The mandate to resist violence by non-violence is a general mandate, and, like all general mandates, it admits of exceptions depending on persons, circumstances, time and place. 'The fact is that the path of duty [dharma] is not always easy to discern amidst claims seeming to conflict with the other.' Gandhi was called a 'practical idealist'; the 'practical' part should not be forgotten. The British conservative Michael Joseph Oakeshott said, 'Political action involves mental vulgarity, not merely because it entails the occurrence and support of those who are mentally vulgar, but because of the simplification of human life implied in even the best of its purposes.'
We live in times when hyper-masculine nationalism preaches the ideas of violent masculinity among the youth. Gandhian politics of trust seems like a farfetched dream. The increasing demand for machismo placed on the young population by the current discourse on nationalism leads to lack of any regard for the affective coexistence and it breeds mistrust and competition as the way of life. Mistrust leads to fear of the ‘other’- the unknown. This fear leads to violence against the religious minorities, refugees, migrants and ‘others’ who cannot be trusted.
We live in a world and a culture that celebrates and is constantly normalizing brutality by moralizing, legalizing, and popularizing violence. The political climate brings more violence to the forefront, as aggression has been continuously explained away and even celebrated. The narratives of importance of national security and glorification of warrior figures of the past normalizes militarism. Dehumanizing propaganda spread by planners of genocide help in violence. Almost every movie shows that violence is the best and final solution to every problem. Officially sanctioned murder is hidden under bland terms like 'collateral damage' or 'neutralized' the enemy.
Every video game I am shown is about shooting and killing. There is a celebration of police encounters and military weapon displays and the militarization of the consciousness. From militarism to aggressive/hyper-competitive sports carnivals, we see the sanctification of violence. The divorce between producers and consumers in the modern economy aids in the social production of moral indifference. Our moral capacities have not been able to keep up with the rapid expansion of our cognitive skills. Anthony Parel says in Gandhi's Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony:
The factual presence of violence in social life forced Gandhi to adjust the scope of his ethics to that reality. Hence the goal of Gandhian non-violence was not the total elimination of violence from social life, for that was impossible . . . but the gradual reduction of its intensity and frequency. It would be utopian to think of the total elimination of violence. But to think of reducing its volume and extent would be realistic.
With Gandhi, the notion of nonviolence attained a special status. He made us understand that the philosophy of nonviolence is not a weapon of the weak; it is a weapon, which can be tried by all. Nonviolence was not Gandhi's invention. He is however called the father of nonviolence because he was probably the first in human history to extend the principle of nonviolence from the individual to the social and political planes.
Antoinette Tuff was working in the front office of an Atlanta School when a 20-year-old gunman stormed in with an AK-47 assault rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition. Rational actors say that ‘the only rational response to terrorism is police action’ and that negotiation is ‘fainthearted’. I came across one of these rational actors say, ‘Survival is impossible without police action in times of crisis, and the tacit threat of it at all times. This is the price we pay for civilization.’ Fortunately, Mrs. Tuff was not a devotee of such a ‘lifeboat ethics’ view of civilization.
When Tuff met the gunman, she told him that she was also a troubled soul like him. She told him about her life struggles: how her marriage had fallen apart after over 30 years and her struggles with opening her own business. Tuff's response was very different from whatever response he had expected and he was not sure how to react. She convinced the gunman to put his weapons aside and allow the police come in to take him to the hospital, since he’d told her that he had not been taking some of the medication he needed to and that he was not mentally stable.
More than 800 students and 100 employees were at the school that day; not one was injured after the gunman surrendered peacefully to the police. In an interview, she said that she saw ‘someone that was hurting, and did not need me to judge or pass judgment on them, show anger or be frustrated or mad at him. But I seen [sic] a young man in an unstable condition mind needing me to show him love.’ There were two security systems in place that day: one was the expected, expensive, violent 'rational response' that failed and the other was a quiet old nonviolent lady who succeeded. (Of course, the incident was reported a lot less breathlessly than would have been the case if there had been a massacre.)
It has always been assumed that nonviolence is a wonderful ideal, but that if one wants to achieve results, violence is the means to choose. Nonviolence, it is said, is the weapon of the weak, to be employed only when violent options seem totally out of reach. In Why Civil Resistance Works : The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth assembled a comprehensive data set of 323 violent and nonviolent campaigns between 1900 and 2006 and their findings challenge this conventional wisdom. They found that nonviolent campaigns were nearly twice as likely to achieve full or partial success as were violent campaigns and that the advantage for nonviolent campaigns held even when controlling for the authoritarianism of the regime.
Nonviolent campaigns turned out to be more effective for both regime change and resistance to foreign occupation. The only purpose for which nonviolent campaigns were not more successful than violent ones was political secession. A campaign’s commitment to nonviolent methods enhances its domestic and international legitimacy and encourages more broad-based participation in the resistance by presenting fewer obstacles to moral and physical involvement and commitment. The higher levels of participation contribute to enhanced resilience, greater opportunities for tactical innovation and civic disruption (and therefore less incentive for a regime to maintain its status quo).
They cause shifts in loyalty among opponents' erstwhile supporters, including members of the military establishment. Whereas governments easily justify violent counterattacks against armed insurgents, regime violence against nonviolent movements is more likely to backfire against the regime. Nonviolent resistance campaigns appear to be more open to negotiation and bargaining because they do not threaten the lives or well-being of members of the target regime. Given a credible alternative, the public is more likely to support a nonviolent campaign. Chenoweth and Stephan conclude that successful nonviolent resistance ushers in more durable and internally peaceful democracies, which are less likely to regress into civil war. As Lewis Mumford says in Technics And Civilization:
Physical power is a rough substitute for patience and intelligence and cooperative effort in the governance of men: if used as a normal accompaniment of action instead of a last resort it is a sign of extreme social weakness.
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