Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

2. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi • 1869-1948 • Lawyer, resistance & nationalist leader • Dandi Salt march (1930) • Quit India (1942) • Satyagraha

3. Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance (1906) • Fingerprinted, other forms of identification • Documents carried at all time • Colonial authorities allowed to enter houses to demand certificates • Registration of all individuals (men, women, & children) of Indian descent in South African colony

4. “I have never known legislation of this nature being directed against free men in any part of the world.” • “I read a volume on finger impressions by Mr Henry, a police officer, from which I gathered that finger prints are required by law only from criminals.” (XI) • To be Indian is to be accorded the same status as a slave or a criminal

5. “For the Ordinance seeks to humiliate not only ourselves but also the motherland. The humiliation consists in the degradation of innocent men. No one will take it upon himself to say that we have done anything to deserve such legislation. We are innocent, and insult offered to a single innocent member of a nation is tantamount to insulting the nation as a whole.” (XI) • “We shall find that India's honour is in our keeping.” • Nationalism and solidarity

6. “Better die than submit to such a law. But how were we to die? What should we dare and do so that there would be nothing before us except a choice of victory or death? An impenetrable wall was before me, as it were, and I could not see my way through it.” (XI) • Death is preferable to a life of humiliation • Liberation, resistance, revolution

7. “It is quite unlikely but even if every one else flinched leaving me alone to face the music, I am confident that I would never violate my pledge.” (XII)

8. Passive resistance: • “The Transvaal Indians have had recourse to passive resistance when all other means of securing redress proved to be of no avail. They do not enjoy the franchise. Numerically, they are only a few. They are weak and have no arms. Therefore they have taken to passive resistance which is a weapon of the weak.” (XIII)

9. “The passive or milder step of not submitting to the law and inviting the penalties of such non-submission upon their heads.” • “They were weak in numbers. Not that they were averse to the use of arms for the attainment of their aims, but they had no hope of succeeding by force of arms. And in a well-regulated state, recourse to arms every now and then in order to secure popular rights would defeat its own purpose. Again some of the Non-conformists would generally object to taking up arms even if it was a practical proposition.” (XIII) • “Passive resistance may be offered side by side with the use of arms.” (XIII) • “Passive resistance is often looked upon as a preparation for the use of force” (XIII)

10. Sadagraha: 'firmness in a good cause.’ vs. (XII) • Satyagraha: Truth • “Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement 'Satyagraha,' that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence.” (XII) • Concept not original to Gandhi • He was first to apply it on level of mass politics

11. “In passive resistance there is always present an idea of harassing the other party and there is a simultaneous readiness to undergo any hardships entailed upon us by such activity; while in Satyagraha there is not the remotest idea of injuring the opponent. Satyagraha postulates the conquest of the adversary by suffering in one's own person.” (XIII, my emphasis)

12. Salt Satyagraha (1930) • Protest against British tax on salt production • 3 ½ week, 240 mile walk to the coast to produce salt without paying the tax • Drew huge crowds, 80,000 imprisoned • Credible demonstration of commitment on the mass level

13. Dharasana Satyagraha • March on the Dharasana salt plant • Gandhi declares intent to British gov’t, is arrested the night before

14. American reporter Web Miller: “the police became enraged by the non-resistance....They commenced savagely kicking the seated men in the abdomen and testicles. The injured men writhed and squealed in agony, which seemed to inflame the fury of the police....The police then began dragging the sitting men by the arms or feet, sometimes for a hundred yards, and throwing them into ditches” • British block telegraphs of Miller’s report into England • Why?

15. Violence is central to the efficacy of Satyagraha • Modern communications • Global audience

16. Quit India (1942) • British has declared war, including all of empire (India included) but hadn’t asked • Indian Congress deeply offended • The stresses and necessities of war, strains on the old imperial system

17. “I am the same Gandhi as I was in 1920. I have not changed in any fundamental respect.” (I) • “God has vouchsafed to me a priceless gift in the weapon of Ahimsa.” (I) • weapon • “A non-violent soldier of freedom will covet nothing for himself, he fights only for the freedom of his country. The Congress is unconcerned as to who will rule, when freedom is attained. The power, when it comes, will belong to the people of India, and it will be for them to decide to whom it placed in the entrusted.” • The Congress “has thought always in terms of the whole nation and has acted accordingly. . .”

18. “I have noticed that there is hatred towards the British among the people. The people say they are disgusted with their behaviour. The people make no distinction between British imperialism and the British people. To them, the two are one. This hatred would even make them welcome the Japanese. It is most dangerous. It means that they will exchange one slavery for another. We must get rid of this feeling. Our quarrel is not with the British people, we fight their imperialism.” (I) • A war of ideas, not blood

19. “We have thus to deal with an empire whose ways are crooked. Ours is a straight path which we can tread even with our eyes closed. That is the beauty of Satyagraha. In Satyagraha, there is no place for fraud or falsehood, or any kind of untruth. Fraud and untruth today are stalking the world. I cannot be a helpless witness to such a situation.” (II)

20. “The bond of the slave is snapped the moment he consider himself to be a free being. He will plainly tell the master: “I was your bond slave till this moment, but I am a slave no longer. You may kill me if you like, but if you keep me alive, I wish to tell you that if you release me from the bondage, of your own accord, I will ask for nothing more from you.” (II)

21. “It is, however, with all these things as the background that I want Englishmen, Europeans and all the United Nations to examine in their hearts what crime had India committed in demanding Independence. I ask, is it right for you to distrust such an organization with all its background, tradition and record of over half a century and misrepresent its endeavours before all the world by every means at your command?” (III)