Learning and Cultivating NonViolence

[Dover]

Civil Disobedience, Nonviolence, and Satyagraha in the Real World


Excerpt:
Gandhi set out a number of rules for the practice of civil disobedience. These rules often baffle his critics, and often even his admirers set them aside as nonessential. But once you understand that civil disobedience, for Gandhi, was aimed at working a change of heart—whether in the opponent or the public—then it’s easy to make sense of them.

One rule was that only specific, unjust laws were to be broken. Civil disobedience didn’t mean flouting all law.

In fact, Gandhi said that only people with a high regard for the law were qualified for civil disobedience. Only action by such people could convey the depth of their concern and win respect. No one thinks much of it when the law is broken by those who care nothing for it anyway.

Other rules: Gandhi ruled out direct coercion, such as trying to physically block someone. Hostile language was banned. Destroying property was forbidden. Not even secrecy was allowed.

All these were ruled out because any of them would undercut the empathy and trust Gandhi was trying to build, and would hinder that “change of heart.”
cont'd

http://www.markshep.com/nonviolence/Myths.html



Some further thoughts on nonviolence:

All of these forms of direct action are effective, Sharp asserts, because they diminish the legitimacy, and hence the power of the opponent. "Nonviolent action tends to turn the opponent's violence and repression against his own power position, weakening it and at the same time strengthening the nonviolent group. Because violent action and nonviolent action possess quite different mechanisms, and induce differing forces of change in the society, the opponent's repression. . . can never really come to grips with the kind of power wielded by the nonviolent actionists." (The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Part II. Pp. 111-113). Sharp compares this approach to the martial art of jiu-jitsu--in which the violent party loses its balance when confronted with nonviolent opposition...cont'd

http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/peace/treatment/nonviolc.htm