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Saturday, October 10, 2009

Gandhi: What It Takes To Practice Non-Violence.



By M.K. Gandhi from Harijan, March 25, 1939. (Additional comments in parenthesis are mine.)


The four days' fast set me thinking of the qualifications required in a Satyagrahi (one who practices non-violence). Though they were carefully considered and reduced to writing in 1921 they seem to have been forgotten.

In Satyagraha,(literally 'clinging to truth'. Also Truth Force or Love Force. Most commonly rendered in English as non-violence) it is never the numbers that count; it is always the quality, more so when the forces of violence are uppermost.

Then it is often forgotten that it is never the intention of a Satyagrahi to embarrass the wrong-doer. The appeal is never to his fear; it is, must be, always to his heart. The Satyagrahi's object is to convert, not to coerce, the wrong-doer. He should avoid artificiality in all his doings. He acts naturally and from inward conviction.

Keeping these observations before his mind's eye, the reader will perhaps appreciate the following qualifications which, I hold, are essential for every Satyagrahi in India:

1. He must have a living faith in God, for He is his only Rock.

2. He must believe in truth and non-violence as his creed and therefore have faith in the inherent goodness of human nature which he expects to evoke by his truth and love expressed through his suffering.

3. He must be leading a chaste life and be ready and willing for the sake of his cause to give up his life and his possessions.

4. He must be a habitual khadi-wearer (home made clothing) and spinner (maker of home spun cloth). This is essential for India.

(At the time of this writing India was impoverished by the importation of British made cloth and clothing. Gandhi urged the boycott of these British products).

5. He must be a teetotaller (non-drinker) and be free from the use of other intoxicants in order that his reason may be always unclouded and his mind constant.

6. He must carry out with a willing heart all the rules of discipline as may be laid out from time to time.

7. He should carry out the jail rules unless they are specially devised to hurt his self-respect (Most of Gandhi's followers where subject to arrest for their non-violent activities and protests).

The qualifications are not to be regarded as exhaustive. They are illustrative only.


(Peace, Ralph)




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