A Theory of Nonviolent Action
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A Theory of Nonviolent Action

How Civil Resistance Works

Stellan Vinthagen

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eBook - ePub

A Theory of Nonviolent Action

How Civil Resistance Works

Stellan Vinthagen

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About This Book

In this ground-breaking and much-needed book, Stellan Vinthagen provides the first major systematic attempt to develop a theory of nonviolent action since Gene Sharp's seminal The Politics of Nonviolent Action in 1973. Employing a rich collection of historical and contemporary social movements from various parts of the world as examples - from the civil rights movement in America to anti-Apartheid protestors in South Africa to Gandhi and his followers in India - and addressing core theoretical issues concerning nonviolent action in an innovative, penetrating way, Vinthagen argues for a repertoire of nonviolence that combines resistance and construction. Contrary to earlier research, this repertoire - consisting of dialogue facilitation, normative regulation, power breaking and utopian enactment - is shown to be both multidimensional and contradictory, creating difficult contradictions within nonviolence, while simultaneously providing its creative and transformative force. An important contribution in the field, A Theory of Nonviolent Action is essential for anyone involved with nonviolent action who wants to think about what they are doing.

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Publisher
Zed Books
Year
2015
ISBN
9781780320533
Subtopic
Sociologie
Edition
1
1 | NONVIOLENT ACTION STUDIES
Which main social theories and concepts are used to understand nonviolence? What separates these theories? Which concepts are useful in describing the sociality of nonviolence? We begin with Gandhi’s perspective, as all theories of nonviolent disobedience refer back to him.
Gandhian nonviolence
During the famous Salt March, Time Magazine declared Gandhi ‘Man of the Year’, while Winston Churchill slighted him as a simple and ‘half-naked fakir’ who would be crushed. After he was murdered in 1948, Gandhi’s image went through a reputational purification, turning him into the icon of India, peace and humanity.1
Although this book is largely based on Gandhi’s understanding of nonviolence, it also encompasses decisive reinterpretations of that understanding. Gandhi highlighted the individual’s spiritual capacity for coping with the trials of resistance. I highlight the collective and practical capabilities of the nonviolent movement based on its social dimensions. A broad sociological view necessitates a separation of nonviolence from its original contexts in order to recontextualise nonviolence in new social contexts. Gandhi developed his nonviolent repertoire of concepts, methods, strategies and organisational forms in racist South Africa and colonial India a century ago. Interaction with concrete opponents and specific issues was crucial to this. Notably, his nonviolence came about in relation to Hinduism.2 He did not present a complete package of nonviolence from the start. Instead, he experimented and sometimes, as he himself said, made mistakes of ‘Himalayan proportions’. Consequently, Gandhi’s nonviolence is treated as a touchstone and not as a book of answers.
Gandhi is commonly associated with peace in the sense of abstaining from using violence or not participating in war: that is, pacifism. However, Gandhi should be understood in terms of liberation. When it comes down to it, Gandhi prioritises the struggle for liberation above the principle of nonviolence. He thought that if one lacked the capability for nonviolence, or a belief or training in it, it might be right to use violence in extreme situations when fighting greater violence.3 This stance distanced Gandhi from pacifism and as a result he is criticised for being inconsistent. Yet the case can be made that Gandhi was not necessarily inconsistent when he expressed this opinion in relation to concrete cases in which action was a duty but where those involved neither believed in nor had the ability to use nonviolence. Either way, it is clear that Gandhi inspired the long-term organisation of nonviolent capabilities, as awareness or will are insufficient in themselves.
Gandhi primarily developed a philosophy of liberation as well as a practical means of liberation: that is, nonviolence. This nonviolent action repertoire approaches oppression and violent methods in an unusual way, subsequently establishing a form of conflict transformation.4 As we will see, nonviolence is a form of action that aims to manage all the dimensions of a conflict and to transform conflict into consensus. As such, associating Gandhi with peace misinterprets his revolutionary approach as well as his focus on resisting oppression and violence. In contemporary India, for instance, Gandhi has been transformed into a representative of the establishment and raised to being ‘Father of the Nation’. Everyone knows (or believes they know) who he is and they avow their respect for this ‘great soul’ (Mahatma). Indian rupee banknotes are now adorned with Gandhi’s well-known face – the face of a man who, when he was murdered, was living a life entirely without private property.
Gandhi derived his concept of nonviolence mainly from a Hindu perspective. If you want to understand Gandhi’s philosophy as a whole, you must also consider its religious scope. On the other hand, this is necessary only if you are interested in his philosophy. That is, he can also be interpreted as a moral practitioner or a practical moralist:5 ‘I do not believe that the spiritual law [of nonviolence] works on a field of its own. On the contrary, it expresses itself only through the ordinary activities of life.’6 Thus, nonviolence should be understood as being both spiritually and socially practical. Moreover, it is something that expresses itself through social activity, and, on these grounds, it is possible to interpret nonviolence purely in sociological terms.
Gandhi was complex. Within the liberation movement he was known to be a compromising strategist (sometimes too much so) and a down-to-earth politician. At the same time his influence in India has mostly relied on his role as India’s spiritual leader. As the person responsible for the national movement’s resistance campaigns, he was a hard-working speaker, letter writer and organiser who travelled extensively. He emphasised that a strong champion of nonviolence must believe in a divinity, yet Gandhi designated his close collaborator and atheist, G. Ramachandra Rao, as the foremost defender of nonviolence.7 With these social and political underpinnings in mind, our focus moves to Gandhi’s view on the sociality of nonviolence and its role as liberation from oppression and violence in social relations.
Satyagraha as idea and practice Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence can be characterised as a theology of liberation, a philosophy of liberation or a philosophy of conflict transformation. Both the philosopher Arne Næss and the sociologist Joan Bondurant have tried to reconcile Gandhi’s unsystematic and sometimes contradictory views.8 Based on both of these classics of nonviolence studies, we can glean the main characteristics of what we can call Gandhian nonviolence.
Bondurant attempts to use the core elements of satyagraha to summarise Gandhi’s nonviolent perspective; this is also the concept that Gandhi finds best captures the core of nonviolent resistance. Satyagraha literally means ‘to hold onto the truth’. According to Bondurant, the three core elements in satyagraha are truth (satya), nonviolence (ahimsa) and self-inflicted suffering or asceticism (tapasya). The latter is not a matter of submission, rather it is a demonstration of sincerity.9 Nonviolence is, as we shall see in the next chapter, a struggle against violence without (using) violence. Thus, it is through nonviolence and suffering that the discord resulting from conflict is transformed and truth is attained. In line with Gandhi (and Bondurant), satyagraha is what constitutes the starting point for the book’s analysis of nonviolence. Although the concept of ‘nonviolence’ is included as one of the three elements of satyagraha, Gandhian nonviolence must be understood as an integrated whole.
At the pinnacle of the Indian liberation struggle in 1930, Gandhi, together with thousands of other activists, was jailed once again. In his cell, he dedicated most of his time to spinning yarn, but writing letters was also part of his daily routine. In one of the letters he writes:
the path of ahimsa [i.e. nonviolence] … may entail continuous suffering and the cultivating of end-less patience … without ahimsa it is not possible to seek and find Truth. Ahimsa and Truth are so intertwined that it is practically impossible to disentangle and separate them. They are like the two sides of a coin, or rather of a smooth unstamped metallic disc. Who can say which is the obverse and which is the reverse? Nevertheless, ahimsa is the means and Truth is the end. Means to be means must always be within our reach, and so ahimsa becomes our supreme duty and Truth becomes God for us. If we take care of the means, we are bound to reach the end sooner or later. If we resolve to do this, we shall have won the battle. Whatever difficulties we encounter, whatever apparent reverses we sustain, we should not lose faith but should ever repeat one mantra: ‘Truth exists, it alone exists. It is the only God and there is but one way of realizing it; there is but one means and that is ahimsa. I will never give it up. May the God that is Truth, in whose name I have taken this pledge, give me the strength to keep it.’10
First, it should be said that truth (satya) is a central aspect of satyagraha (nonviolent struggle). For Gandhi, the true, or what is, is viewed as what is right, or perhaps even what is right is what is.11 In other words, Gandhi is a realist. Of course, his realism is very different from Western political realism, which emphasises power relations and violence, not morality; however, like the Western tradition, he discusses and even explores that which is, the actual relations of reality. Even truth and God fuse together so that God becomes that which exists permanently: truth. This does not mean that God represents or accords with the truth or that truth is like God; rather ‘Truth is God’.12 If God is truth and not a being but a ‘universal law’,13 then no major difference exists between Gandhi and a researcher looking for the truth, regardless of whether the latter views him- or herself as religious or an atheist. At its core, the constitution of reality and how reality should be are not different (such a ’difference’ is precisely what denotes ethics in the Western tradition). According to both Gandhi and Hinduism, what is normally viewed as reality is an illusion or a false reality that we can see through.14 Beyond that illusion of reality, there is no difference between that which really works in reality and that which should work – the effective and the morality. Gandhi can thus be viewed both as a realistic pragmatist and as an idealistic moralist.15 Over time, and depending on the degree to which you follow the requirements of morality – or what is true or real – your actions will lead to success (that is, they will work practically).
Gandhi states that the justification of nonviolence lies in the fact that no one has certain knowledge of the truth, but all humans belong together and comprise a living unity.16 If our knowledge about truth remains uncertain, it means that anyone can be right since they have an understanding that is a part of the total truth; for that reason, others must take an individual’s understanding into consideration. To kill means to deny the possibility that the other person has something to teach us: if one day you realise that you were mistaken, the murdered person cannot be asked for forgiveness later. Since the truth itself is absolute but access to the truth is uncertain, a free inquiry into what is true is possible only if we do not kill each other during the search.17 One should therefore assume one’s own relative truth, one’s inner voice or one’s conscience, and hold true to it during the conflict, despite threats and the temptation to abandon it. At the same time, one must be open to being convinced by others’ understanding of the truth; if not, one cannot attain a deeper understanding of the truth.18 The search for absolute truth results in not using violence against others.
Second, nonviolence (ahimsa) is a central aspect of satyagraha. This is accompanied by the striving for non-egotistical ‘self-realisation’, or progress towards a life in service.19 This self-realisation is not the same as the one that characterises modern individualism. Gandhi speaks of something that, according to Arne Næss, should rather be understood as a collective self-realisation whereby the individual ego dissolves and the oppression of any single human hinders the self-realisation of all others.20 In this light, himsa (violence) should be understood as reducing the degree of self-realisation and ahimsa (nonviolence) as increasing it.21 Thus, nonviolence is not only a negation of violence. To be passive – to not resist the violence or oppression that is exercised anywhere in the world against any one of us – was something that Gandhi viewed as a form of participation that in itself constituted the exercise of violence.22 So the question of what constitutes violence or nonviolence is seen from a common (not an individual) perspective. Gandhi finds that ‘exploitation’ is the core of violence.23 Importantly, exploitation is not only about economic profiteering, but also about profiteering as a whole, profiteering from a person’s possibility of self-realisation as part of life or humanity.24 In a strict sense, complete ahimsa, non-damage or self-realisation is probably impossible and thus a utopian ideal. It is hardly possible to stop all violence and oppression all the time. The essential criterion for being able to claim that an action is an expression of ahimsa is whether it is an attempt to further the possibility of self-realisation or an effort to fight himsa.25 In practice, ahimsa is a question of trying to decrease, undermine or work against himsa, reducing it to the lowest possible level. In counteracting violence, unavoidable suffering arises.
Self-suffering or asceticism (tapasya) becomes a third central aspect of satyagraha: acting against power relations and using violence in conflicts lead to the suffering of the nonviolent actor, even if the intent is to avoid suffering.
The assumption is that you will suffer no matter what you do: if you accept oppression (which leads to the reduction of our common or mutual self-realisation) or resist, regardless of whether the resistance is conducted with violence or nonviolent struggle, suffe...

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