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November/December 1999
Awakening
Nonviolent Power A dramatic illustration of the irresistible power of nonviolence that a person or a group can wield by self-discipline was enacted during the US civil rights struggle in 1964 in Birmingham, Alabama. Black marchers found themselves blocked by a line of police and firemen with dogs and hoses. Not prepared for this, the marchers knelt down to pray. After a while they became "spiritually intoxicated," as one of them later put it, rose to their feet and steadily marched up to the police and firemen, calmly saying as they drew closer, "How do you feel about what you're doing? We have come for our freedom, and we're not going back." Faced with this determination, the police and firemen found themselves unable to respond, even though the sheriff, a notorious segregationist, repeatedly shouted "turn on the hoses!" The marchers walked steadily on, passing right through the police lines. Under the right circumstances, nonviolence is unstoppable. As Gandhi put it: "What Satyagraha in these cases does is not to suppress reason but to free it from inertia and to establish its sovereignty over prejudice, hatred, and other baser passions. In other words, if one may paradoxically put it, it does not enslave, it compels reason to be free." All this illustrates the role of faith and a systematic discipline such as prayer or meditation. Instead of relying on exactly the right "chemistry" to evoke the needed courage in a given emergency, many activists have sought by such disciplines to become "spiritually intoxicated" at all times. They are trying, we might say, to be spiritually proactive. "You and me against the problem." When we have a nonviolent outlook, we no longer look on a dispute as what's called a "zero-sum game." Instead of thinking that for me to win, you have to lose, we now believe there must be a way that both of us can grow. The very fact that we can turn an argument into a problem-solving session, a dispute into a learning experience, alienation into unity, is a gain for all concerned. The nonviolent actor is never against persons. This is one of the ingredients of nonviolent power. Where ordinary conflict is "you against me," the nonviolent actor sees it as "you and me against the problem." Therefore the nonviolent actor is never out to humiliate or in any way injure another person or group. He or she can be opposed to the other's actions, never the person her- or himself: as the Christian tradition teaches, "we hate the sin, but not the sinner." Once the Prophet Muhammad told his disciples, "Help your brother, whether oppressor or oppressed." When asked, "How can we help an oppressor?" he replied, "By preventing him from his oppression." The more you respect the opponent as a person, the more forcefully you can oppose his or her wrong agenda. Underlying this awareness is a belief that life is not a competition. To put it in economic terms, "there is enough in the world for everyone's need; there is not enough for everyone's greed." By separating the "greed" of the opponent, which we resist, from his or her legitimate "need," which we support, it becomes easier to "compel his or her reason to be free." (This presupposes that we pursue only our own legitimate needs, of course!) In this "positive sum" approach, a satyagrahi (person offering satyagraha) strives to persuade, rather than coerce, others. Sometimes, as we'll see, the satyagrahi must take on a certain amount of suffering for the persuasion to work; but he or she will feel that such suffering is worth it, because someone who is persuaded stays persuaded, while someone who is coerced will just be waiting for the chance to get back. Gandhi once gave beautiful expression to the concept of "resisting the sin, not the sinner." It was in the context of the hardest test nonviolence can face, namely of defending a country against full-scale invasion by a determined enemy. Gandhi insisted on the power of nonviolence. In this case, in 1942, India, already held down by the British, was fearing invasion by Japanese armies: "If we were a free country, things could be done nonviolently to prevent the Japanese from entering the country. As it is, nonviolent resistance could commence the moment the Japanese effect a landing. Thus, nonviolent resisters would refuse them any help, even water. For it is no part of their duty to help anyone to steal their country. But if a Japanese had missed his way and was dying of thirst and sought help as a human being, a nonviolent resister, who may not regard anyone as his enemy, would give water to the thirsty one. Suppose the Japanese compel resisters to give them water, the resisters must die in the act of resistance." The bold vision of nonviolent national defense became a reality when Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia to suppress reforms in 1968. Because the Czechs resolutely refused to obey their orders, yet at the same time fraternized with the Soviet soldiers and tried in many cases to contain their bad feelings toward them as people, three Soviet armies totaling half a million troops were unable to gain control of the country for eight long months. Along with the Czech citizens' courage (and sense of humor), their skill in separating person from program, or "sinner" from "sin," gave them a large measure of success against those overwhelming odds. Today we call this nonviolent national strategy "Civilian-Based Defense." This combination also worked very well in the 1986 Philippine revolution, the attempted coup in Moscow in 1991, and many other places. People can be cruel to others only when they think of them not as people but as "enemies": chetniks, unbelievers, communists—what have you. This clouding of vision is called dehumanization, and overcoming it is often the core of nonviolent resistance. When such people find that their "enemies" will not obey them but do not wish them harm, that they will not yield on fundamentals but still respect them, their anger softens. Sometimes it softens visibly, sometimes to the point that they themselves give up their attacks. Under the right conditions, this kind of resistance can nullify even a large-scale, highly determined oppression. Rehumanization, then, is another key to nonviolent power. It has what we might call an emotional component, as we saw above, and it has a cognitive, or visionary component: we struggle to control the negative feelings in us which are connected with the incorrect vision that all are separate. We unleash positive feelings towards others by clinging to the faith that we are all very much interconnected. m
Michael Nagler is the Chair of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the University of California (Berkeley). This article is excerpted from The Steps of Nonviolence, a new booklet published by FOR, available for $5.00, postage included. |
What
Gandhi calls "reason" in this quote is the innate awareness
that we are all connected, as opposed to the emotions that cloud our judgment
when we see each other as separate, competitive fragments. This awareness,
advocates of nonviolence believe, is latent in everyone. In theory, it
can be reawakened in virtually anyone, if we have the key. When it is
awake, it automatically takes back control from our "baser passions."