I have read several times about Mahatma Gandhi’s views on non-violence and non-cooperation for civil disobedience. But in his response to Samuel E. Stokes [who later became Satyanand], it helps me to understand in the context of his struggle with the British Government. But what he says is equally applicable to any government and how to challenge its evils. Of course, in a constitutional democracy, apart from non-cooperation, we have other means to address it through elections, approaching the judiciary, and gathering public opinion against such evils along with media to confront. But what Mahatma Gandhi talked about was the British government of his time. However, even this is also applicable to our time, except for authoritarian rule as seen in China, Russia, Belarus, and North Korea.
Gurukulam, 6-6-2024
86. LETTER TO S. E. STOKES
POST ANDHERI,
March 19, 1924
…we should take advantage of everything good that may be offered by the Government measures and endeavour to do our best to correct the evil in them…. [with govt.]
…there is a saying among lawyers that hard cases make bad law. Properly applied, it is a sound truth. Para-phrased in religious terms, it means that because, under some exceptional circumstances, departure from religious truth may appear to be advantageous, it furnishes no ground for losing faith in the truth. In your own case I would have reasoned to myself: This
(p. 86)
undoing of the work must be regarded as the people’s sacrifice in order to get the real thing. And what is that real thing? For the common masses to rid themselves of the fetish of power. For ages they have been taught to look to a Government to do everything for them, to protect them. The Government, instead of being regarded as an instrument in their hands for their advantage, is looked up to as something beyond and apart from them which, like a deity, whether benignant or malignant, has got to be propitiated. Non-co-operation as conceived by me is ceasing to co-operate with that idea of Government and teaching the people to feel that the Government is their creation and not they creatures of the Government. I should not therefore wonder that many of the so-called advantages that we have hitherto enjoyed through the instrumentality of such a Government have to be sacrificed. If the non-co-operation was not non-violent, we would seek, as all nations in history have sought, to beat Governments with their own weapons, that is, force of arms. In such a fight it would be folly not to make use of the whole of the Government machinery. People in a violent struggle do not expect to sacrifice though they are prepared for it and, if they have at their disposal arms superior to those possessed by the Government, beat it down without any sacrifice. But in a non-violent struggle resort to arms is eschewed, and sacrifice for the moment is a necessity of the case….I know men who have lost money because they would not go to a court of law. I know cases in which the Government officials have chuckled with pride and pleasure that men who before used to gain advantages through their instrumentality were losing, but those who lost with a full knowledge of the struggle counted their loss as gain….
(p. 87) …My endeavour was and is to find a substitute for ordinary rebellion, and that is civil disobedience….
The Councils are no training-ground even for the Councillors for civil disobedience. They believe in the “tooth for tooth” law. The sophistry, evasion and even fraud of the Government benches are returned in [their] coin. Their manifest purpose is to embarrass the Government. Their appeal is to fear. The non-co-operator’s manifest purpose is never to embarrass, and his appeal must always be to the heart, therefore, to love and trust.
You evidently seem to think that mystical and religious non-co-operation can run side by side with the purely political non-co-operation of the Councils. I hold that the two are mutually destructive, and my faith in religious non-co-operation is so immutable that, if I find that it would not answer the needs of India and that the masses would not respond to it, I should be content to be alone and rely upon its ultimate invincibility to convert even the masses. Indeed, I see no escape for this world except through the acceptance of non-violence as the predominant and ordinary rule of life. The present society is ultimately based upon force. That is violence. My endeavour is no less than to get ride of this worship of force, and my conviction is that, if any country is ready, for assimilating the doctrine in its entirety in a large and workable measure, it is India. And having that conviction, I have no other remedy for the needs of our country. [Non-violence, non-cooperation].
( p. 88)
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 27, pp. 86-88
I have read several times about Mahatma Gandhi’s views on non-violence and non-cooperation for civil disobedience. But in his response to Samuel E. Stokes [who later became Satyanand], it helps me to understand in the context of his struggle with the British Government. But what he says is equally applicable to any government and how to challenge its evils. Of course, in a constitutional democracy, apart from non-cooperation, we have other means to address it through elections, approaching the judiciary, and gathering public opinion against such evils along with media to confront. But what Mahatma Gandhi talked about was the British government of his time. However, even this is also applicable to our time, except for authoritarian rule as seen in China, Russia, Belarus, and North Korea.
Gurukulam, 6-6-2024
86. LETTER TO S. E. STOKES
POST ANDHERI,
March 19, 1924
…we should take advantage of everything good that may be offered by the Government measures and endeavour to do our best to correct the evil in them…. [with govt.]
…there is a saying among lawyers that hard cases make bad law. Properly applied, it is a sound truth. Para-phrased in religious terms, it means that because, under some exceptional circumstances, departure from religious truth may appear to be advantageous, it furnishes no ground for losing faith in the truth. In your own case I would have reasoned to myself: This
(p. 86)
undoing of the work must be regarded as the people’s sacrifice in order to get the real thing. And what is that real thing? For the common masses to rid themselves of the fetish of power. For ages they have been taught to look to a Government to do everything for them, to protect them. The Government, instead of being regarded as an instrument in their hands for their advantage, is looked up to as something beyond and apart from them which, like a deity, whether benignant or malignant, has got to be propitiated. Non-co-operation as conceived by me is ceasing to co-operate with that idea of Government and teaching the people to feel that the Government is their creation and not they creatures of the Government. I should not therefore wonder that many of the so-called advantages that we have hitherto enjoyed through the instrumentality of such a Government have to be sacrificed. If the non-co-operation was not non-violent, we would seek, as all nations in history have sought, to beat Governments with their own weapons, that is, force of arms. In such a fight it would be folly not to make use of the whole of the Government machinery. People in a violent struggle do not expect to sacrifice though they are prepared for it and, if they have at their disposal arms superior to those possessed by the Government, beat it down without any sacrifice. But in a non-violent struggle resort to arms is eschewed, and sacrifice for the moment is a necessity of the case….I know men who have lost money because they would not go to a court of law. I know cases in which the Government officials have chuckled with pride and pleasure that men who before used to gain advantages through their instrumentality were losing, but those who lost with a full knowledge of the struggle counted their loss as gain….
(p. 87) …My endeavour was and is to find a substitute for ordinary rebellion, and that is civil disobedience….
The Councils are no training-ground even for the Councillors for civil disobedience. They believe in the “tooth for tooth” law. The sophistry, evasion and even fraud of the Government benches are returned in [their] coin. Their manifest purpose is to embarrass the Government. Their appeal is to fear. The non-co-operator’s manifest purpose is never to embarrass, and his appeal must always be to the heart, therefore, to love and trust.
You evidently seem to think that mystical and religious non-co-operation can run side by side with the purely political non-co-operation of the Councils. I hold that the two are mutually destructive, and my faith in religious non-co-operation is so immutable that, if I find that it would not answer the needs of India and that the masses would not respond to it, I should be content to be alone and rely upon its ultimate invincibility to convert even the masses. Indeed, I see no escape for this world except through the acceptance of non-violence as the predominant and ordinary rule of life. The present society is ultimately based upon force. That is violence. My endeavour is no less than to get ride of this worship of force, and my conviction is that, if any country is ready, for assimilating the doctrine in its entirety in a large and workable measure, it is India. And having that conviction, I have no other remedy for the needs of our country. [Non-violence, non-cooperation].
( p. 88)
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 27, pp. 86-88
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