March / April 2005

The Decade Challenge

The Wheel: Taking Gandhi's Lead in Our Present Context

By Chris Moore-Backman, Edited by Janet Chisholm

 

Mohandas Gandhi did not hide the fact that he detested being called mahatma—the Sanskrit term of veneration meaning “great soul.” In addition to his own doubts about his worthiness of such an accolade, Gandhi showed no signs of interest in being installed on a pedestal. He consistently urged his fellow Indians not to exalt him, but to look instead to the nuts and bolts of nonviolent transformation.

I am deeply heartened to know that right here in the United States, right now at the dawn of the 21st century, more and more activists of faith are catching the very important drift of this distinction, and are moving decisively to liberate Gandhi from the pedestal that we too have reserved for him. In so doing, we are by no means forfeiting the inspiration we have found in the Mahatma. We are simply turning to Gandhi in a new way, looking to him not solely as the revered patron saint of nonviolence, but as a real-life instructor, a trusted guide with concrete directions for us.

In FOR’s nationwide nonviolence training program and in this column, Janet Chisholm calls for translating Gandhi’s approach. She suggests experimenting, as he did, with spiritual practice, constructive program, and resistance in order to change our violent culture and build the alternative culture of justice, peace, and reconciliation.

In workshops in the New England area, Joanne Sheehan and John Humphries are presenting Gandhi’s approach to nonviolent social change in a very similar fashion. They describe it as a threefold process of personal transformation, constructive program, and political action, offering this simple, powerful description as a most helpful response to the desperate “What do we do now?” that so many of us are asking these days. These friends remind us that the answer lies far beyond mere political agitation. As Gandhi demonstrated, what is required of us is nothing less than the building of an alternative society.

In the San Francisco Bay area, yet another set of experiments is underway, including the efforts of a small group of us who are striving to distill Gandhi’s instructions into a working program for our time and place. Recently I arrived at the model pictured here: The Wheel. It’s a kind of recipe for life, designed especially for first-world activists of faith, which draws together the three key elements of Gandhi’s approach also described by Joanne and John.

wheel


The principles and practices of The Wheel point to a way of life that simultaneously invites and incarnates a nonviolent alternative society. As such, The Wheel is, in essence, an aid to renouncing and abandoning our first-world lifestyles.

Let me repeat that. The Wheel is, in essence, an aid to renouncing and abandoning our first-world lifestyles. And let us by no means look on this as an occasion for mourning! Our most treasured, trustworthy voices have been telling us this all along, and our own hearts warm at the truth of it. Rather than bemoaning this knowledge, let us rejoice in it, and gratefully embrace that this is where a disciplined, nonviolent program must lead us.

The guiding hope undergirding The Wheel is that the US peace movement will soon include a truly disciplined contingent embodying the soul-force of Gandhi’s conception. This contingent will be a constellation of communities spread throughout the country, but rooted firmly in the common ground and training of a shared nonviolent program.

As we near the midpoint of this Decade to Build a Culture of Nonviolence for the Children of the World, I can think of no more meaningful or hopeful outcome than this. And I offer The Wheel as a picture of the program that can help us get there.

To learn more about The Wheel and how it is being brought to life, contact Chris Moore-Backman at moorebackman@yahoo.com or at 2776 Harrison St, San Francisco, CA 94110.