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Practice of Non-Violence
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(4) Norway's Non-Violent Resistance (1940-43). Some of them failed when violence crept into them.
Whither Satyagraha?
Throughout India, local satyagrahas are reported almost daily. Even while Gandhi was alive, strikes and fasts had become a universal plague. Agitations organised in whichever way and for whatever objective, were widely described as 'satyagraha movements. Nowadays the name satyagraha has come to be applied to almost any direct social or political action, short of organised violence, against government or an institution.
They are intended to apply sufficient pressure against the allegedly unjust policy of the opponent so as to make him agree to one's own supposedly just demands. A strike is typical of the straight forward application of such pressure. It is commonly employed to effect economic pressure, and is intended to hurt business or to strain relationships so that normal functions are brought to a halt, or at least inhibited. Normal functioning is not allowed to be resumed until policy changes are instituted. The participants in such campaigns approach the conflict with a set of prejudgements: the opponent is, ipso facto, wrong; the 'immoral' position that he holds must be exposed and in its place be substituted a 'morally right position which is preconceived as being correct.
While a satyagraha strives for and seeks a re-synthesis of position whereby the opponent is converted through a change of heart so that ultimately both the parties in conflict feel the joy of triumph over the situation, these above-mentioned procedures of strikes and fasts (which may perhaps be termed duragraha) seek concessions by application of undue pressure; the loss to the opponent is no consideration to a duragrahi.
Yet these duragrahas are the order of the day. The leaders and the participants of such struggles do not have the purity of mind, the preliminary training, or the patience to practice satyagraha. Satyagraha as conceived and practised by Gandhi is a faultless instrument which can provide social justice through non-violent means, but just now it is out of fashion, out of demand; people do not understand the working of this instrument; they are not even inclined to understand its
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