The Gandhian Way Today

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The Gandhian Way Today
The Hindustan Times (30 January 1999)

On January 30, 1948, Mohandas K. Gandhi was assassinated. It is not fifty
one years later. This is an appropriate time to reflect on what lessons his
thought and actions have for us who face many acute conflict throughout the
world. These are often conflicts in which important issues related to
freedom and justice are at stake.

What are Gandhi's lessons for us -- we who suffer the combined pains of
popular powerlessness and pervasive violence, and who will soon enter the
twenty-first century? These appear to me as follows:
* Justice and freedom require empowering oppressed people and
redistributing power in society.
* Peace is not achieved by stifling conflicts in which important issues are
at stake but by using nonviolent struggle to fight out those conflict to a
resolution.
* Mass nonviolent struggle in politics is possible as a substitute both for
passivity and for violence.
* Masses of people who will never accept nonviolence as a moral principle
will at times practice pragmatic struggle.
* The key to widespread adoption of nonviolent means lies in formulating
and implementing strategies of nonviolent struggle to serve as substitute
for violence for specific purposes.
* Nonviolent struggles can be made significantly more effective if wise
strategies with implementing tactics are developed and applied.
* Nonviolent struggle can be developed, refined, adapted and adopted in a
series of specific replacements to be a substitute for violence as the
final means of applying pressure and power in society and politics.

Nonviolent struggle has existed for many centuries. Gandhi learned from
some of those cases including those in Russia, China, England, South
Africa, Bengal, Ireland and elsewhere.

We are now at a new stage in the development of nonviolent struggle. It is
possible to refine this technique to make it more effective, to adapt it
for use in several types of acute conflicts, and to increase the chances of
success while reducing casualties.

A great deal of research, analysis, policy development, education,
consulting and planning is required to explore and develop the potential of
nonviolent action and to take action in the acute conflicts of our time.
These include disintegrating dictatorships, blocking coups d'etat,
resisting genocide, lifting oppression, and correcting economic injustices.


These efforts will require going beyond, and often against, important
established trends of modern society and powerful national and
international forces. The centralization of power, the militarisation of
inter-state politics, the hegemony of traditional methods of
problem-solving -- these and other factors work against reasoned
consideration of the potential relevance of nonviolent struggle.

(Excerpted from a speech by Gene Sharp, senior scholar at the Albert
Einstein Institution, USA, and author of Gandhi as a Political Strategist)