The philosophy of nonviolence may be exploited to prevent reform

I am not a pacifist. I think that nonviolent protests and demonstrations, as exemplified by Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement and by Martin Luther King's Freedom Marches, are generally a very good idea, but I certainly do not believe that nonviolent protests are the only valid response to tyranny and injustice. The effectiveness of nonviolent protest has its limits, and history has shown that there are always tyrants who are not at all influenced or swayed by nonviolent protests. For example, it is highly doubtful that the sight of thousands of Jews assembling or marching in peaceful protest would have brought a positive reaction from the Nazis in Germany during the 1930s and 40s.

In 1905, thousands of people assembled in peaceful protest before the Russian Czar’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to present a very reasonable request for the Czar’s mercy for the suffering of the poor. Without any warning, the Czar’s troops suddenly opened fire on the demonstrators, and then the Czar’s Cossack cavalry rode in with their sabers drawn, mercilessly cutting down many of those who had survived the bullets. Hundreds of the peaceful demonstrators were killed, and their bodies littered the bloodstained snow.

One tragic outcome of the Russian Revolution was the execution of Czar Nicholas and his family in 1918. Czar Nicholas could have avoided this grisly result by listening to the Russian People and respecting their natural rights as human beings. But it is well documented that Czar Nicholas firmly believed in his own ‘Divine Right’ to rule as he was putatively ‘ordained by God’, and that he paternalistically regarded himself as ‘the Father of the Russian People’. It is my opinion that the egotistical Czar Nicholas, overconfident in his own ill-considered beliefs and judgment, was ultimately more responsible for the violent Russian Revolution and for the unfortunate fate of his own Royal Family than were the Revolutionaries who overthrew him.

In India, Mahatma Gandhi and the Satyagraha movement were protesting against their nation’s British occupiers, who were spread quite thinly, not only in India, but also in dozens of other British colonies throughout the world. The British Empire was overextended, and while the British military was trying desperately to stop the German Blitzkrieg in Poland and France, the Japanese quickly conquered most of the British colonies in East Asia. British nationals captured by the Japanese were interned and terribly abused in squalid and disease- ridden ‘death camps’ for the next four years, until the War ended in 1945.

After the fall of Southeast Asia to the Japanese, Gandhi and the Congress Party, which led the Satyagraha movement, agreed to stop their protests and demonstrations for the duration of the War. Gandhi and the other leaders of the Satyagraha movement wisely believed that Japanese occupation would be far worse than the British occupation. After the War, the British finally allowed India its Independence in 1946.

The Satyagraha movement in India was successful in large part because Britain was a democratic country with a population that was to some degree devoted to the notion of ‘fair play’. Also, by the end of World War Two, the British government, whose economy was devastated by the War, was finding it increasingly impossible to maintain control over all of its many overseas colonies.

Those who advocate the exclusive use of nonviolent peaceful protest and who also advocate using the existing and hopelessly corrupt US political and electoral process to bring about change within the fascist USA should be reminded of certain historical facts.

Mahatma Gandhi was not entirely a pacifist in his political philosophy. On a number of occasions Gandhi admitted that, while he personally developed and advocated the Satyagraha movement’s methods of nonviolent peaceful protests against the British colonial occupation of India, he (Gandhi) also recognized that the Satyagraha movement’s methods of nonviolent peaceful protest would not work against the German Nazis or the Japanese Imperialists.

At the outbreak of World War Two, Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party, which organized and led the Satyagraha movement, made an agreement with the British government that for the duration of the War, the Congress Party would direct its leaders and its followers to ‘stand down’, and refrain from staging any Satyagraha protests or demonstrations. Furthermore, the Congress Party, including Gandhi, encouraged the Indian population to support the British war effort against the Germans and the Japanese. The Congress Party even helped recruit Indian troops for the British Army.

Thus we see that Mahatma Gandhi, the fabled leader of the nonviolent Satyagraha movement, advocated violent measures against the Germans and the Japanese during World War Two. This seeming paradox in Gandhi's behavior demonstrates that Gandhi was not a purist, but a pragmatist, when it came to choosing between the nonviolent Satyagraha methods or violent resistance. Those who consider themselves to be followers of Gandhi and Satyagraha need to be reminded of this fact, because many of them espouse a rigid adherence to Satyagraha that Gandhi himself did not advocate or follow.

There are many Christian advocates of strictly nonviolent protest whose role-model is Jesus, and they should be reminded that according to the Bible, Jesus armed Himself with a scourge to drive the money changers from the Temple.