by William J. Jackson

When we see that change is needed in some sphere of life, how might we disrupt business-as-usual in a civil way? Gandhi asked that question and proceeded to piece together answers. His writings show the moments of his searching attempts and the discoveries and practices he found to be effective. Had he not made his search and written about his experiments and struggles he would not have become an exemplar giving hope to others.

Gandhi had a great awareness of language. As he worked over the years to address social issues he developed a memorable vocabulary for key principles he discovered. Gandhi’s vocabulary of non-violence was useful in forming signposts for co-workers; mottos to keep philosophical ideas in focus while activists faced conflicts, such as being beaten with sticks during a protest. Gandhi needed to develop a program with strategies and teachings for protesters, showing them how to deal with natural feelings of anger, fear, and anxiety, and how to tap into “inborn gentleness and desire to do the opponent good,” as he wrote in his Autobiography. Without practice in these disciplines, the masses involved in public demonstrations would naturally become unruly and resort to violence.

To generate significant changes, a vocabulary describing the methods and goals of Satyagraha had to be clearly formulated. (As Henry Kissinger observed, many years later, speaking generally, “A revolution cannot be mastered until it develops the mode of thinking appropriate to it.”) Gandhi’s faith was revealed in the key terms he popularized. It is rewarding to reconsider the context of these key words, recognizing their background in the whole outlook of Gandhi’s philosophy. Of course the primary key word was Satyagraha, holding on firmly to the enduring principle of truth (or integrity or conscience), also sometimes translated as “soul-force.”

When he was about fifty years old and considering what it would take to make changes in colonial India, Gandhi said, “If I could popularize the use of soul-force, which is but another name for love force, in place of brute force, I know that I could present you with an India that could defy the whole world to do its worst. In season and out of season, therefore, I shall discipline myself to express in my life this eternal law of suffering, and present it for acceptance to those who care, and if I take part in any other activity, the motive is to show the matchless superiority of that law.” (M.K. Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, tr. Mahadev Deasi, New York, Dover, 1983, p. 405.) Gandhi’s great faith in this conscientious approach is apparent in his willingness to give up his own comforts, selflessly working for others’ welfare.

Gandhi was a practical man. He could use legal methods to bring offenders to court and demand justice in some cases. But other problems required other means—for example, British colonial rule and Indians’ need for self-rule, independence from foreign-imposed governance. Gandhi imaginatively considered possible strategies, exploring how best to deal with a disagreeable situation and arrive at a specific method to redress social injustices. He was faced with this question: What can we do to change things without using force? How can we apply ourselves to get attention and demand a change from an entrenched colonial government? A holistic approach, working on oneself while trying to work things out with others was Gandhi’s way. And he needed methods that were effective but non-violent, showing spiritual aspiration, the rightness of the cause. As a dedicated worker, he strove and aspired, and sought inspiration and guidance.

The Rowlatt Act of 1919 was an emergency measure to halt public unrest, and to prevent conspiracies against the colonial government. It allowed arrest and imprisonment of those suspected of revolutionary activities without trial, and without discussion of evidence or revelation of the identity of accusers. Indian leaders felt that this policy could not be accepted. There were conflicts over how to respond, and Congress was fragmented in its goals at that time, but Gandhi felt a new path was needed to address the situation. He saw the crisis as an opportunity, and sought to redefine the purpose of Congress at that time. He formulated the basics by saying that Congress needed (1) to cause the British to withdraw from the subcontinent, and to do so on India’s terms, and (2) to foster the spirit of nationhood in a manner showing self-respect, crystallizing a new national self-identity. Gandhi sought India’s independence through a series of non-violent actions to spur progress ushering in change.

Refusing to be coerced by the British government was one method, articulated as a resolution in Congress, which urged “non-cooperation.” Congress would not cooperate in elections, and would boycott British goods, and furthermore, Indian VIPs would renounce British titles—honors bestowed by the colonial power, which seemed to sap the independence of leading personalities. Indians would refuse to attend government schools, would refuse to pay taxes, and would refrain from participation in British dominance in whatever ways were possible. The first major public demonstration of this resolve of non-cooperation was a hartal, a strategy to disrupt business-as-usual in the British colonial order of everyday life.

In a letter Gandhi wrote in 1919: “The idea came to me last night in a dream that we should call upon the country to observe a general hartal.” Hartal means a “strike.” Gandhi then explained, “Satyagraha is a process of self-purification and ours is a sacred fight, and it seems to me to be in the fitness of things that it should be commenced with acts of self-purification. Let all the people of India therefore, suspend their business on that day and observe the day as one of fasting and prayer.” (Autobiography, pp. 414-5) Why fasting? The diet and attitude of a man of self-restraint and dedication is different from a man of pleasure. Buddha and Francis of Assisi are examples. Interestingly, the founding fathers of America began their revolution against the British with a day of fasting and prayer. Fasting focuses the mind, a good start for an arduous process needing a sense of dedication and resolve.

Gandhi’s dream of a hartal became a plan. It needed to be communicated to millions of people first, but it was accomplished. It was a step in a certain direction. “The whole of India from one end to the other, towns as well as villages, observed a complete hartal on that day. It was a most wonderful spectacle.” (Autobiography, p. 415.) The hartal was a show of unity, a demonstration of “passive resistance,” and it involved a sacred fast. Going without food for spiritual reasons was an old practice in Hindu traditions. Gandhi as a youth often saw his mother observing days of fast. To not eat, to “suspend business,” to close up shops and not conduct usual work and activities, all these were non-actions. They were refusals, abstentions, and withdrawals.

“Civil disobedience” is another aspect of refusal and unlawful but non-violent protest. Civil disobedience can take many forms. At one point it might involve a procession, but it can also take the form of quietly stopping one’s actions when one is expected to do one’s duties. The impact of India grinding to a halt showed British rulers that the everyday flow of life depended on the whole population of Indian people working together. It was a wake-up call for the British—and also for the people themselves. It brought home to them the taken-for-grated fact that they were not helpless, they were the ones who grew the food, sold it at stores, delivered the goods and performed the services all across India.

Gandhi noted that a British official named Griffith was skeptical—he told Gandhi that, “the masses will not be non-violent, even if you will.” Gandhi, in leading the movement of people following his philosophy of Satyagraha in practice, would stop demonstrations that turned violent, postponing them until people could be calm and dedicated to non-violence. His path of Satyagraha was a “weapon of the truthful” and conscientious; it required keeping a vow, being pledged to non-violence. To conduct a mass movement of large public protests requires an education in a philosophy, a discipline that will help keep order when there is chaos and violence in the public encounter. It takes self-control to not strike back when hit by police with sticks. In America too, Martin Luther King Jr. and others had to explain the methods, reasons, and goals of the civil rights movement to ordinary people willing to participate. The people who joined marches and sit-ins had to practice discipline, so they could keep order and maintain the stance of non-violence when they were mistreated, struck and arrested. Peaceful protests didn’t just happen by accident.

The verb “to not cooperate” suggests a spectrum of non-actions: to withhold participation, to refrain from action, to renounce harming the oppressor and to abstain from work that keeps the oppressor in power. To not show up. Or to show up and just sit there. A sit in—to create a dramatic protest, making a demand, by just sitting still in a place one is not supposed to be. Not to vandalize or bomb, not to assassinate or attack, but to shock with sheer stubbornness, to cause oppressors to stop and think about an issue they’re allowing to exist, an oppression they are perpetuating without even consciously realizing it. The sit-in protest makes a demand: “Rethink this. Consider alternatives to this unsatisfactory situation.”

The power of not doing things is a unique power, which time and again over the ages Asians have made use of and Western people have tended to underestimate. Just as peace, or health, is positive, dynamic, generative, vitalizing, not merely an absence of war or absence of illness, non-violence as Gandhi saw it can be a potent force for fuller life. He quoted an ancient seer: “Not through violence, but through non-violence can persons fulfill destiny and duty to fellow creatures.” Electricity is an invisible and mysterious force, and so is non-violence in Gandhi’s view. His experiments showed him that “at the center of non-violence is a force which is self-acting.” There is vitality in the principle of non-violence, which entails a life-supportive philosophy.

Thus, the African-American Christian theologian Howard Thurman, who went to see Gandhi in India in the 1940s, wrote after speaking with Gandhi that, “Ahimsa is love in a Pauline sense, ‘unless you have love, you’re just a tinkling bell.’” When the African-Americans asked Gandhi “how can we train individuals in this art?” he said it required a living example, and that it was hard to attain but worth it: “The Kingdom of Heaven is Ahimsa.” For Christians, it is the teaching of “turn the other cheek” and “resist not evil,” that is the teaching of non-resistance. Gandhi said that even in the face of violence, they should “not wish ill to lynchers, not cooperate with them in any way,” and he told them that it required self-sacrifice to make change. When invited to the U.S. Gandhi said that blacks in America may be the ones to give the message of non-violence to the whole world.

Martin Luther King Jr., learning about Gandhi’s non-violence from African-American leaders who had met him became convinced “The most potent weapon of oppressed people is non-violence.” In his letter from jail King wrote, “Non violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and … tensions that a community… is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to dramatize the issue so that it can no longer be ignored.”

Not eating (fasting), ahimsa, non-violence, non-cooperation, civil disobedience, non-resistance—these basic “negative” principles provided a way toward positive steps toward self-rule, India’s independence. Gandhi, realizing he needed to include the millions of Muslims in India in the activism, found the words Muslims in India would understand—ba-aman for ahimsa, nonviolence. And tark-i-vavalat for non-cooperation. Non-violence and non-cooperation gave a peaceful identity to the movement. Non-belligerence, non-aggression, respect for the opponent, the winning of freedom required such a vocabulary for virtues and practices like these.

The idea of not doing, like the concept of emptiness, is a deep and rich one in Asia. Innovator and inventor Buckminster Fuller once remarked that because the Romans had a completely pragmatic bias, their culture had no numerical concept for nothing—they had no zero. It would be like the abacas’ empty column, representing “no sheep” or “no firewood” or “no money”—a bare cupboard. Since they thought no sheep, no wood, no money would be useless, they assumed it lacked all value. “For this reason, the Mediterranean Europeans thought of the cipher only as a decoration signifying the end of a communication…until 1200 AD… when the works of a Persian named Algorismi were translated into Latin and introduced into Europe…complex computation could be effected, which had been impossible with Roman numerals.” American comic Jimmy Duranti once joked, “I ain’t going to the Grand Canyon, ‘cause that’s a hole in the ground, and a hole is nothin’.”  But really, the “nothing,” which people experience there is something wonderful. In many ways the “nothing” of zero, emptiness, and abstention, is not really nothing, but is capable of dynamism.

The use of emptiness was known elsewhere—for example, other cultures could use empty molds to form molten metals for sword making etc., long before the Romans. Chinese philosophy—Taoism—saw the importance of the empty space—in a bowl, in doors and windows, in a bellows and in the center of a wheel, in valley and womb—“nothing” plays a big role. Taoism’s paradoxical concept of wu-wei is non-dualistic action, action with no division between the doer and the thing done, seeing the universe as a whole. The sage can teach without words, and conquer without injury, as the ancient Tao Te Ching text says. Action not founded on any purposeful motives of material gain or striving can be action that is spontaneous, in tune with Tao, the mysterious principle of the whole of existence. I am not suggesting that Gandhi read the Tao Te Ching, although he did read great texts of other cultures, so it is within the realm of possibility. Taoism is an ancient wisdom of Asia in any case, and it shares some insights with Hindu wisdom.

The mystery of non-dual action, wu wei, involves effortless actions, doing “no action that does not have the spontaneity of the flower following the sun.” Wu wei also means to accomplish the most with the least exertion. Seeking the line of least resistance—to coast along following contours already there, not straining against the grain of life. Tao does without doing, so, wise people follow that model, following the way of Tao, which is wholeness. Not forcing things, but following subtle impulses, following inner inspirations, doing without making a great to-do about it. Empty space can be a vital aspect of art, just as silence is necessary for sound, as musicians know. “The still is the master of moving,” as the Tao Te Ching observes. Gandhi could find this same insight in the Bhagavad Gita, an old Hindu text, which speaks of being able to “See inaction in action, and see action in inaction.” (In a similar vein, restless American country singer Willie Nelson reflected in his lyrics: “I can be moving or I can be still, but still is still moving to me.”)

In the West, people often think of transcendence as going to a place—heaven. But in Asian wisdom transcendence is often described negatively—as timeless, formless, changeless. Nirvana, the Buddhist concept of transcendence, is described by what it is not. The word means “Blown out, extinguished passions and sorrows, agitations and desires gone.” In Buddhism awareness of sunyata is awareness of emptiness, at different levels: a luminous void encompassing all, as space between subatomic particles in all matter, and as the way things have no solid enduring self but are temporary composites, and constantly changing. When on the last page of his Autobiography Gandhi wrote: “I must reduce myself to zero,” he was following the ancient yogic path, and the Buddhist and Jain practice, saying ego and desires cause suffering. He was pointing to the spiritual idea of finding self-fulfillment in the larger vision of being one with endless existence.

Language itself has richness, always revealing new ideas, suggesting new resources for thought. “Innocent” is a western term like ahimsa (“non-violent”)—it has a “negative root” because it points to something that is not. At root it means both “unhurt” and “not harming” others, being free of guilt and “not noxious.” Ahimsa is an ancient principle in India, a virtue in the shared vocabularies of Hindu yoga, Buddhist ethics, and Jain practices.

Gandhi used deep-rooted Asian insights to solve problems. Feeling called upon to seek independence, Indians stepped back in order to leap forward. Some, such as my friend the African-American writer Albert Murray, have called the methods of non-violent civil disobedience “political jujitsu” because it involves not avenging an oppressor by forcefully striking, but getting out of the way, being an empty space where the aggressive attacker trying to harm you loses balance and falls of his own weight. “The bigger they come, the harder they fall,” as the saying goes. (The jujitsu/ karate/martial arts meaning of this saying has been lost in recent years, and people now often interpret it as “People who are more powerful suffer more when they fall.” But it was originally about big scary muscle-bound attackers losing balance in encounters with smart artful dodgers.) Being the wronged one who is harmed in a protest attracts the world’s sympathy, and means a loss of sympathy for the brutal oppressor. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. had faith in this principle, the winning over of public opinion to a righteous cause through undergoing suffering as a teachable moment, and they practiced it with brave resolution.

EDITOR’S NOTE: William J. Jackson is a regular contributor to our website.  He is professor emeritus of religious studies at Indiana University-Purdue University, and was the first Lake Scholar (2005-2008) at the Lake Family Institute on Faith and Giving, Philanthropic Studies Center, Indiana-Purdue University. His academic specialties are the comparative study of religion, Asian arts and literature,  and South Indian bhakti (devotion) in the lives and works of singer-saints. For further biographical information please consult the Editor’s Note for his previous article linked here.