The Evolution of Satyagraha: Mahatma Gandhi's nurturing of Truth-force in South Africa

- By Vishnu Varatharajan*

Abstract

Mahatma Gandhi's political activity was deeply appreciated by people across the world even before the Salt March of 1930 that elevated Gandhi and the Indian Independence movement to global prominence. Gandhi slowly nurtured satyagraha into an ingenious and original philosophy, and opened multiple dimensions - as a political expression, as a weapon, or even as a way of life. Satyagraha acquired more meaning over time that was deeply rooted in Gandhi's cultural-religious expression as well as his external reading. As Gandhi gained more and more experience as a leader of the masses, involving in the civil resistance campaigns in South Africa, his conception of satyagraha also slowly shaped into a more profound and complex idea. This essay tracks this course, about how Gandhi's satyagraha slowly came into what it was. For specificity, it tracks the nurturing of satyagraha between 1908 and 1914, when Gandhi was in South Africa.

Introduction

Mahatma Gandhi's political activity was deeply appreciated by people across the world even before the Salt March of 1930 that elevated Gandhi and the Indian Independence movement to global prominence. Many political activists like Carl von Ossietzky were closely following Gandhi's activities. In October, 1929, von Ossietzky wrote in his magazine Die Weltbühne¹, "Gandhi is not a political person in the European sense. He is more. He is the secret power that dominates everyone without office and party... ...India is fortunate that his new law is not imposed on him by a dictator, does not boast in the relentless command of an Asian Napoleon, but is proclaimed by the gentle voice of Mahatma Gandhi [In German]"². Gandhi initially labelled his concept under passive resistance, but in 1908, he coined the term satyagraha to denote it thereafter. But over the years, the term satyagraha became more than just passive resistance, as Gandhi slowly nurtured satyagraha into an ingenious and original philosophy, and opened multiple dimensions - as a political expression, as a weapon, or even as a way of life. Satyagraha acquired more meaning over time that was deeply rooted in Gandhi's culturalreligious expression as well as his external reading. It became an untranslatable standalone Gujarati word³. As Gandhi gained more and more epistemic knowledge, reading and wide experience as a leader of the masses, involving in the civil resistance campaigns in South Africa, his conception of satyagraha also slowly shaped into a more profound and complex idea over the course of time. This essay explains this course, about how Gandhi's satyagraha slowly came into what it was. For specificity, it tracks the nurturing of satyagraha between 1908 and 1914, when Gandhi was in South Africa.

Part I - Humble beginnings

The process of finding a Gujarati equivalent for passive resistance began in 1908, in South Africa. Satyagraha's origins can be traced back to Gandhi's speech in 1906 at Empire Theatre, Johannesburg, where he explained the concept of passive resistance to the audience. But, the true origin of satyagraha should be pegged at 1908, since in between the years, his specific readings of Socrates, Gita, Tolstoy, Thoreau and Ruskin had significant influence on the foundation of his civil resistance programme that was distinct from what he proposed in 1906. Gandhi was the founder of 'The Indian Opinion', a newspaper that was started in 1903. In January 1908, he announced a contest to his readers, asking them to find a Gujarati term for passive resistance⁴. It was Maganlal Gandhi - the grandson of Gandhi's uncle - who suggested a word similar to satyagraha. He translated passive resistance as sadagraha, which roughly means "firmness to being good". Gandhi modified the term to satyagraha, which, though similar in context, elevated its quality by emphasizing on "firmness to being truthful". Thus, when the word satyagraha was born, the element of truthfulness was also simultaneously associated with it. It is then that the term satyagraha was coined, and the person who performed satyagraha became a satyagrahi. Satyagraha, the noun, was a political activity, and satyagrahi, a moral-political identity.

Gandhi had been already mobilizing Indians against the Asiatic Registration Act⁵ that was drafted in 1906. After the term satyagraha was coined as an alternative for passive resistance, Gandhi improvised the already practiced rules of the resistance in Transvaal, South Africa. His editorials and letters concerning the subject in a way became a codification of the rules of satyagraha. The initial two humble rules⁶ stressed that it should be used on proper occasions, and that the people should remain united. Gandhi did not elaborate or define what 'proper occasion' was, at that time. Second it acknowledged the limits of satyagraha, that it cannot be used at all times. Gandhi's caution that people could misunderstand satyagraha and dilute its ingenuity made him write so many columns on this subject, even for trivial matters, thoroughly explaining and reiterating the concept. He did not want satyagraha to be used in an unorganized manner that could end up creating confusion and chaos, or even turn violent. Owing to its nascency, he also explained its limits with an example that if the Government did not allow Indians to acquire land, satyagraha would not be helpful, but that if a draconian law forbade them to walk on a certain pathway, or prevented them to carry on their trade, satyagraha could then be used.

With these two simple rules, Gandhi also attached a condition for satyagraha - that everyone should be collectively prepared to accept hardships. Gandhi constructed an analogy that they had done good spade-work, like clearing of the grounds and digging the foundations, and that it remained to be seen what kind of superstructure they could build with the success. In fact, the first deficiency that Gandhi identified in satyagraha in practice was the circumvention of inconvenience, when he found out that some of the Indians in prison got extra food than others. Therefore, subjecting oneself to hardship, suffering or inconvenience became an essential condition to satyagraha. "Let us see whether or not we are capable of these"⁷, he wrote. While Gandhi laid down the rules of satyagraha, he did not want to thrust satyagraha as some kind of a bitter experience, though he did repeatedly warn that suffering follows. Instead, he in parallel tried to uncover its "beauty"⁸. He encouraged the people by assuring that the Government would further be disgraced by satyagraha, and in that measure, people would gain more strength. Such an initiative rested "with the Indians instead of with the Government", Gandhi clarified. He constructed his political philosophy with this burden of moral responsibility as one of its core foundations. "A satyagraha campaign depends on the satyagrahi, not on others"⁹, he later wrote.

For Gandhi, satyagraha campaign was not just a means to an end, but also a penance to win increased respect for themselves. He urged the Indians to have satyagraha as a common practice. By saying "common practice"¹⁰, he did not mean to advocate it to be the first resort as a method of resistance, but rather as a truthful way of life. Gandhi took efforts to repeatedly explain the concept of civil resistance to people, because of the amount of discipline it required. He explained to the people case by case, on whether in this particular instant, going to jail is necessary, or that just paying the fine would be enough. Gandhi being a trained Barrister, he was able to guide people on the consequences of breaking the law. "It does require us to pledge our life [to the cause]. It can be resorted to only for the common good, not for mere self-advancement"¹¹, he wrote. Gandhi was also convinced that legality does not always side with the morality, and even advocated people to stop requiring the services of the courts in certain cases by that point of time¹².

Gandhi explained to the people that satyagraha could be used against their own society also¹³, and not just against a Government, since a society could also happen to be as unjust as the Government. He referred to many prominent personalities in history to substantiate his stand. For instance, he brought in Henry Thoreau's stand against the slave-trade in the United States, and educated his readers about the life and times of Thoreau¹⁴. Gandhi, then in his late 30's, tried to seek legitimacy to his methods by pinpointing that his proposition was not completely new, but had already been tested in the past. He finally urged the Indians to live and die like Socrates, who according to him also adopted satyagraha against his own people as a result of which "...Greeks became a great people"¹⁵. Gandhi simply tried to impart a roadmap of struggle on the minds of the people. It was a conventional 'Point A to Point B' map - Point A as the problem, point B as the solution, but satyagraha as the only path, a path that required a lot of explanations.

Part II - Transforming people's psyche

One of the strengths of Gandhi during that crucial point of his formative years was his ability to use rhetoric. To achieve evoking a sense of resistance among the people, his text was as simple as possible in order to reach as many Indians. How exactly did Gandhi view satyagraha in the beginning, and what it was to him, could be perceived by looking at some of the attributes that he used to describe it. Gandhi used the term 'weapon of satyagraha'¹⁶ at the end of February 1908 in the same column where he referred to Thoreau as mentioned above. To Gandhi, satyagraha was not the opposite of war, but just that there would be no physical force involved in that war. Gandhi tried to change the psyche of the people, and their very fundamental understanding of struggle. At this point, he started separating war and physical force. He tried to make people rethink about how satyagraha need not be associated with cowardice. He wrote a lot about situations where people end up contradicting their own brethren, as he himself personally faced this problem when he started getting physically assaulted by some Indians who didn't believe in his methods¹⁷.

The term that conveyed Gandhi's passive resistance needed to be as accurate as possible for that transformation to happen, and therefore Gandhi still considered alternate names for satyagraha, whether any other word described it better¹⁸. There was a suggestion, the word Pratyupaya, which meant counter-measure. Gandhi rejected it as it did not explain the use of physical force. Gandhi wanted a term which not only denoted passive resistance, but also made one ponder about the relationship between resistance and force - the force being truth-force - as an alternative to physical force. Two months after Gandhi coined his new term for his passive resistance against the Transvaal Government, Mr. Shakir Ali, the then secretary of the London Indian Society wrote a letter to Gandhi¹⁹, mentioning the passive resistance campaign as satyagraha movement. The word started gaining acceptance from influential people as Gandhi also kept on shaping satyagraha as a sophisticated tool and added value to it by appropriate choice of words. His most prominent verb associated with satyagraha was resort. "Resort to satyagraha"²⁰, he wrote, assuring it won't fail them. By the end of March 1908, the word passive resistance started to become seldom used as the meaning of satyagraha began to evolve.

It is during this time that the British suffragette movement was also happening, and though Gandhi was critical of various aspects of the movement, he kept comparing the movement with his satyagraha. He referred to that movement to motivate his people into resorting to satyagraha²¹, and when they committed themselves to it, Gandhi felt the need to recognize them in order to influence further more people into following it²². At the end of April, he educated people about the Chinese boycott of Japanese goods in the early 20th century and how it changed the way the Japanese Government dealt with China²³.

Gandhi's writings concerning satyagraha during this point reveals that his semantics to describe his civil resistance programme had similarities to that of a conventional army. He called the resistance as a battle, and that the sword of satyagraha would never rust²⁴. He used terms such as the "power of the satyagrahic gun", assuming the role of a general in command of an army of satyagrahis. Yet, satyagraha and armed resistance were poles apart in inspiration and method.

Similar to any battle - and that satyagraha had become analogous to it - ceasefire would be a natural condition. If then, the question would be when to resume satyagraha during the accounts of failure of settling disputes. Gandhi wanted to acknowledge the practical difficulties that were faced by the opponents in solving the dispute, and gave more focus to their intentions. Truth became the deciding criteria²⁵. Gandhi was at this point confident that those who understood the meaning of satyagraha would know the answer to the question of resumption from within, that the fight would be resumed when the opposition party had proved untrue to its word. It could be argued that this is almost the same case in many forms of resistance, but the difference is that satyagraha placed trust and pleaded on the humanity of the opposition without completely polarizing the communities under conflict, or targeting the individual agents of systemic oppression to be hated upon. Because, Gandhi held that these individual agents of violence 1) were also capable of reason and 2) also had the legitimate authority to initiate systemic reformation. In short, Gandhi's programme provided more opportunities for his enemies to correct their mistakes, than any other forms of resistance.

Part III - Soldiers of Truth

Gandhi named the above mentioned column that referred to Thoreau as the 'Secret of satyagraha'. According to him, a satyagrahi enjoyed a degree of freedom that was not possible for others²⁶ because an ideal satyagrahi would not succumb to fear. Ideal, because the basic challenge to satyagraha came in the form of fear. Gandhi repeatedly stressed the need to be fearless about everything, including the violence to the satyagrahi's family²⁷. Gandhi was in the borderline of stripping away one of the most essential human conditions - fear. Gandhi's approach to this condition of fear makes one ponder on whether Gandhi tried to create an army of soldiers of truth, as an anti-thesis to an army of killing soldiers who themselves are victims of obeying the commands that expect them to be amoral machines. Though Gandhi was very critical of army in the conventional sense of militarism, the writings of Gandhi suggests that satyagraha is indeed also a state of war, just not in the traditional sense but in the capacity of a modern, innovative and efficient method of non-violent equivalent to warfare. "This war through satyagraha is no less of a war than those fought with [gun and] powder... ...The sword of satyagraha is far superior to the steel sword. Truth and justice provide its point..."²⁸, he wrote. "Beauty, because satyagraha can be waged continuously"²⁹ was his statement. Though Gandhi proclaimed the struggle as a state of war, satyagraha is not a substitute to warfare, rather an equivalent to warfare, since there are structural and ethical differences between them.

By the middle of 1908, Gandhi started to use the word liberally in a normalized sense. He no more tried to define satyagraha, and his writings became more fluid with casual references, assuming that people would thereby understand what he meant, without much explanation. But, Gandhi did not stop emphasizing the importance of truth and unity, as the movement grew forward. "In satyagraha, unity is imperative. Every Indian must, therefore, don armour in order to join the battle"³⁰, Gandhi wrote. To him, "...in satyagraha, it must be remembered, truth must not be forsaken"³¹.

Gandhi had a very unique understanding about conflict and peace. He did not see them as dichotomous positions as it is seen conventionally. To him, conflict and peace had clear overlaps that had internal exclusivities at times, but definitely not polar opposites. He held that satyagraha was a form of warfare that can be waged continuously without the exhaustion of material resources. He expanded the rules of satyagraha based on specific cases, and introduced three fundamental rules to be followed during a satyagraha:

1. Those who were prepared to go to Jail were advised not to depend upon a lawyer.

2. Those who were prepared to go to Jail irrespective of their status, were advised not to give much thought about what others would do outside. Trust was an important bonding agent in satyagraha.

3. There could be a situation when abiding to an unfair law becomes the only way to escape punishment. Satyagrahis were advised to accept the punishment rather than abide to that law.

A satyagraha campaign is an umbrella term, as there can be many forms of protest within satyagraha. Until then, going to jail was seen as the most effective and paramount form of satyagraha³². Gandhi's logic was that jail, as an institution of the State, restricted the movement and expression of people by arresting them through the agency of the police, by the rule of law. But, if the law is unfair, then such an arrest would be immoral irrespective of its legal legitimacy. Also, restricting the motion and expression of an individual by such an immoral law would be a questionable act. Therefore, Gandhi ingeniously urged his satyagrahis to occupy and fill up the jails. Filling up this State institution achieves two things. One, it ridicules the imaginary power of the jail that it draws from its intimidatory image, and two, it humiliates the State by explicitly exposing its immorality. Taking these into account, Gandhi stressed that there would be a need to go to jail multiple times, as it was the "most effective means of fighting political disabilities"³³. When Gandhi was arrested for the third time in 1909, he spent three months in Volksrust jail. After coming out, he wrote that he was a better satyagrahi then than he was three months back. "For all this, thanks are due to the local (the Transvaal) Government"³⁴, he wrote.

Part IV - Qualities and components

Gandhi's perception of satyagraha gradually evolved with its meaning, becoming more and more complex over time. Satyagraha was not only waged, but in the context of sacrifice, it also became a service that was offered³⁵. "The key [to the situation] is with us. Satyagraha is all that is required of us"³⁶, wrote Gandhi. He had to repeatedly assert to the people that satyagraha sustained through moral upper hand. Then, a question would arise: From where does a person acquire this morality? It is a very complex question, but for Gandhi, religion was the answer. Gandhi gave high emphasis to religion as a catalyst for truth, and therefore, devotion to God became an element of satyagraha³⁷ which in a way also made it sacrosanct. While speaking of hardships and duties, he also in parallel kept on emphasizing the beauty of it. He laid down five qualities for a satyagrahi, which when dutifully followed, satyagraha could "blossom forth into perfect beauty and achieve success that would evoke the admiration of all the world"³⁸:

1. Remaining truthful
2. Trust in God
3. Courage till the dying moment
4. Ready to sacrifice money, property and life in the service of the community
5. Entirely honest, fearless, pure, courteous and modest

He especially elaborated the first quality - remaining truthful. For Gandhi, truth was violated not only with lies or silence. Gandhi held that the very act of violence was also a violation of truth - the truth that human beings are capable of being and doing good. Upholding that ultimate truth was paramount to Gandhi while offering satyagraha. In the process of achieving the local demand, Gandhi cautioned not to abandon the larger truth about humanity. In order to protect that truth, Gandhi insisted that satyagraha also consisted in enduring any suffering for its sake, no matter if the person died in the process. "We should do no harm to anyone, for by harming others we violate truth"³⁹, he wrote.

The next attribute that Gandhi focused was the success and failure of a resistance movement. With an example⁴⁰, Gandhi asserted that there was no complete failure in satyagraha. For instance, a man aimed at seizing the property of another by killing him, failed in his task and ended up not killing him or seizing the property. This failure would evoke frustration in him, but that since he committed a criminal offense, he also had to face a criminal punishment, since harm was done to the morale and peace of the community. This frustration of failure could also arise during satyagraha, but according to Gandhi, there would be a choice where that frustration need not be arisen. The Transvaal agitation that demanded the repeal of Asian registration act though was not a complete success, Gandhi proclaimed that the satyagrahis were still victorious or were closer to victory, because the very act of satyagraha would still have caused positive consequences, and also would have done the community no harm. In this sense, satyagraha became an education for Gandhi. He did acknowledge that the time taken for sensing success is more in satyagraha, but insisted that the rule of three should be followed without any dilution for guaranteed success⁴¹. George Orwell studied these and put forth his critique on Gandhi in 1949⁴².

The next component that was added to satyagraha was abstaining from alcoholic drinks. Gandhi felt that it not only was against religion, but also a "debilitating effect on both body and mind"⁴³. He felt that lack of control or progressive decline in control over the body and mind would weaken the conviction and firmness one could have over satyagraha. Throughout 1908, when the concept of satyagraha was slowly developed and nurtured, he also observed the intersectionality that existed within the satyagrahis, and noted that the majority of the masses were poor. Influenced by the writings of Leo Tolstoy, Gandhi was convinced that wealth obstructed truth. "The rich find the burden of their wealth too heavy; they are not able to carry the burden of truth"⁴⁴, wrote Gandhi, and invited them to embrace poverty.

Gandhi at this point had constructed a distinguishable civil resistance method called satyagraha, which started to mean more than passive resistance. Influenced by John Ruskin⁴⁵, he introduced the term soul-force⁴⁶ into his writings, and urged the humanity that whatever it built or created, soul-force must be its foundation. Naturally, satyagraha which was a mode of fighting also depended on such soul-force. One of the attributes of exhibiting soul-force is to look beyond the blurry line of the polarizing "us vs them" narrative. Gandhi was against the white Supremacy of the Transvaal government, but that did not turn into hatred towards the white-skinned people. In fact, Gandhi's notion of a perfect satyagraha was demonstrated by a white man named Mr. Green, who refused to pay an unjust tax. Gandhi immediately took him as an example and appreciated that that was "...satyagraha in the truest sense of the term"⁴⁷. It was the act that was important and not who performed the act. This is an ingenious, revolutionary, and humane position during a time of rationalized total war, where civilians were also targeted along with the State and its institutions. Gandhi's inclusivity, in this way, shook the very foundation of identity-based violent conflicts. Gandhi received appreciation and sympathy for his cause from two South African women - including Olive Schreiner, an anti-war campaigner and author - to which he wrote, "The satyagraha movement had won a place in their hearts"⁴⁸. The conventional "us vs them" narrative was not so rigid in Gandhi's satyagraha as he simultaneously called to conduct satyagraha against the ill-practices of the community itself. Gandhi firmly believed that anything that hampered the unity of the community should be opposed even if many within the community upheld it. An example would be the discrimination based on Caste. Gandhi urged the Indians to resort to satyagraha against their caste and their family in order to abolish the discriminatory behaviour of the community⁴⁹. He introduced new thinkers and thoughts to the readers and reinterpreted the texts as reflections of satyagraha. He quoted John Ruskin, Henry Thoreau, the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita - to name a few - to justify and legitimate satyagraha as a harmless universal principle⁵⁰. He evoked the imagery of religious mythologies to rally people behind satyagraha. By interpreting Prahlad⁵¹ as a satyagrahi⁵², he attempted to infuse satyagraha as a part of their religious culture⁵³, so that they could relate with satyagraha even more. This was during 1909 and 1910. This was during the same time that Gandhi's correspondence with Leo Tolstoy began⁵⁴, and Tolstoy greatly appreciated the philosophy of satyagraha. His correspondence with Tolstoy⁵⁵, though brief but deep, was a significant chapter in his experience and growth as a political philosopher⁵⁶.

Gandhi made the satyagraha campaigns as definitive events, thus making it possible to be considered as units of history. For instance, in 1909, the satyagraha that happened in Krugersdorp became Krugersdorp Satyagraha. The next year in 1910, the satyagraha that happened in Transvaal became Transvaal Satyagraha. This connotation followed until the very end of Gandhi's life. Gandhi thus familiarized the term satyagraha as an independent sophisticated word.

Part V - The establishment of satyagraha

At this point, the principles of satyagraha were well established, but sacrificing one's life was still a question that was raised often. Gandhi tried to explain that in case of conflicts where death is inevitable, death by satyagraha was far valuable to the cause than death by violence. He wrote, "...dying in the attempt to kill another does not require even a hundredth part of the fortitude and courage implicit in the suffering that a satyagrahi goes through, in the slow, prolonged torture that he calmly endures in facing a bullet without firing one in return. No one wields a sword strong enough to bear down the force of satyagraha; on the contrary, a man brandishing a sword of steel has to give ground when confronted by a sword sharper than his. That is the reason why the story of a satyagrahi is read with a feeling of reverence. One who is not strong enough to practise satyagraha is naturally tempted to resort to brute force, which is, in comparison, quite easy to employ"⁵⁷.

Gandhi warned his people that satyagraha would test the satyagrahis on their level of conviction, thus propounding that the only test of satyagraha was to believe that as long as "at least one person remains to continue satyagraha, we may rest confident that victory will be ours"⁵⁸. Gandhi did acknowledge the importance of numbers, but since the weapon here was truth and soul-force, he believed that even one lone person had the ability to win over an army of the opponents. However, satyagraha was always the last step in Gandhi's resistance strategy. In 1910, he laid down four steps for effective dissent⁵⁹:

1. That people from different regions should present a united front;

2. That the leaders of different regions must not take steps independently without consulting one another.

3. That meetings needed to be held in every town and city, passing resolutions that expressed the will of the people or the community. Those resolutions were to be forwarded to the government along with a petition directly addressed to the parliament⁶⁰ of the governments involved, from local to imperial including the Indian parliament.

4. That satyagraha needed to be resorted to when no development happened through the previous steps.

Satyagraha involved subjecting oneself to suffering, but Gandhi also publicized the inhumanity that followed to satyagrahis while enduring the suffering⁶¹. Use of media was a paramount tool in a successful satyagraha. This is where George Orwell posed a critique on satyagraha, that it was not truth alone that led to the victory. "In a totalitarian state where the media is controlled and censored, his actions wouldn't have been a public sensation at all. No one would have heard of them. Thus, it wasn't non-violence alone that gave Gandhi leverage. It was the coverage they received in the press"⁶², wrote Orwell. The effectiveness of satyagraha indeed depends to some degree on the opponent's capacity to value truth - the truth that all human beings are born equal and free. In this age of social media and internet crackdown, new innovative and adaptive methods of satyagraha and other forms of passive resistance need to be reinvented or documented in order to counter the contemporary authoritarian and neo-imperial challenges, and the relative universality in satyagraha need to be charted so that it could be efficiently adapted or emulated by modern civil resistance movements against the various dynamics of power. Gandhi's satyagraha is significant in the sense that there is much to learn, like rethinking the very concept of resistance and dialogue.

Gandhi kept on repeating that satyagraha was universal and infallible, since he believed that all human beings possessed soul and the capacity to be and do good, with whom one could reason with and persuade. The first recognition to satyagraha from an official of the State came in 1911 from the Royal Highness the Duke⁶³. Commenting that Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, a member from Pretoria East, Transvaal, was afraid about satyagraha spreading to the whole of South Africa, Gandhi added that no member of parliament were able to speak anything against satyagraha, that they were afraid of it, yet unable to find reasons to fight against it⁶⁴.

Gandhi was very much impressed by the progress of his movement, and at the end of 1913 wrote that the satyagraha movement had hardly a parallel in history⁶⁵. He wrote in 1914, "...every time the Government went back on its word, it was obliged to yield more to us"⁶⁶. Shortly before departing to India, Gandhi spoke at a meeting in Durban, and advised to "turn to satyagraha instead of looking for leaders"⁶⁷. His idea of satyagraha becoming a spiritual guide indicate that truth-force was of paramount importance to him than the image of individual leaders. After leaving South Africa, Gandhi wrote a letter from the ship, "We are travelling third class, Mr. Kallenbach (Hermann Kallenbach), my wife and I. This is my first experience of a voyage to England in this class. Of first class I have had experience on several occasions. I must say that we are happier in third class than we could have been in first. There are no attendants here keeping constant watch on us. We feel no pricking of conscience that we are living in special style, segregated from the poor"⁶⁸. Renouncing privileges and breaking the socially constructed segregations were part of Gandhi's experiments with Truth. Reflecting upon the satyagrahas that happened until that point, he remarked, "I never dreamt that 20,000 poor Indians would arise and make their own and their country's name immortal"^69.

These were the evolutions that Gandhi introduced in his political programme and philosophy during his days in South Africa. The evolution continues further during Gandhi's years in India. He prepared a draft constitution⁷⁰ for his then new Ashram in India, the fundamental principles of which were derived from the rich experiments that Gandhi conducted in South Africa. He wrote a letter from Lahore in January 1920 to an unidentified person, explaining the distinction between satyagraha and Passive Resistance. Although his justified desire for cultural autonomy comes in between his distinction between the two, it still gives an idea of the direction in which Gandhi set his agenda in motion: "I have drawn the distinction between passive resistance as understood and practised in the West and satyagraha before I had evolved the doctrine of the latter to its full logical and spiritual extent. I often used "passive resistance" and "satyagraha" as synonymous terms: but as the doctrine of satyagraha developed, the expression "passive resistance" ceases even to be synonymous, as passive resistance has admitted of violence as in the case of the suffragettes and has been universally acknowledged to be a weapon of the weak. Moreover, passive resistance does not necessarily involve complete adherence to truth under every circumstance. Therefore it is different from satyagraha in three essentials: Satyagraha is a weapon of the strong; it admits of no violence under any circumstance whatsoever; and it ever insists upon truth."⁷¹

Acknowledgements

This essay originates from a presentation that the author delivered at a colloquium at Humboldt University of Berlin in May, 2019, chaired by Professor Boike Rehbein. Most part of it was written from the inspiring guest room of the anti-war museum, Berlin. Thanks are due to Professor Boike Rehbein and Professor Ananta Kumar Giri of the Madras Institute of Development Studies The observations on Gandhi and his satyagraha by Mr. Christian Bartolf, founder of Gandhi- Informations-Zentrum, Berlin, are deeply appreciated.

Notes and References:

1. In English: The World Stage.
2. German original: "Gandhi ist kein politischer Mensch im europäischen Sinne. Er ist mehr. Er ist die geheime Gewalt, die ohne Amt und Partei doch alle beherrscht... ...Indien ist glücklich zu schätzen, dass ihm sein neues Gesetz nicht von einem Diktator auferlegt wird, nicht in dem unerbittlichen Kommando eines asiatischen Napoleon dröhnt, sondern von der sanften Stimme Mahatma Gandhis verkündet wird". From: "Mahatma Gandhi", in: Weltbühne, October 8, 1929. Refer: Gandhi Information Center eV.
3. Zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl is a German word, an inaccurate English translation of which would be - 'a feeling of belonging together', or 'the sense of solidarity', or 'a communal spirit'. None of these translations have the capacity to completely reflect the original term, owing to its cultural roots. Satyagraha is one such word.
4. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi ( CWMG) vol. 8, ( New Delhi, Publications Division, 1958), pp. 22 f.
5. It was one of the pass laws - a component of the apartheid system. On suspicion of unauthorized entry into South Africa, it aimed to segregate the Indians and the Chinese, demanding every male to register and keep a thumb-printed certificate of identity.
6. CWMG, vol. 8, pp. 60 f.
7. Ibid., p. 64.
8. Ibid., p. 71.
9. Ibid., p. 318.
10. Ibid., p. 86.
11. Ibid., p. 87.
12. Ibid., p. 86.
13. Ibid., p. 91
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., p. 173.
16. Ibid., p. 91.
17. Ibid., p. 93.
18. Ibid., p. 131.
19. Ibid., p. 133.
20. Ibid., p. 138.
21. Ibid., p. 188.
22. Ibid., p. 194.
23. Ibid., p. 212.
24. Ibid., p. 215.
25. Ibid., pp. 248 f.
26. Ibid., p. 91.
27. Ibid., p. 252.
28. Ibid., p. 324.
29. Ibid., p. 368.
30. Ibid., p. 288.
31. Ibid., p. 274.
32. Fasting had not yet become an organized form of protest in satyagraha then. Fasting inside the jail was an ingenious double leap in this evolution. Gandhi's first penitential fasting was in 1913 in Phoenix, South Africa, and his first political fasting was in 1918 in Ahmedabad, India.
33. Ibid., vol. 9, p. 120.
34. Ibid., p. 228.
35. Ibid., vol. 8, p. 482.
36. Ibid., vol. 9, p. 10
37. Ibid., vol. 8, p. 61; p. 87
38. Ibid., vol. 9, p. 41.
39. Ibid., p. 62.
40. Ibid., p. 84.
41. Ibid., p. 90.
42. Elaborated later.
43. CWMG, vol. 9, p. 99.
44. Ibid., p. 114.
45. Gandhi paraphrased Ruskin's 'Unto This Last' as a series in Indian Opinion. He later published the series as a pamphlet, under the title Sarvodaya (Welfare of all).
46. CWMG , vol. 8, p. 258; Ibid., vol. 9, p. 118.
47. Ibid., vol. 9, p. 120.
48. Ibid., p. 270.
49. Ibid., p. 181.
50. Ibid., pp. 181 f.
51. The Hindu mythological story of Prahlad, a young boy who searches for divine truth against his father's wishes and undergo suffering with conviction.
52. Ibid., vol. 10, p. 346.
53. Ibid., vol. 9, p. 199; p. 236.
54. In October, 1909.
55. Read Christian Bartolf, Letter to a Hindoo: Taraknath Das, Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi (Berlin: Gandhi-Informations-Zentrum, 1997. Print).
56. Shortly after Tolstoy died, Gandhi published his photograph in the Indian Opinion along with a short commentary of Tolstoy on satyagraha.
57. CWMG, vol. 10, pp. 202 f.
58. CWMG, p. 323.
59. Ibid., p. 358.
60. One of the chief criticisms of George Orwell was on the compatibility of satyagraha in a non-parliamentary totalitarian system.
61. CWMG, vol. 10, p. 367.
62. George Orwell, 'Reflections on Gandhi', Partisan Review (London: January 1949).
63. CWMG, vol. 10, p. 403.
64. Ibid., p. 472.
65. Ibid., vol. 12, p. 311.
66. Ibid., p. 449.
67. Ibid., p. 471.
68. Ibid., p. 507.
69. Ibid., p. 509.
70. Ibid., vol. 13, p. 91.
71. Ibid., vol. 16, p. 509.

Adapted from 'Gandhi Marg', Vol. 41 Number 4, January-March 2020

*VISHNU VARATHARAJAN is an independent scholar with primary interests in Gandhian thought and Indian nationalist movement. Having obtained a masters degree in Political Science from the University of Madras, India, he was a visiting scholar at the Institute of Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin. Prior to that, he was a freelance translator at People's Archive of Rural India, and a student photojournalist at Vikatan group of magazines. Vishnu is a public speaker and columnist with regular appearances on print and electronic media. He is now a corresponding member at Gandhi-Informations-Zentrum, Berlin. | Email: vishnuvaratharajan@gmail.com.