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Title: Nonviolent Revolution
Author: Geoffrey Ostergaard
Date: 1985
Language: en
Topics: non-violence, pacifism, revolution
Source: http://www.satyagrahafoundation.org/nonviolent-revolution-origins-of-the-concept/
Notes: This article is the Introduction to Geoffrey OSTERGAARD, Nonviolent Revolution in India New Delhi: J. P. Amrit/Sevagram & Gandhi Peace Foundation, 1985; pp. ix-xxiii. Although the last paragraphs are descriptions of the chapters that follow in the book, we felt it useful to retain them in the hopes of sparking further interest in Ostergaard and this important work. Courtesy of The Gandhi Peace Foundation, and Gandhi Book House.

Geoffrey Ostergaard

Nonviolent Revolution

“Nonviolent revolution” is a relatively novel and, at first glance,

paradoxical concept. In classifying principled nonviolence, Gene Sharp

describes it as “the most recent type”, dating from about 1945, and as

“still very much a direction of developing thought and action rather

than a fixed ideology and program.” [1] As the term itself suggests, it

is an ideological hybrid, the product of two hitherto distinct, though

not unrelated traditions of thought. The first of these traditions is

“pacifism”, the defining feature of which is the rejection, on principle

and as a guiding rule of individual conduct, of violence, especially but

not only the institutionalised violence manifested in war. The “peace

testimony” of the Quakers made in 1661 typifies the pacifist stance:

“All bloody principles and practices we (as to our own particular) do

utterly deny, with all outward wars and strife and fighting with outward

weapons, for any end or under any pretext whatsoever . . .” [2]

The defining feature of the second tradition, which we may label “social

revolution”, is the belief that the major problems of the existing

society are deep-seated or structural in origin and, therefore, can be

solved only by basic or revolutionary changes in the structure of

society. So defined, “social revolution” leaves open what structural

changes are required and whether such changes can be effected

peacefully, without the use of “illegitimate” violence. Historically,

this tradition has been socialist in the broad sense of that term, i.e.,

the major problems have been seen as originating in the capitalist

organization of the economy, which must therefore be replaced by a

socialist one. While “social revolution” implies that the required

structural changes can be effected quite rapidly, it is compatible with

the belief that they may be carried out peacefully. The first generation

of British socialists—the followers of Robert Owen—thought so; their

strategy involved voluntary action by the people themselves to set up

“villages of cooperation”—small-scale, basically self-sufficient

communist communities, loosely linked together for purposes of mutual

aid and the exchange of surpluses. Even Marx, in his later years,

believed that in certain countries, “like America and England (and, if I

knew their institutions better, I would add Holland) the workers can

achieve their aims by peaceful means.” [3] But, again historically,

“social revolution” has been associated with the belief, also expressed

by Marx on the same occasion, that “force must be the lever of our

revolutions.” It is, of course, the common association between

‘revolution’ and ‘force,’ which accounts for the apparently paradoxical

character of the concept of “nonviolent revolution”.

Only certain elements within pacifism and social revolution have

converged to produce “nonviolent revolution” as the central concept of

their developing ideology. From the pacifist side, these elements are

those whose pacifism can be classified, in Sharp’s typology, as “active

reconciliation”, “moral resistance,” or “satyagraha” (or a mix of these

three). The “active reconciliation” pacifists, exemplified by Tolstoy

and many Quakers, emphasize the use of goodwill in achieving change,

seek to avoid using coercion, even nonviolent coercion, and stress the

worth of every individual and his or her capacity to change and live in

harmony with others. The “moral resistance” pacifists (unlike those of

the “nonresistance” type) emphasize that evil should be resisted, but

only by moral and nonviolent means. They stress the responsibility of

every individual both to refuse personally to participate in evil and

also to do something active to combat evil. William Lloyd Garrison, a

leader of the movement to abolish slavery in the USA, exemplified this

type. “Satyagraha” pacifists are those who have adopted Mahatma Gandhi’s

approach in which nonviolence is both a technique of social action and a

principled way of life. As we shall see, pacifists of this type have

contributed most to the development of the concept of nonviolent

revolution.

From the social revolution side, those who have been attracted to the

concept may be described as “libertarian socialists”. Libertarian

socialism constitutes one of the three broad schools of socialist

thought, distinguishable by their attitude towards the state. The other

two schools, Marxian communism and democratic socialism (or social

democracy), assign to the state a central role in their strategy for

achieving socialism. The Marxists, holding the view that the state is

the instrument of the ruling class, insist that the proletariat, through

its own political party, must capture state power, by forceful means if

necessary, establish a proletarian state, and then use it to carry out

socialist measures which will lead to the abolition of social classes

and, consequently, “the withering away of the state”. The democratic

socialists, holding the view that the state, actually or at least

potentially, is the instrument of the people as a whole, argue that

socialists should win political power by constitutional means and then,

having done so, proceed step by step to replace capitalism by socialism.

In both schools, control and the use of state power is seen as an

indispensable condition for the achievement of socialism. The

libertarian socialists, in contrast, believe that socialism can be

achieved largely (in the view of some) or wholly (in the view of others)

without the use of state power. Instead, reliance is placed (again

largely or wholly) on direct voluntary action by the people themselves,

which may be either violent or nonviolent—action such as forming

cooperatives which will eventually replace capitalist organisations or

building labour unions which, at an appropriate time, will seize control

of the means of production owned by the capitalists. The thrust of

libertarian socialism is thus either non-statist or anti-statist.

“Anarchism” is the descriptive label of those whose thrust is

consciously anti-statist, and, historically, anarchism in its several

socialist variants —there is also a capitalist variant—has been at the

centre of libertarian socialism. In terms of basic political values,

libertarian socialism represents an attempt to combine liberalism with

socialism, liberty—the prime liberal value—being placed on a par with

equality, the prime socialist value. In the view of libertarian

socialists, the two values are inter-connected, equality constituting a

necessary condition for the liberty of all (as distinct from the liberty

of only some). For such socialists, a social order that can be

characterised as a “fraternity” (in modern parlance “community”) is the

resultant of the cherishing of liberty with equality and equality in

liberty.

The routes leading to the convergence of certain types of pacifism with

a certain type of socialism may be briefly indicated. The convergence

may be seen in part as a process of mutual education in which pacifists

learned from libertarian socialists and vice versa. In the process

pacifists acquired from socialists the latter’s understanding of the

structural origins of many social problems, particularly the problem of

violence in the form of war, whether it be war between states or “war”

between social classes. The insight that violence was not simply a

problem at the level of individual behaviour, which could be solved by

the adoption of new norms regulating the conduct of individuals and

states, but was also a structural problem had to be recognised by

pacifists if they were to become social revolutionaries, rather than

remain the liberals most of them were in the nineteenth century. The

socialist idea that capitalism was one of the prime causes of war and

violent class conflict, and the anarchist idea that war was endemic in

the organization of mankind into states—in Randolph Bourne’s words, war

was “the health of the state”—were two fundamental ideas that pacifists,

faced as they were with the evident unwillingness of the vast majority

of mankind to adopt pacifist norms, came to see as increasingly

plausible.

Pacifists who were also socialists had already begun to emerge before

1914: Keir Hardie, the first leader of the British Labour Party, was one

of them. But the synthesising, as distinct from the simple combination,

of pacifism and socialism was a process that took some fifty years to

complete. The beginnings of the synthesis date from World War I when

pacifist conscientious objectors were thrown in jail together with

anti-militarist (but not strictly pacifist) socialists.[4] Undoubtedly,

the most important single factor promoting the synthesis was the

publicity given in the inter-war years to Gandhi’s campaigns in

India.[5] Although some old-fashioned pacifists were highly critical of

Gandhi’s methods, the younger and more radical pacifists were impressed

by his demonstration that the armory available to those who were

prepared nonviolently to resist oppressive structures included a whole

range of weapons. In addition to conscientious objection by

individuals—the classical method favoured by pacifists—they included

collective nonviolent resistance and non-cooperation and mass civil

disobedience, weapons which, potentially at least, could be used to

overthrow oppressive regimes.[6] A key work of synthesis in this period

was The Conquest of Violence written by the Dutch anarchist and

anti-militarist, Bart de Ligt.[7] Addressing specifically those who lust

for revolution, he declared: “The more violence, the less revolution”,

and he urged that the movement against militarism, using mass nonviolent

action, should proceed to make a social revolution. In the prisons and

camps housing the conscientious objectors and anti-militarists of World

War II, the synthesis was taken further. Referring to “one curious

cultural synthesis” resulting from the wartime alliance between young

religious pacifists and young socialists, an American pacifist journal

drew attention to the emergence of a new kind of radical, one who would

probably be “a source of confusion both to Peace Church pacifists and

old line radicals”. “Who is he, this New Minority Man?” it asked, and

gave as its answer: “He is working for objectives which are both moral

and practical . . . His ends will be easily identifiable as

revolutionary but his reasons for working towards them will unite moral

content with critical penetration.” [8]

In 1946, the American new radicals of this kind formed the Committee for

Nonviolent Revolution. Its policy statement included the following

words:

“We favour decentralized, democratic socialism guaranteeing

worker-consumer control of industries, utilities and other economic

enterprises. We believe that the workers themselves should take steps to

seize control of factories, mines and shops…. We believe in realistic

action against war, against imperialism and against military or economic

opposition by conquering nations, including the United States. We

advocate such techniques of group resistance as demonstrations, strikes,

organized civil disobedience, and underground organization where

necessary. As individuals we refuse to join the armed forces, work in

war industries, or buy government bonds and we believe in campaigns

urging others to do similarly. We see nonviolence as a principle as well

as a technique. In all action we renounce the methods of punishing,

hating or killing any fellow human being. We believe that nonviolence

includes such methods as sit-down strikes and seizure of plants. We

believe that revolutionary changes can only occur through direct action

by the rank and file, and not by deals or reformist proposals directed

to the present political and labor leadership.” [9]

In the years immediately following the formation of the Committee, A.J.

Muste became the leading exponent of this approach, which, since his

death, has been actively pursued by George Lakey and his associates in

the Philadelphia Life Center. [10]

If the route leading to some pacifists becoming social revolutionaries

was relatively straightforward, that leading some libertarian socialists

to become pacifists was more tortuous. Certainly, one school of

libertarian socialists—the Owenites—were social pacifists from the

outset. But when the millennial hopes of a rapid transformation of

competitive capitalist society faded, the successors of the Owenites,

adopting the same cooperative approach to socialism but along

‘segmental’ rather than ‘integral’ lines, ceased being social

revolutionaries. They retained their social pacifism but settled for

reform rather than revolution. And when, about the turn of this century,

they realized that the cooperative approach by itself was unlikely to

achieve “the cooperative commonwealth”, they allied themselves, not with

other libertarian socialists but with democratic socialists, on the

understanding that the latter’s plans for state socialism would reserve

a sector of the national economy for cooperatives. That cooperators

allied themselves with democratic socialists rather than with those who

were ideologically closer to them is partly explained by their aversion

to the violent strategy adopted by most libertarian socialists. For

mainstream anarchists, like Bakunin and Kropotkin, the strategy

envisaged widespread popular insurrections in the course of which

capitalism and the state would be abolished and replaced by a system of

freely federated socialist communes.

The uprising of the Paris Commune of 1871 approximated to this anarchist

model of revolution, but its crushing exposed the weakness of the

strategy and led to a strengthening of the tendency towards state

socialism, whether of the Marxist or democratic variety. Some anarchists

then developed an alternative syndicalist strategy. [11]The idea was to

turn trade unions into revolutionary instruments of class struggle, the

revolution taking the form of a general strike in which the unions would

take over control of the instruments of production and dispense with the

institutions of nation-states. The syndicalist strategy represented a

significant move towards nonviolent revolution. Although the

syndicalists were still far from being pacifists—as they envisaged armed

workers defending the revolution—the theory of the revolutionary general

strike was based on the same fundamental premise that underlies

nonviolent action: that the power of rulers depends, in the last

analysis, not on physical force but on the consent and cooperation,

however reluctant, of those who are ruled. In essence, the syndicalist

general strike represented the total non-cooperation of workers in the

continuance of rule by the capitalists. However, before the syndicalist

strategy had been put to the test, World War I intervened, the Tsarist

regime in Russia collapsed, and the Bolsheviks led by Lenin seized power

and established the first allegedly proletarian state. To most social

revolutionaries, the Bolshevik revolution appeared to vindicate the

Marxist-Leninist strategy. Except in Spain, where anarchists remained a

significant force until their defeat during the Civil War (1936-39),

libertarian socialism suffered an eclipse. In the four decades following

the Bolshevik revolution, the strategy debates in the socialist

movements throughout the world were conducted largely in terms of the

rival theories of Bolshevik Communism and Social Democracy: libertarian

ideas were more or less ignored.

It was not until the emergence of the New Left in Europe and the USA, in

1956, that libertarian socialist ideas began to be widely rediscovered

and reasserted. The most striking feature of New Left thinking was its

disillusionment with both Communism and Social Democracy: in the major

forms then extant—Stalinism and Welfare Statism—neither appeared capable

of achieving real socialism. In the ensuing decade, various themes,

theories and actions, all distinctly libertarian even when couched in

Marxist language, began to come to the fore: anti-militarism, the

rediscovery of community, community action, radical decentralism,

participatory democracy, the organization of the poor and the oppressed

inter-racially and the building of counter-culture and

counter-institutions (such as new “co-ops”, collectives and communes).

The New Left was “a movement of movements” rather than a single

movement. But among these movements three were of particular

significance for the development of the concept of nonviolent

revolution: the Civil Rights and the anti-Vietnam War movements in the

USA and the movement for nuclear disarmament in Britain and elsewhere.

In all three, methods of nonviolent action, ranging from peaceful

protests and marches through to mass civil disobedience, were widely

used. The popularization in the West of this unconventional political

technique, at the level of action and not merely of ideas, encouraged

the belief among the more radical pacifists and anarchists that

nonviolent revolution was a possible scenario. [12] In Britain, for

example, under the aegis of the Committee of 100, radical pacifists and

anarchists came together and, as a result of their mutual education, a

new anarchist hybrid clearly emerged: anarcho-pacifism. In ideological

terms, this hybrid fused an anarchist critique of the state with a

pacifist critique of violence; and “for nonviolent revolution” became

the rallying cry. [13] But as, from 1967 onwards, the New Left

disintegrated—the disintegration being marked by the bombings of the

Weathermen and of the Angry Bridge and a widespread attraction to the

cult of revolutionary violence—any hope or prospect that the various New

Left strands could be woven into a grand strategy for nonviolent

revolution rapidly faded.[14] Up until this writing (1984), nonviolent

revolution in the West remains very much a concept—perhaps more a slogan

than a concept— confined to miniscule groupings. With the development of

nonviolent action against the extension of nuclear energy and with the

resurgence, since 1977, of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in

Europe and the more recent revitalization of the peace movement in the

USA, it is possible that in the near future the concept may gain wider

currency; but it is no more than a possibility.

However, there is one country in which nonviolent revolution has been

elaborated at the conceptual level and also actively promoted by a

coherent social movement at the practical level.[15] That country is, of

course, India, the homeland of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhi, in

fact, coined the term ‘nonviolent revolution”, although he did not use

it often. Two of his references to it may be noted. In one, he declared:

“Some have called me the greatest revolutionary of my time. It may be

false, but I believe myself to be a revolutionary —a nonviolent

revolutionary.”[16] In the other, he wrote: “A nonviolent revolution is

not a programme of ‘seizure of power’. It is a programme of

transformation of relationships ending in a peaceful transfer of

power.”[17] Both statements require interpretation. In the first, there

is no clear reference to social revolution: in declaring himself a

“nonviolent revolutionary” Gandhi may have been claiming no more than

that he had pioneered basic innovations in the method of struggling

against oppression or, in other words, had revolutionized the technique

of struggle. In the second, although the contrast between seizing power

and transforming relationships is significant—pointing perhaps to a

difference between Gandhi’s approach and that of the Committee for

Nonviolent Revolution cited above—the context makes it clear that the

relationships he had in mind were political, not social, the

transformation to be marked by the transfer of power from British to

Indian hands. At most and in itself, this statement would suggest that

Gandhi had developed the concept of nonviolent political revolution—a

concept the application of which was perhaps limited to situations

where, as in India at that time, the people did not enjoy full

democratic rights.

In fact, as his other writings and his activities make clear, Gandhi was

a social as well as a political revolutionary; he did seek radical

changes in the structure of society, polity and economy and also in

modes of thinking and individual behaviour. He was, indeed, in modern

parlance, an advocate of total revolution. But to most observers in the

West and also to many in India, Gandhi’s revolution, involving as it did

a critique of industrial civilization, was of the wrong kind: it was not

progressive but reactionary, aiming at putting the clock back, not

forward![18] Given this view of Gandhi as a “counter-revolutionary”, it

is not surprising that even many of those who admired his skill in

leading the struggle for national liberation in India were highly

selective in what they took to be Gandhi’s “message”. In the West, with

rare exceptions, Gandhi’s contribution was assessed as the development

and popularisation of a technique of social action, a method of

resolving conflicts nonviolently. By informed students, although often

not by nonviolent activists who invoked his name, it has usually been

recognized that Gandhi’s “technique” is based on a “philosophy” which

renders the technique distinguishable from “passive resistance”. Thus,

for example, satyagraha is principled as distinct from pragmatic or

expediential nonviolence; and it aims at converting rather than coercing

the opponent, whereas passive resistance is often overtly coercive in

the sense of seeking to compel the opponent to do what he would not

willingly do. Nevertheless, despite these differences, the picture of

Gandhi presented in the West has largely been that of an exponent of the

technique of nonviolent action. [19] In this context, it is significant

that when “Gandhism” began to have a noticeable influence on politics in

the West it manifested itself first at the level of action. It was only

subsequently that some nonviolent activists proceeded to explore other

aspects of Gandhi’s thought and to discover their relevance to problems

that confront Western societies. [20]

In India, as might be expected, there has always been a more rounded

understanding of Gandhi. As a broad generalization, it would be fair to

say that for most Indians, including the bulk of those who accepted his

leadership of the Indian National Congress, it was Gandhi’s technique of

struggle against the British Raj that attracted them to him. Other

aspects of his thought and activities, when not openly challenged, were,

so to speak, tolerated as the price to pay for his leadership or, as in

the case of his “fad” for khadi, interpreted as having little more than

symbolic value for the political struggle. [21] But over the course of

the years in which he dominated Indian politics, Gandhi did succeed in

attracting to himself a relatively small band of disciples—genuine

votaries of his own developing philosophy of nonviolence. It was to

these people that Gandhi assigned the main responsibility for developing

what he came to call his Constructive Programme.

This Programme provides the essential clue to understanding Gandhi’s

approach to nonviolence, as well as confirmation that he was a social

revolutionary. From the outset of his public career, including the

period of apprenticeship in South Africa, Gandhi, as an acknowledged

disciple of Tolstoy, was concerned to see that all social life should be

governed, as far as possible, by “the law of love”. This implied not

merely conforming to this “law” in struggling against oppression but

also constructing and reconstructing social institutions. The Gandhian

approach, therefore, was dual or two-sided, one side being what may be

termed “civil resistance,” the other being “constructive work”. [22] To

Gandhi, the latter was the more important. This assertion is supported

by various statements that he made. In 1931 he wrote: “My work of social

reform was in no way less than or subordinate to political work. The

fact is that when I saw that to a certain extent my social work would be

impossible without the help of political work, I took to the latter and

only to the extent that it helped the former.” [23] A few years later,

he is reported as telling his followers: “If you can make a success of

the constructive programme you will win swaraj for India without civil

disobedience.” [24] And in 1940, in a significant confession that he had

not achieved a correct balance between the two sides, he admitted: “In

placing civil disobedience before constructive work I was wrong. … I

feared that I should estrange co-workers and so carried on with

imperfect ahimsa.” [25]

Gandhi’s constructive programme was developed piecemeal and included

items such as the promotion of khadi and other village industries,

achieving Hindu-Muslim communal unity, prohibition, and the abolition of

untouchability. In a pamphlet The Constructive Programme: Its Meaning

and Place, published in 1941, eighteen such items were listed. At first

glance, it is a curious list and one that suggests—as does the 1931

statement quoted above—that Gandhi was a social reformer rather than

social revolutionist. However, it included one item of an intellectual

order different from the rest and which he singled out as “the master

key to nonviolent independence”: the attainment of economic equality.

From this, as also from the other writings in which he sketched his

vision of a future India made up of largely self-sufficient but

inter-linked “village republics”, it is clear that he envisaged basic

structural changes. [26] His ways of working might appear “reformist”

and he might describe himself as a “social reformer” but his cast of

mind was that of revolutionary. This is evident in his statement: “I

would use the most deadly weapons if I believed they would destroy (the

system). I refrain only because the use of such weapons would only

perpetuate the system.”[27] It is also clear that, looking beyond the

attainment of political independence, he anticipated the need to use

civil resistance: “I know that if I survive the struggle for freedom, I

might have to give nonviolent battles to my own countrymen which may be

as stubborn as that in which I am now engaged.” [28] Further, Gandhi was

convinced that, whatever might be true of other countries, a bloody

revolution would not succeed in India. [29] He also believed that the

Indian peasants, once the British prop to the status quo had been

removed, would themselves take revolutionary action. In a free India, he

told Louis Fischer in 1942, “the peasants would take the land. We would

not have to tell them to take it.” [30]

Additional insights into Gandhi’s thinking about the nonviolent

revolution in which he saw himself engaged may be gathered from various

statements and proposals made in the brief period between the attainment

of political independence and his assassination on 30 January 1948. From

the perspective of Gandhi and his closest followers, political

independence was merely ‘the first step’ towards the attainment of real

independence. The withdrawal of the British Raj, since it involved a

basic change of regime, could be considered a nonviolent revolution—even

if it had been accompanied by appalling and bloody communal conflicts

which prompted Gandhi to reflect earnestly on the character of his

countrymen and on the nature of the nonviolence they had displayed, in

his view, that of “the weak” rather than of “the brave” or “the strong”.

[31] But it had been no more than a political revolution, and an

incomplete one at that, since political power had still not been

transferred to the masses. And, of course, it had in no sense been a

social revolution. From this perspective, some constructive workers,

soon after independence, expressed their concern at the way the Congress

appeared to be ignoring the Constructive Programme. They suggested,

therefore, that an organization should be formed which would seek to

place constructive workers in the newly-formed Union and State

governments, so that political power could be used to help establish a

nonviolent social order. Gandhi opposed the suggestion on the ground

that the moment nonviolence assumed political power it contradicted

itself and became contaminated. “Politics have today,” he said, “become

corrupt. Anybody who goes into them is contaminated. Let us keep out of

them altogether. Our influence will grow thereby.”[32] The role of

constructive workers, he added, was to guide political power and to

mould the politics of the country without taking power themselves:

“Banish power and keep it on the right path.” [33] However, Gandhi did

admit that it was necessary to reorganize the constructive work

activities. In place of the various specific associations that had been

set up to carry on particular items of the programme, he suggested their

combination in a single umbrella-type association. More significantly,

in a document written on the day preceding his assassination, he

proposed that the Congress should disband as a political party and

flower again in the form of a Lok Sevak Sangh or Association for the

Service of the People. “Congress in its present shape and form, i.e. as

propaganda vehicle and parliamentary machine”, he wrote, “has outlived

its use. India has still to attain social, moral and economic

independence in terms of its seven hundred thousand villages as distinct

from its cities and towns.” [34]

The document in which Gandhi made this radical and, to most observers,

astonishing proposal has come to be known as his “Last Will and

Testament”. For Gandhi’s true followers it has remained a key document,

a guide in helping them to chart the course of the nonviolent revolution

in India which Gandhi had initiated but the completion of which, now

that he was dead, it was their task to fulfill.

The vehicle for the development of the theory and practice of India’s

nonviolent revolution has been the Sarvodaya (Welfare of All) Movement,

which is the direct descendant of Gandhi’s Constructive Programme and of

the institutions and persons involved in it. In this book, I attempt to

trace the development of the movement from the time of Gandhi’s death to

the end of the year 1982. The book is concerned mainly with the years

since 1969, partly because the story of the earlier years has been the

subject of previous authors.[35] The purpose of Chapter One is to

outline the main developments in the movement’s first twenty-one years,

knowledge of which is essential for understanding the more recent

developments. The book, it should be emphasized, does not seek to

provide a rounded history of the movement. The focus of the study,

rather, is on what may loosely be called the movement’s “strategy and

tactics”. The reason for choosing this focus will become apparent in

Chapter Two, which deals with the period 1969-1973. In these years, the

movement ran into severe difficulties, which, in view of many of its

activists, threatened the achievement of its goals. A strategy debate

then took place, the outcome of which was the adoption of a revised

strategy. Jayaprakash Narayan (henceforth referred to as ‘JP’, the

initials by which he was popularly known], second only to Vinoba Bhave

in the movement’s leadership, was the principal exponent of this new

strategy. Its further development and application are related in

Chapters Three and Four, which cover the period from JP’s assumption of

the leadership of the student-initiated agitation in Bihar in March 1974

down to the declaration by Indira Gandhi’s Government of a general state

of Emergency in June 1975. It was in these years that JP developed his

concept of “Total Revolution,” a concept which, it will be shown, is a

version of the concept of nonviolent revolution but the promotion of

which, since it was not supported by Vinoba, led to a split in the

Sarvodaya movement. In Chapter Five, the experience of the movement in

the years of the Emergency, 1975-77, is discussed. Chapter Six relates

the subsequent experience in the years of the Janata Government,

1977-80, and Chapter Seven surveys developments during the first three

years after Indira Gandhi’s return to power in January 1980. In the

“Conclusion”, I make a final comment on the differences between Vinoba

and JP and present some reflections on the movement’s strategy.

In presenting my material chronologically, I have attempted to provide

the reader with a narrative, rather than an analytical and theoretical,

account of the development by its Indian exponents of their concept of

nonviolent revolution. My justifications for making the attempt are two.

The story of JP’s intellectual odyssey from Marxism to Total Revolution

has been the subject of several recently published works, [36] but their

focus has been on JP as a social and political thinker: his role as a

leader of the Sarvodaya movement from 1953 until his death in 1979 has

not been fully explored. The developments in JP’s thought in his later

years—his “last phase”—were not simply the product of his own search for

truth but were also influenced by his Sarvodaya colleagues, some of

whom, it will become evident, either anticipated or encouraged him to

develop “the new line” with which his name is associated. Numerous other

studies have focused on the Bihar agitation, “the JP movement”, the

Emergency, and the rise and fall of the Janata Party and Government.[37]

But, in my view, none of these studies has explored adequately the role

of the Sarvodaya movement in these historic events.[38] The study that

follows attempts to do just this.

The other principal justification of my study is that nonviolent

revolution is a novel and challenging concept. It is frequently

dismissed as an absurd or impossible concept, especially by Marxists,

but also by many others. Such dismissals are only rarely made on the

basis of informed knowledge and understanding of the one movement in the

contemporary world that has made a serious effort to develop it. [39]

The concept may, finally, have to be judged as “absurd”, “impossible,”

and as yet one more ideological construct of the Utopian mentality; but,

if this be the judgement, it should be made after a proper examination

of such evidence as is presented in this study. However, as I have

already indicated, there are those—still very few in number but possibly

a growing number— who are attracted by the concept. In countries outside

India such people are not always as informed as they should be about the

Indian experiment and experience. To them this study should be of

particular value. All readers, however, should be advised that I do not

adopt a “value neutral” position on the issue of nonviolent revolution.

In telling my story, I have tried to exercise the detachment expected of

a scholar and I have tried not to ignore or to disguise unpalatable

facts. But it is only proper that I declare my interest: I myself am one

of the tiny minority who find the concept attractive. How much this

interest has biased my account is for each reader to judge. I would add,

however, that, as a political scientist, I am not impressed by those who

describe politics as “the art of the possible”. I am much more impressed

by those who have a quite contrary attitude towards politics and who are

prepared to declare, as Gandhi once did, “Our task is to make the

impossible possible.” Prizing open the limits of the possible is, in my

view, what politics —and much else in human life—should be about. In

this connection, it may be worth noting that Max Weber, the celebrated

author of Politics as a Vocation and coiner of that very un-Gandhian

dictum: “The decisive means for politics is violence”, made much the

same point: “All historical experience confirms the truth that man would

not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out

for the impossible.” [40]

[1] Gene Sharp, Gandhi as a Political Strategist (Boston: Porter

Sargent, 1979), p. 221. His other types are: nonresistance, active

reconciliation, moral resistance, selective nonviolence, and satyagraha.

[2] Quoted in G. Hubbard, Quaker by Convincement (Harmondsworth:

Penguin, 1974), p. 128.

[3] Speech in Amsterdam, 1872. See D. McLellan, Karl Marx: Selected

Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 594-95. Marx’s

admission of the possibility of a peaceful revolution in certain

countries represented a modification of the position he and Engels had

expressed in The Communist Manifesto, the concluding paragraph of which

states that the ends of the Communists “can be attained only by the

forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.”

[4] See C. M. Case, Nonviolent Coercion (New York: Century, 1923), pp.

227-80. “Anti-militarism” is associated with the belief that all or most

modern wars are fought in the interests of ruling classes and does not

preclude the violent overthrow of such classes. Some anti-militarists

advocated joining the army in order to spread disaffection and to

persuade the troops to use their weapons against their class enemies.

[5] Two books, which helped to popularize Gandhi’s technique in the

West, are Richard Gregg, The Power of Nonviolence (London: Clarke, 1960,

originally published in 1935) and K. Shridharani, War Without Violence

(London: Gollancz, 1939).

[6] Sharp, Gandhi as a Political Strategist, p. 222, suggests that

satyagraha is the most important type of pacifism contributing to the

development of nonviolent revolution largely because it combines a

pacifist position with a technique of resistance and revolution, thus

serving as a bridge or catalyst between pacifism and social revolution.

[7] The English edition was published in London by Routledge in 1937.

[8] Cited in Sharp, Gandhi as a Political Strategist, pp. 233-34, n. 67.

[9] Quoted in Sharp. Gandhi as a Political Strategist, p. 223.

[10] For an account of Muste’s ideas and actions, see Nat Hentoff, Peace

Agitator: The Story of A. J. Muste (New York: Macmillan, 1964). Lakey’s

books include Strategy for a Living Revolution (San Francisco, 1973) and

(with S. Gowan, W. Mover and R. Taylor) Moving Toward a New Society

(Philadelphia: New Society Press, 1976).

[11] This strategy had been prefigured by certain Owenite trade

unionists who, in 1834, formed the Grand National Consolidated Trades

Union. Its object was to take over the control of industry following

what they called a Grand National Holiday.

[12] The scenario is discussed by Martin Oppenheimer in Chapter Six of

his Urban Guerrilla (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970). His conclusions are

negative.

[13] In 1971, Peace News, the British peace movement journal and by then

one which expressed the new viewpoint, adopted “For Nonviolent

Revolution” as its subtitle. In the following year, the War Resisters’

International (London) published its Manifesto for Nonviolent

Revolution. The concept was subsequently elaborated by Howard Clark, a

former editor of Peace News, in a pamphlet entitled Making Nonviolent

Revolution (London: Housmans, 1978). The emergence of anarcho-pacifism

is discussed more fully in my “Resisting the nation-state; the pacifist

and anarchist traditions” in L. Tivey (ed.) The Nation State (Oxford:

Martin Robertson, 1981).

[14] See Nigel Young, An Infantile Disorder: The Crisis and Decline of

the New Left (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977).

[15] Sri Lanka is a second country in which a significant movement for

nonviolent revolution has developed. For a comparison between the Sri

Lankan Sarvodaya Movement and its Indian counterpart, see Detlef

Kantowsky, Sarvodaya: The Other Development (New Delhi: Vikas, 1980).

[16] The quotation was used as the epigraph to an article by Jayaprakash

Narayan in The Times (London), 13 October 1969. In the article, JP

argues that Gandhi’s nonviolence “is indeed a philosophy of a total

revolution, because it embraces personal and social ethics and values of

life as much as economic, political and social institutions and

processes.”

[17] Harijan, 17 February 1946.

[18] The key work for understanding a Gandhian revolution is Hind

Swaraj, 1909, a devastating critique of modern industrial civilization.

[19] See, especially, Joan Bondurant, The Conquest of Violence

(Princeton University Press, 1958) and Gene Sharp, The Politics of

Nonviolent Action (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1971). It should be noted

that both authors recognize, even if they do not emphasize, the

importance of the “constructive work” side of Gandhi’s approach.

[20] This reflects my own personal experience, an interest in his

technique leading on to a deeper study of Gandhi’s ideas. For a

discussion of the relevance of Gandhi today, see my article “A new

society” in Resurgence, May-June 1975. It should be noted, however,

that, earlier, others had pointed to their relevance. See Richard Gregg,

Which Way Lies Hope! (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1957) and Wilfred Wellock,

Gandhi as a Social Revolutionary (Preston: Wellock, 1957).

[21] Thus the wearing of khadi and “the Gandhi cap” became, in Nehru’s

words, “the livery of freedom”.

[22] Gandhi’s development of his dual approach in the years 1915-22 is

the subject of the (as yet unpublished) study by Bob Overy of the School

of Peace Studies, University of Bradford. Following Overy, I use “civil

resistance” as the best term to refer to one side of Gandhi’s approach.

[23] Young India, 6 August 1931.

[24] Quoted in Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase (Ahmedabad:

Navajivan, 1956), Vol. I, p. 44.

[25] Harijan, 21 July 1940.

[26] See, especially, the following of Gandhi’s works: Sarvodaya and

Village Swaraj (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1954 and 1963, respectively) and

Socialism of My Conception (Bombay: Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan, 1957).

[27] Young India, 17 March 1927. The quotation continues: “ . . . though

it may destroy the present administrators. Those who seek to destroy men

rather than manners adopt the latter and become worse than those they

destroy under the mistaken belief that the manners will die with the

men. They do not know the root of the evil.”

[28] Ibid, 30 January 1930.

[29] Young India, 12 February 1925.

[30] Louis Fischer, A Week with Gandhi (New York, 1942), p. 54.

[31] On Gandhi’s evaluation of the kind of nonviolence used in the

Indian struggle for independence, see Sharp, Gandhi as a Political

Strategist, Chapter 6.

[32] Quoted in Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase, Vol. II, p.

664.

[33] Quoted in Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase, Vol. II, p.

666.

[34]

M. K. Gandhi, My Non-Violence (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1960), p. 359.

[35] See, for example. Suresh Ram, Vinoba and His Mission (Kashi: Sarva

Seva Sangh Prakashan, 1954, 3rd ed. 1962), Suresh Ram, Towards Total

Revolution (Thanjavur: Sarvodaya Prachuralayam, 1968), and Hallam

Tennyson, Saint on the March (London: Gollancz, 1956). My own study

(with M. Currel) The Gentle Anarchists (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971)

is primarily a sociological analysis of the movement.

[36] See the introductions by the editors to the selections of JP’s

writings: Bimal Prasad, A Revolutionary’s Quest (Delhi: Oxford

University Press, 1980) and Brahmanand, Towards Total Revolution

(Bombay: Popular Prakashan, Vols. I-IV, 1978). See also R.C. Gupta, JP:

From Marxism to Total Revolution (New Delhi: Sterling, 1981).

[37] These include: Ghanshyam Shah, Protest Movements in Two Indian

States (Delhi: Ajanta, 1977), R. K. Barik, The Politics of the JP

Movement (New Delhi: Radiant, 1977), S. K. Ghose, The Crusade and End of

Indira Raj (New Delhi: Intellectual Book Corner, 1978), J. A. Naik, The

Great Janata Revolution (New Delhi: Chand, 1977), J. A. Naik, From Total

Revolution to Total Failure (New Delhi: National, 1979).

[38] Exceptions might be made of the books by the Sarvodaya activist,

Vasant Nargolkar, JP’s Crusade for Revolution (New Delhi, 1975) and JP

Vindicated! (New Delhi, 1977), although, as the titles suggest, the

focus is on JP rather than on the Sarvodaya movement.

[39] The best-informed critique of the movement in its earlier years

remains the pamphlet by R. T. Ranadive, Sarvodaya and Communism (New

Delhi: Communist Party of India, 1958).

[40]

H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills, From Max Weber (London, 1947), p. 128.

For the dictum, see p. 121.