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.

As the Civil Disobedience Campaign has proceeded, however, two things have become clear. Mr. Gandhi’s teaching has evidently obtained a deep hold on the minds of the masses of the Indian people. With the Hindus, the traditional philosophy of their religious teaching has prepared them for the doctrine of sacrifice and “soul-force”. With the Moslems there is not the same philosophic background, yet they, also, in large numbers have caught the spirit of Mr. Gandhi’s teaching. Nothing has been more remarkable, for instance, than the manner in which the people of Peshawar, a Moslem city, bared their breasts before British guns. (1)

There have been incidents when nonviolence has not been maintained, but the amazing thing, surprising even Indians, has been the extent to which self-discipline has been maintained. In Bombay a million people have taken part in illegal processions and demonstrations. In all the large cities the law has been defied by hundreds of thousands. The people have been beaten mercilessly; yet it has been very rare that a hand has been lifted in return. There are between 25,000 and 30,000 Indians in prison or detention camps. Fewer than 1,000 have been charged with acts of violence.

This astounding revelation of spiritual strength has impressed even those Indian leaders who had previously no real faith in the effectiveness of nonviolence. The leader of the younger school of Indians is Jawaharlal Nehru. In the correspondence recently published in connection with the “Peace Parleys” (2) he confessed that he “delights in warfare,” but adds in a letter to Mr. Gandhi: “May I congratulate you on the new India that you have created by your magic touch? What the future will bring I know not, but the past has made life worth living and our prosaic existence has developed something of epic greatness. Sitting here in Naini jail (3) I have pondered on the wonderful efficacy of nonviolence as a weapon, and have become a greater convert to it than ever before.” The tendency in India until the beginning of the Civil Disobedience Campaign was to despair of the method of nonviolence. Now its power is understood as never before.

To war resisters, Indian events have this significance: in the past nonviolence has proved an effective negative instrument of defence against tyranny; Mr. Gandhi is proving it to be an equally effective positive instrument in the struggle for freedom.

Endnotes: (JG)

(1) On April 30, 1930, British officers ordered native troops in Peshawar to fire on their own people, but they refused. Peshawar was at that time one of the main cities in the Northwest Frontier, not yet Pakistan. The great nonviolent Muslim leader Ghaffar Khan was the main influence on the demonstrators.

(2) In the late 1920s Nehru was the president of the Indian National Congress, which had been pressing for a declaration of full independence from Britain, later to become known as the Purna Swaraj, or complete self-rule declaration.

(3) Naini Jail is located near Allahabad. It was one of the main prisons where Indian freedom-fighters, including Nehru and Gandhi, were jailed.

Reference: IISG/WRI Archive Box 116p: Folder 1, Subfolder 1.

EDITOR’S NOTE: A. Fenner Brockway, Baron Brockway (1888-1988), was a British pacifist and socialist politician actively involved in the Fabian society, co-founded by George Bernard Shaw. Brockway was born in Calcutta to missionary parents, and had a life-long interest in India. He actively campaigned against military conscription and was founder of the No-Conscription Fellowship. The author of over 20 books, his titles include The Indian Crisis, and A Week in India. His biography is too extensive to cite at any length, but Wikipedia has a reliable article, and for a short summary see also this Peace Pledge Union link. We are grateful to WRI/London and their director Christine Schweitzer for their cooperation in our WRI project.