowed to spend only one percent of its
GDP on its armed forces. If such a condition can be
imposed on Japan, why cannot it be imposed on all
countries?" (14)
Mahathir concludes this extraordinary speech, perhaps
the most visionary address by a statesman since Woodrow
Wilson gave voice to some comparable statements after the
carnage of World War I, by considering the dynamics of
the struggle. He acknowledges that the countries of the
south are "weak" but that they have allies among the
peoples and governments of the north, and insists that
"[w]e must work with them." And he proposes that
the Non Alignment Movement be revitalized to realize "a
world order which is above all free from the age old
belief that killing people is right, that it can solve
problems of relations between nations." (15)
I have emphasized this one statement by an important
political leader, but there are other indications that a
subtle and complicated process of reassessing the
dynamics of change and conflict resolution is taking
place at the deeper recesses of collective human
consciousness. The nuclear age highlighted the essential
self-destructiveness of war and political violence. The
long unresolved internal wars that have take so many
millions of lives in the decades since World War II have
underscored the terrible costs of relying on political
violence, and the tragedy of interactive violence in
struggles of state and society in which neither side
relents. (16) Scholars and academicians have increasingly
looked to such goals as the abolition of war and a
geopolitics of nonviolence as the only sustainable
foundations of world order, accepting as pillars of such
a transformation of global security the essential role of
respect for human rights and the international rule of
law, as well as an energetic implementation of the global
justice agenda so promisingly initiated in the 1990s.
(17)
A Concluding Note on
Globalization in the 21st Century
Toward the end of the twentieth century there was a
strong sense that war and violence were not as
significant for the future as they had been in the past.
There was an economistic climate of opinion in which
prevailing opinions viewed the main arena of struggle to
involve challenges directed by global civil society
against the inequities associated with neoliberal
globalization that seemed to emphasize market priorities
at the expense of the peoples of the world. September 11
and its sequel has demonstrated how shortsighted such
views were, and suggest the need to revamp globalization
to take into account the war/peace dimensions. A
conceptual framework that continues to use the
terminology of "globalization" remains useful to
highlight the degree to which the life of the planet and
its peoples must be conceived holistically, and not as
patterns of interactions among territorial entities
called sovereign states. (18) If the Gandhian moment is
to be realized, then it must encompass both concerns with
the violence of weapons and the violence of inequitable
structures of domination and exploitation. Perhaps,
unwittingly, the visibility of this violence due to the
globalization of media coverage, especially TV, will
hasten the process by which the peoples of the world sick
from violence and the suffering entailed, will hasten the
awakening of conscience and commitment needed to carry
forward the struggle for a nonviolent world order. This
is as much as we can hope for at present, but such a hope
will certainly prove vain if we do not also act to the
fullness of our individual and collective capacities to
rid the world of war and violence.
Endnotes
1. Homer A. Jack, ed., The Gandhi Reader: A
Sourcebook of His Life and Writings (Indianapolis,
IN: Indiana
University Press, 1956) 264.
2. Note 1, 193.
3. Perhaps, this precariousness was best expressed by
Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth (New York:
Knopf, 1982); see also Robert Jay Lifton and Richard
Falk, Indefensible Weapons: The Political and
Psychological Case Against Nuclear Weapons (New York:
Basic Books, updated ed., 1991).
4. These developments have been described and analyzed
by Elazar Barkun, The Guilt of Nations (2000)
5. See The Responsibility Project, Report of
the International Commission on Intervention and
Sovereignty, (Ottawa, Canada: International Development
Research Centre, 2001); for overview Richard Falk, "The
First Normative Global Revolution? The uncertain future
of globalization," in Mehdi Mozaffari, ed.,
Globalization and Civilizations (London, UK:
Routledge, 2002) 51-76.
6. President Bush has made frequent statements about
"hunting" and destroying al Qaeda by force of arms, as
has Osama Bin Laden as the leader of al Qaeda. For
instance, "[t]his hadith teaches [us]
that the conflict with the enemy will be settled by
killing and warfare, and not by disabling the potential
of the Nation for decades by a variety of means such as
the deception of democracy." And again, "[The Islamic
Nation] should toughen itself and prepare for real
life, a life of killing and war, of shooting and
hand-to-hand combat." Both quotes from "Bin Laden's
Sermon for the Feast of the Sacrifice," 14 March 2003, 3,
12 www.Memri.de/uebersetzen_analysen/themen/islamistische_ideologie/isl_binladen
7. There is a serious ambiguity as to the nature of
terrorism. The mainstream usage associates political
violence directed at civilian targets as terrorism, if
and only if perpetrated by non-state actors. I have
argued in the past that if "terrorism" as a term of moral
and legal opprium is to be used at all, then it should
apply to violence deliberately targeting civilians,
whether committed by state actors or their non-state
enemies. See Falk, Revolutionaries and Functionaries:
The Dual Face of Terrorism (New York: Dutton,
1988).
8. See Laurie Goodstein, "Dalai Lama Says Terror May
Need a Violent Reply," NY Times, Sept. 18, 2003, A16.
9. For an early attempt to analyze state terror see
Alexander George, ed., Western State Terrorism
(Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1991).
10. For text see www.nam.gov.za/media/030225na.htm.
11. See, note 10, numbered para. 32-34.
12. Note 10, para. 35-36.
13. Note 10, para. 37-39.
14. Note 10, para. 43.
15. Note 10, para. 47-48.
16. The Israel/Palestine violent encounter is
paradigmatic for this pattern. Saul Mendlovitz in arguing
the case for the abolition of war gathers the various
estimates of deaths due to large-scale political violence
concluding that since World War II there have been about
180 wars that have produced more than forty million
deaths, 125 million wounded, and some 100 million who
were forcibly displaced from their homes and homeland.
See Mendlovitz, "The Prospects for Abolishing War: A
Proposal for the Twenty-First Century," Rutgers Law
Review 16:621-632 (2000), esp. 621-622 and footnotes
2-4.
17. In addition to Mendovitz cited in the prior note
see Jonathan Schell's comprehensive inquiry in The
Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of
the People (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003);
along similar lines with a more poetic and inspirational
style of persuasion see Stuart Rees, Passion for
Peace: Exercising Power Creatively (Sydney,
Australia: University of New South Wales Press, 2003);
Fred Dallmyr is preparing a more philosophically grounded
book along comparable lines. For a more programmatically
oriented phased approach addressed to civil society
actors around the world see Global Action to Prevent
War: A Coalition-Building Effort to Stop War, Genocide,
& Internal Armed Conflict, Program Statement,
2003.
18. For one attempt see Richard Falk, "Reimagining the
Governance of Globalization," paper initially presented
at conference on Critical Globalization held at the
University of California, Santa Barbara, May 1-4,
2003.
See also Richard Falk's piece on Gandhi from 1998
here:
http://www.transnational.org/forum/meet/r_falk_gandhi.html
Copyright © 2004 TFF
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