by Theodor Ebert

Editor’s Preface: This unpublished essay, by an eminent Christian pacifist and theorist, was a paper presented at the Study Conference on Nonviolent Solutions of Conflict with Special Reference to Germany and Berlin. It was held in Offenbach, Germany, in August 1964 under the joint auspices of War Resisters’ International, and is another in our series of rediscoveries from the WRI archive. Please see the notes at the end for further archival references and biographical information about the author. JG

Image courtesy vjai.com

In March 1964 a collection of articles was published in London under the title ‘Civilian Defence’ in which Adam Roberts, Jerome Frank, Arne Naess and Gene Sharp discussed the possibilities of meeting invasion or coup d’état by nonviolent resistance. Adam Roberts in his introductory contribution states, ‘All the authors of the articles in this booklet consider that nonviolent action should be judged not in terms of a doctrine, which one may accept or reject, but as a technique, the potentialities of which in particular situations demand the most rigorous and careful study.’

It should be the task of science, even at the risk of shocking public opinion and making ‘creative misunderstandings’ more difficult, to reveal the doctrinal background of such a technique, i.e. to explain the ideas of the leaders of nonviolent resistance campaigns who, in deference to the outside world, pretended to be mere technicians of nonviolent action or who, at best, called themselves ‘practical idealists’ with the accent on ‘practical’.

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by Nirmal Kumar Bose

Illustration art courtesy behance.net

Editor’s Preface: This article is the text of a speech delivered at the World Pacifist meeting in Shantiniketan, India, 1-5 December 1949, and continues our War Resisters’ International archive series. Nirmal Kumar Bose was an important figure in Gandhi’s life in the 1930s and 40s, and the author of an important diary of his life in Gandhi’s ashrams. For more biographical details please see the Editor’s Note at the end, along with an archive reference and a link to a pdf reproduction of the entire, original article. JG

India has tried to follow the principles of satya and ahimsa, truth and nonviolence, through centuries of her history. The actual application of these concepts has varied over the centuries and they have also been successfully employed in the solution of numerous problems relating to personal life or even group-life, where the group was based upon common religious experience.

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by Barbara Deming

Portrait of Deming c. 1960s, courtesy demingfund.org

Editor’s Preface: Barbara Deming (1917-1984) was a lesbian/feminist activist and proponent of nonviolent social change, her most notable work being Revolution and Equilibrium (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1971). A foundation has been set up in her name to give financial support to women’s causes. Their website has further biographical information. This article is taken from War Resistance: Journal of the War Resisters, issue 39, fourth quarter, 1971. Please also see the archive reference information and acknowledgments at the end. JG

I have been asked to write about the relation between war resistance and resistance to injustice. There are many points to be made that I need hardly labor. I don’t have to argue at this date that if we resist war we must look to the causes of war, and try to end them. And that one finds the causes of war in any society that encourages not fellowship but domination of one person by another. We must resist whatever gives encouragement to the will to dominate.

I don’t think you would object to my stating the relationship between the two struggles in another way; restating it, for it has been often said: Bullets and bombs are not the only means by which people are killed. If a society denies to certain of its members food or medical attention, or a political voice, the sense of their own worth, the freedom to exercise their talents — this, too, is waging war of a kind.

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by Harold F. Bing

Editor’s Preface: Harold Bing was chairman of WRI from 1949-1966. During World War I he was an “absolutist” conscientious objector, and received an unusually harsh sentence of three years imprisonment, while the norm was six months. He wrote pamphlets on pacifism, Palestine, and other topics. The Peace Pledge Union has an interesting article about him, at this link. This article is taken from War Resistance: Journal of the War Resisters, issue 39, fourth quarter, 1971. Please also see the archive reference information and acknowledgments at the end. JG

Drawing by a WWI British conscientious objector, courtesy ppu.org.uk

Although in origin the word Pacifism means merely ‘working for peace’ or ‘the creation of peace’, in recent years it has come to mean a code of conduct or a philosophy of life which rejects war of all kinds and relies upon nonviolence as a means of achieving both private and public ends. While, however, this interpretation of the word pacifism is relatively modern, the ideology which lies behind it is very ancient.

We know little about the moral code of primitive man, but there is considerable evidence to suggest that war, in the sense of organised conflict between groups of men specifically trained for that purpose, developed relatively late in human history and, in fact, coincided with the rise of private property in land and other primary sources of wealth and the division of society into classes differing in their privileges and possessions. The desire to secure economic advantages and social prestige, or to defend them if already possessed, led to armed conflict. Tools rather than weapons are found in the surviving remains of the earliest human settlements and no doubt a sort of communism characterised primitive human groups.

But as far back as recorded history goes, which is no more than some six thousand years out of the hundreds of thousand that man has been on the earth, mankind seems to have been troubled by wars and rumours of wars. At the same time there have been teachers, prophets and philosophers who have pointed out the evils of violence and suggested a better way.

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by Asha Devi Aryanayakam

Editor’s Preface: This article is taken from The War Resister, issue 92, Third Quarter 1961. We have posted a number of other articles on Shanti Sena, which may be accessed via our search function. Notes about the author, references, and acknowledgments are found at the end. JG

“Soldiers Painting Peace”; mural by Banksy; courtesy stencilrevolution.com

The conception of a Peace Brigade or a Peace Army was first placed before the Indian people by Gandhi in 1938. He was then engaged in the great experiment of reconstructing Indian national life through nonviolence. The movement for political independence was only a part of the story. The monster of communal tension had just begun to rear its ugly head and the Peace Army was Gandhi’s answer to the problem. With his characteristic straightforwardness, he placed his proposal in down-to-earth practical terms without any philosophical introduction.

As he wrote, ‘Some time ago I suggested the formation of a Peace Brigade (Shanti Sena), whose members would risk their lives in dealing with riots, especially communal. The idea was that this brigade should substitute for the police and even the military. This sounds ambitious. The achievement may prove impossible.’

Gandhi then suggested qualifications for the volunteers, which are mentioned by Donald Groom in his contribution to this issue of the War Resister [posted below under this date]. As Gandhi wrote, ‘Let no one understand from the foregoing that a nonviolent army is open only to those who strictly enforce in their lives all the implications of nonviolence. It is open to all those who accept the implications and make an ever increasing endeavour to observe them. There never will be an army of perfectly nonviolent people. It will be formed of those who will honestly endeavour to observe nonviolence.’ (Harijan, 21.7.1940.)

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by Donald G. Groom

Editor’s Preface: This article is taken from The War Resister, issue 92, Third Quarter 1961. We have posted a number of other articles on Shanti Sena, which may be accessed via our search function. Notes about the author, references, and acknowledgments are found at the end. JG

“Shanti/Peace” in Sanskrit; courtesy palmstone.com

In my view there are two main aspects of the World Peace Brigade, that of individual and group action carrying out service or direct peace action; the other the supporting action of thousands and millions who have heartfelt sympathy with its purposes. All will have faith in the revolutionary power of love and compassion in all spheres of human activity and in the innate goodness of man, even though the upholding of this faith may involve suffering and death. But those people who are chosen for direct involvement in the problems of human suffering, tension, fear and all forms of violence would have to function at a different level and demonstrate the power of nonviolence for peacemaking which could only come through a high quality of life and discipline. What is expected therefore from such volunteers?

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by Prof. Giovanni Pioli

Dolci organzing the fishermen of Trappeto, 1952; courtesy en.wikipedia.org

Editor’s Preface: This article continues our series of historically important articles from the War Resisters’ International archive, our goal to trace the influence of Gandhian nonviolence on the early pacifist movements. This is from The War Resister, issue 71, Second Quarter 1956. We have previously published articles by or about Dolci, one of the great exponents of Gandhi’s constructive program. These may be accessed via our search box. Please consult the notes at the end for further information. JG

Pamphlets, bulletins and books have now been written by Danilo Dolci and the valiant men and women who join him for a time to share his experience, his poverty, his distress and his hard labour for the uplift of those submerged, demoralised ‘criminal’ masses who struggle — even beyond legal limits — for the bare necessities of life. Italian social workers, pacifists, and humanitarians respect this literature, dealing with conditions in Trappeto and Partinico, situated in the Province of Palermo, Sicily — infamous as a centre of Sicilian banditry and the mafia.

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by H. Ahmed

Editor’s Preface: This article is from The War Resister, issue 70, First Quarter 1956, and continues our series of essays on nonviolence in Islam. Please consult our Islam category for further articles. Reference and acknowledgments are at the end. JG

“Islam is Peace”; courtesy en.wikipedia.org

In the limited space at my disposal, I will concern myself with the fundamental principles of pacifism in Islam, as taught by the great Prophet of Arabia. As in the case of almost all the other religions, Islam has also been betrayed by its followers, so much so that the other day I came across a rather blunt remark that there is no place for nonviolence in Islam and that Islam does not advocate the establishment of world peace. And it is very often that we come across such remarks.

There is a bar to all knowledge, and that is contempt prior to investigation. Any scholar who studies the original Islam without preconceived ideas will realise that Islam is also a religion of peace and that it also advocates pacifism. It aims at the welfare and prosperity of every human being without the difference of caste, creed, colour or nationality. The teachings of Islam lead one to the golden rule of “Live and let live for mutual forbearance and tolerance”. The Prophet of Arabia declared, “Faith is restraint against all violence”. Further exhorting his followers to non-violence, he said, “Let no Muslim commit violence!” Can there be a clearer injunction than this?

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by H. Runham Brown

Editor’s Preface: H. Runham Brown was a British anarchist and secretary of War Resisters’ International. He was appointed in 1931, soon after being released from prison, having served two years for conscientious objection. He authored books about peace and the Spanish civil war, and Hitler’s rise. This article is taken from The War Resister: Quarterly News Sheet of the War Resisters’ International, issue XXXI, Summer 1932. Please also see the archive reference information and acknowledgments at the end. JG

Few people in the West can understand why a man should go on a hunger strike. It appears to them that he is only hurting himself and they would rather hurt somebody else. We do not here ask that so strange an action should be understood, but that a fact should be taken notice of. From time to time a man in prison refuses to take food until his objective has been attained. He is forcing the issue. Such action may be wise or foolish; it depends on the man.

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by A. Fenner Brockway

Editor’s Preface: Brockway’s short article appeared in The War Resister: Quarterly News Sheet of the War Resisters’ International, issue XXVII, Winter 1930-1931. It is another in our series tracing Gandhi’s impact on European and American individuals and movements, and is also another posting in our WRI project category, accessible at this link. Please also consult the notes at the end for biographical information about Brockway, archive reference, and acknowledgements.  JG

The method of nonviolence as a positive instrument for securing freedom and justice is being employed in India on a scale never before attempted in human history. The development and results of the Nationalist struggle will be of greatest importance to the future of our movement as a practical contribution to the solution of the world’s problems.

The Indian people have adopted the method of nonviolence for two reasons. With Mr. Gandhi and his immediate followers it has been a matter of principle. Mr. Gandhi sees brute force as the instrument of tyranny and its mentality as the philosophy of tyranny; he cannot therefore adopt it as the instrument and philosophy of freedom. But with many of Mr. Gandhi’s colleagues, nonviolence has been a matter of expediency. The Indian people are unarmed; the British have guns and armoured cars and bombing aeroplanes. Under such conditions the method of force would be suicidal.

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