{"id":29823,"date":"2013-06-10T12:00:24","date_gmt":"2013-06-10T11:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=29823"},"modified":"2015-05-06T12:52:54","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T11:52:54","slug":"what-gandhi-says-about-nonviolence-resistance-and-courage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/06\/what-gandhi-says-about-nonviolence-resistance-and-courage\/","title":{"rendered":"What Gandhi Says about Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Book Review: What Gandhi Says about Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage<\/em> by Norman G Finkelstein, New York and London 2012 pp100.<\/i><\/p>\n

Thinking through how a nonviolent protest might free the West Bank\u00a0from Israeli occupation led the author to take a close look at Gandhi\u2019s own\u00a0writings to see just what he did say about nonviolence. One of his complaints\u00a0is that Gandhi scholars in fact rarely do take a close look at the Collected\u00a0Works, though surely this is transparently unfair in the case of Anthony Parel\u00a0and, indeed, our own editor, George Paxton. As one would expect of a close\u00a0friend of Noam Chomsky a razor-sharp intelligence is brought to bear on\u00a0those writings. Finkelstein has written extensively on the Israel-Palestine\u00a0conflict and maybe predictably his major critique of Gandhi\u2019s ideas lies in\u00a0their ineffectiveness for dealing with Hitler and the Holocaust. But this is a\u00a0highly sophisticated analysis and is far more ambivalent in the ways it looks\u00a0at such questions as Gandhi\u2019s consistency and at the psychology underlying\u00a0these ideas, other historical conflicts, above all the freedom struggle, and this\u00a0is a measured recommendation for a nonviolent approach at the time of the\u00a0Arab spring and the Occupy movement.<\/p>\n

It is easy enough for Finkelstein to expose Gandhi\u2019s inconsistencies. Gandhi wrote of\u00a0the hobgoblin of consistency and the author concedes that, for all the apparent contradictions,\u00a0there were underlying core beliefs: \u201che probably never consciously lied.\u201d (p20).\u00a0Finkelstein sees a fatal weakness in Gandhi\u2019s reliance on intuition, his inner voice, and though I\u00a0don\u2019t wholly see the logic of his conclusion, sees this as bound to lead to authoritarianism: \u201cto\u00a0doubt Gandhi was to doubt God.\u201d (p23) But then he corrects himself and sees Gandhi\u2019s ideas\u00a0as less abstract and incoherent and open to rational explication.<\/p>\n

The most worrying inconsistency is the way Gandhi wavers between nonviolence and the need in certain circumstances to resort to\u00a0violence. In some ways the whole play between nonviolence and violence could be recast in terms of courage versus cowardice. Gandhi surely rightly\u00a0saw it as the highest form of courage to meet violence with nonviolence, even\u00a0a readiness to die. Finkelstein sees Gandhi taking this to an extreme and\u00a0encouraging a positive cult of death, almost reveling in the number of those\u00a0who might lose their lives, say in a communal conflict with Muslims. Nothing\u00a0was so shameful in his eyes than cowardice. Better to resort to violence than\u00a0to be cowardly. To quote Finkelstein: \u201cGandhi\u2019s Collected Works are filled\u00a0with, on the one hand, scalding condemnations of ersatz nonviolence, and on\u00a0the other, exhortations to violence if the only other option is craven\u00a0retreat.\u201d (p35) Gandhi is seen as almost sharing Nietzsche\u2019s contempt for\u00a0Christian passivity, its turning the other cheek.<\/p>\n

Oddly the reason for such concern is staring us in the face. Gandhi\u2019s\u00a0was surely a response to an imperialist rhetoric which spoke of the lack of\u00a0manliness, the effeminacy of Indians. The Raj here had the Bengalis in mind\u00a0in contrast to the Indian martial races. Here was one way the Raj met the\u00a0challenge of a nationalist movement initially inspired by the Bengalis. In\u00a0many ways Gandhi had bought into the martial values of the Rajputs.\u00a0Evidently the charge of effeminacy stung Gandhi and possibly he\u00a0overcompensated. Of course there are more complex psychoanalytic\u00a0explorations possible and Gandhi\u2019s complex attitudes to sexuality, evidenced\u00a0in brahmacharya, inevitably exposes him to such enquiry.<\/p>\n

Finkelstein\u2019s real concern is to test the effectiveness of nonviolence.\u00a0The example he takes is the plight of European Jews in the Holocaust.\u00a0Gandhi was obviously not alone in floundering before such crimes against\u00a0humanity. Might he yet appeal to Hitler\u2019s good nature? Might mass\u00a0nonviolent passive resistance by the Jews work on the conscience of the\u00a0Nazis? Finkelsteins\u2019s argument is that the coercive power of satyagraha, its\u00a0capacity to change minds, cannot work against a mindset such as the Nazi.\u00a0They were impervious to such moral pressure. There is no evidence that the\u00a0sight of millions of Jews being led to the crematoria \u2018like lambs to the\u00a0slaughter house\u2019 had the slightest affect on the conscience of the Nazis.\u00a0Noncooperation simply would not work in this case. He concludes, somewhat\u00a0ambiguously, that Gandhi\u2019s own unique moral force could prevail and \u201cthis\u00a0was his great personal triumph, but also his great political failure. The tactic\u00a0had no generalised value.\u201d (p57) Gandhi himself, to quote his own words,\u00a0believed \u201chuman nature in its essence is open and therefore unfailingly\u00a0responds to the advances of love.\u201d (quoted p69) Finkelstein does not share\u00a0this optimism. At this juncture he chooses not to explore the alternative tactic\u00a0of violent Jewish resistance, both in the camps and ghettoes, a violence of\u00a0course played up today by Israel itself, gripped by a rhetoric of survival. Nor\u00a0does he mention Gandhi\u2019s Jewish friends, Polak and Kallenbach, and\u00a0Kallenbach\u2019s failure to win Gandhi over in the 1930s to a more militant stand.<\/p>\n

But then Finkelstein proceeds, along different lines, to try and explain\u00a0how in fact a coercive nonviolent strategy does work. It is of course\u00a0controversial to see nonviolence as morally coercive, which Gandhi always\u00a0denied, for it seems in flat contradiction to its moral nature. A Gandhian\u00a0strategy will only work, it is argued, if there is some susceptibility in the\u00a0opponent either to its moral case or, just as probably, to a sense of its being in\u00a0its own self interest. Finkelstein puts this well: \u201cthe thrust of his campaign\u00a0was clearly to energize a latently sympathetic public via self suffering.\u201d\u00a0(Pp61-2) Gandhi might prevail in a temperance campaign, for the\u00a0Indian public saw the ravages of alcohol, but not against gambling, for here\u00a0the Indian public was far too committed to gambling for any campaign to\u00a0work. And of course the classic campaign was the nonviolent freedom\u00a0struggle itself. But here once again Finkelstein takes a controversial line. He\u00a0does not believe that it was \u2018love power\u2019 that persuaded the British to leave.\u00a0There was no successful appeal to their moral conscience. Gandhi himself\u00a0realised that the way to get the British to leave was to make India\u00a0ungovernable and hence unprofitable. It was not a case of melting British\u00a0hearts: \u201cinstead he set out to coerce them, albeit non-violently, into\u00a0submission.\u201d \u201cIt was not the power of love but the juggernaut of power that\u00a0cleared the path to India\u2019s independence.\u201d (p78) Of course this is to overlook\u00a0metropolitan British moral disquiet at the Amritsar massacre and the\u00a0Christian conscience of the Viceroy, Lord Irwin.<\/p>\n

This short, incisive work has to be taken very seriously. In the end\u00a0Finkelstein, however ambiguous his whole interpretation seems to come\u00a0down on Gandhi\u2019s side. He looks at the world today and decides on balance a\u00a0nonviolent struggle leads to less loss of life than a violent. (cf the Arab Spring\u00a0in Tunisia and Egypt compared to what happened in Libya.) But does it set\u00a0the bar of courage too high ? Is it necessarily more ethical than a violent\u00a0struggle? (Obviously here he has the Second World War in mind). But he\u00a0proceeds: \u201cbut what can be said with confidence is that the results of violent\u00a0resistance have at best been mixed.\u201d So just how far will a nonviolent struggle\u00a0take us ? He argues: \u201cthe further along it gets nonviolently, the more likely it\u00a0is that the new world will be a better one.\u201d (pp79-81)<\/p>\n

Finkelstein\u2019s interpretation of the limitations of Gandhism confronting\u00a0Nazism reminds me of Ernest Gellner\u2019s critique of moral relativism.\u00a0Confronted by Nazism one has no alternative but to believe in an absolute\u00a0right and wrong. You cannot in anyway qualify Hitlerism. And the debate over the need for fearlessness, Gandhi\u2019s belief that could the British overcome their fear of loss of Empire they would happily surrender, reminds me of\u00a0Aung San Suu Kyi\u2019s belief that could the Army in Burma lose its fear of the\u00a0loss of power, they would come into line with more progressive policies. It is\u00a0in Burma that the Gandhian ideal is currently being put most critically to the\u00a0test.<\/p>\n

________________________<\/p>\n

Antony Copley is\u00a0honorary senior research fellow at University of Kent and trustee of The Gandhi Foundation.<\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 gandhifoundation.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Review of the book written by Norman G Finkelstein – Gandhi\u2019s belief that could the British overcome their fear of loss of Empire they would happily surrender, reminds me of Aung San Suu Kyi\u2019s belief that could the Army in Burma lose its fear of the loss of power, they would come into line with more progressive policies. It is in Burma that the Gandhian ideal is currently being put most critically to the test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,59,56,67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-nonviolence","category-asia-pacific","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}