Category: Features

It was Gandhi, first in South Africa and then in India, who both evolved a technique that he called ‘satyagraha’ that he characterised in terms of its ‘non-violence’. In this, ‘non-violence’ was forged as both a new word in the English language, and as a new political concept.
The Non-violent Struggle for Freedom by David Hardiman brings out in graphic detail exactly what this entailed, and the formidable difficulties that the pioneers of such resistance encountered in the years 1905-19.
Here is an excerpt from the book:

The idea of nonviolence as a form of political strategy was theorised by Gandhi in India during the second decade of the twentieth century.   The Oxford English Dictionary states that the first recorded usage of the word – in its hyphenated form – was in the nineteenth century as a medical term describing either a certain type of surgical procedure (Britain) or the failure of the body to resist the violence that is inflicted on it by disease (USA).  Only in 1914 did it appear in a political context when a Wisconsin newspaper contrasted ‘rumpus and riot’ with ‘the tenets of moderation, orderly thinking and non-violence’.   The next usage recorded in the dictionary was by Gandhi, who stated in 1920: ‘I believe that non-violence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment.’  Despite the preceding appearances of the word in Britain and the USA, the dictionary gives its etymology as a translation of the Sanskrit word ahimsa, which is a combination of a- (non-) and himsa (violence).   This indeed was how Gandhi was to project the idea – namely that nonviolence was a major philosophical principle that was rooted in ancient India.  If, however, we look at the nineteenth-century Sanskrit- English dictionary by Monier-Williams, we find that the term – spelt here as ahinsa – is translated as ‘not injuring anything, harmlessness (one of the cardinal virtues of most Hindu sects, but particularly of the Buddhists and Jains; also personified as the wife of Dharma)…security, safeness’.  Ahinsa-nirata is defined as ‘harmlessness or gentleness’, ahinsana as ‘not hurting’, and ahinsra as ‘innocuous, harmless behaviour’.  The term thus suggested passivity, rather than a principled resistance to wrong-doing that avoids the use of violence – as Gandhi understood it.

***********************************

In the past, ahimsa was hardly deemed to have any applicability to popular protest, or be some sort of political technique.   This only became possible in the epistemic space that we associate with modernity, with its emphasis on the need of states to enjoy popular legitimacy and with acts of mass civil protests becoming one major way in which popular feeling may be expressed.   In emphasising the need for peaceful means, dissent could be expressed without the need for that violence that could threaten both civil tolerance and even civil society itself.  Although such a principle was conceived initially conceived in terms of the secular method of ‘passive resistance’, with peaceable methods being deployed tactically rather than as a matter of principle, it was Gandhi who first tried to make ahimsa-cum-nonviolence into an imperative principle for all forms of civil protest. In doing so, he claimed a compelling power to a moral stance that was, as he understood it, invested with divine power – that of ‘truth force’.   In this, God/Truth was accorded agency.   Secular notions of ‘passive resistance’, ‘civil resistance’, ‘people power’ and the like never made such a daring claim.
 Gandhi only began to talk about ahimsa as an informing principle of his method of resistance after his return to India from South Africa in 1915. Gandhi only began to talk about ahimsa as an informing principle of his method of resistance after his return to India from South Africa in 1915.  Although Gandhi had already forged his method of satyagraha, he had never previously described it as a form of either ‘ahimsa’ or ‘nonviolence’.  There has been some confusion on this matter, as the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi gives the impression that he deployed the concept when he launched his first campaign of passive resistance in 1906.  In this source, Gandhi had allegedly asserted: ‘This is for us the time for deeds, not words. We have to act boldly; and in doing so, we have to be humble and non-violent.’   If we examine the original version in Gujarati, we find that he is quoted as saying ‘…narmash vaparvani che’ which literally means ‘make use of softness’.   In fact, the root of ‘narmash’ is the noun ‘naram’, which means soft and smooth, gentle, tender, humble, soft, weak, effeminate.    In other words, it suggests passivity, a connotation that Gandhi was soon to distance himself from.

Although non-violence is associated above all with the towering figure of M.K. Gandhi, David Hardiman shows – in his book, The Non Violent Struggle for Freedom – that civil forms of resistance were already being practiced by nationalists in British-ruled India under the rubric of ‘passive resistance’.

Sohaila Abdulali was the first Indian survivor to speak out about rape. In her book, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape, writing from the viewpoint of a survivor, writer, counsellor and activist, and drawing on three decades of grappling with the issue personally and professionally and her work with hundreds of survivors, Sohaila Abdulali looks at what we-women, men, politicians, teachers, writers, sex workers, feminists, sages, mansplainers, victims and families-think about rape and what we say.
She also explores what we don’t say.
Here is an excerpt from the chapter in the book titled How to save a life

When Audrey phoned from Rome and told her friends what had happened to her, they flew straight to her from different parts of the world without a moment’s hesitation.
When an unnamed woman (#LionMama) in South Africa heard that her daughter had been raped, she killed the rapist.
When a High Court judge in Punjab and Haryana read a victim statement about the men who raped her, he decided she was promiscuous and rescinded their sentences.
When a twelve-year-old in Pakistan told her mother she had been raped, her mother went to the village elders, who ordered the rape of one of the rapists’ sisters.
When my father found me, he wrapped me in his arms, carried me up four sets of stairs to the roof, and said, “What do you want? We’ll do whatever you want.”
Four years later, when I was counseling survivors, training professionals, and speaking at schools, I found myself using my father—a middle-aged Muslim man who had never
studied psychology, sociology or gender dynamics—as the textbook model for how to behave with a survivor.
It’s a simple formula. Give unstinting control, acceptance and support. That’s it.
A couple of days after the rape, I got ready to go take a bus to a different part of town. My father came in, saw my bright pink and blue silk shirt, and said, “Don’t wear that on the bus!”
“Arre, why not?”
“I don’t know … people might see you!”
We stared at each other, both horrified at what he had said. I understood that he wasn’t ashamed of me. He wanted to protect me, to make me invisible so that nobody could see me, and hurt me.
“Let them see me!” I said.
“Yes, let them.”
Then there was the uncle who first didn’t want to call the police, then didn’t want to tell my mother, then didn’t want anyone to talk about it, ever. Once again, my father, usually the decisive one, turned to me for a cue.
“It’s not a secret,” I fumed. “Why should I hide it, why?”
He took that and ran with it, much to many people’s discomfiture. All he wanted was for me to feel better and get whatever I needed. A few days later, we were paying a social call to some people we didn’t know very well, who had no idea what had so recently happened. In the middle of tea and biscuits and a totally unrelated conversation, my father suddenly broke in with, “My daughter was raped!” Talk about a conversation-killer … I still laugh when I think about that moment.
Despite the simple formula, it’s not always easy to decide what to do. We are always looking for reasons to play down sexual assault. And one of the easiest reasons is plain old discomfort. One woman told me about an uncle groping her, and how she still socialized with him until he died many years later. Shunning him would have meant hurting her aunt, whom she loved. Always making sure there was a table between her uncle and her was easier than creating a huge schism in the family. She and her parents agreed on this. But it’s a slippery slope—suppose she had not been able to bear family gatherings? For her, it was not a huge deal to see the creepy old man. For someone else, it might have been.

Get your copy of What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape now!