Mahatma Gandhi News Digest, Germany : Issue for May 22 – 28, 2006

Mahatma Gandhi News Digest, Germany : Issue for May 22 – 28, 2006

Gandhi and his women
Mid-Day – India – March 5, 2006

The Mahatma started practising brahmacharya since 1901. For him, brahmacharya was wider concept than mere celibacy or continence. It constituted an entire philosophy and a moral imperative to be observed in thought, word and deed — indeed his sure road to nirvana.
Sexuality in his world view was to be banished to the nether regions for eternity. He took a vow of lifelong celibacy in 1906. Since then till his death, his personal life was a mission its goal: To become the perfect brahmachari. All through, he sought to explain his quest.
To his friend and benefactor GD Birla, Gandhiji said: “Today I am a better brahmachari than I was in 1901. What my experiment has done is to make me firm in my brahmacharya. The experiment was designed to make myself a perfect brahmachari and if God so wills it will lead to perfection.”
Everyone should abjure passion, Gandhiji thought.
The thesis of passionless society was explained in a letter to his devoted follower Krishnachandra: “The idea is that a man, by becoming passionless, transforms himself into a woman, that is, he includes the woman into himself. The same is true of a passionless woman. If you visualise the state of passionlessness in your mind, you will understand what I say. It is a different story that we do not come across such men and women.” The primary discordant note in this abstinence-dictated harmony is, of course, that not even Gandhiji claimed to have reached that state.
Parade of women
Observers of his life would be struck by a singular fact: for a man who abhorred bodily temptations, women constituted his entire world at one level. They walked in and out of his life. From his days in South Africa to the end of his life he maintained the closest relations with them.
Millie Graham Polak was the first. She was a lady in every sense of the term. Gandhiji established complete rapport with her soon after she arrived in South Africa. Her husband Henry was also one of his closest friends. Sonja Schlesin was the other woman from his South African days. She was the best secretary he ever had. She led from the front and was the only woman Gandhiji was afraid of. She was domineering, aggressive and opinionated, but she delivered.
Two women entered his life after his return to India — Saraladevi Chowdharani and Madeline Slade from England. The former was a cultured and cultivated bradramahila of Tagore lineage. She was Gandhiji’s only true infatuation. In a rare confession recorded in his diary, he talked of “one exemption” to physical passion in his entire life. The tall Slade was a British Admiral’s daughter whom Gandhiji rechristened Mirabehn.
She was, as the irreverent modern expression would have it, obsessed with Gandhiji. Her whole life may be described as a pilgrimage in the cause of the Mahatma. He teased her and played little games with her. In the end, she forsook him for Baba Prithvi Singh Azad, and finally, Beethoven, her first love.
There were three other Western women who came in close contact with him but quickly left. The American Nilla Cram Cook was Mahatma’s most vivacious woman associate. He was fond of calling her the Fallen Daughter. She appeared and disappeared whirlwind-like.
The German Jewish Margarete Spiegel was dull, boring and slow-witted but totally in awe of Gandhiji (and Tagore). Gandhiji was being gallant when he told her, “I shall love you in spite of your faults.” The Danish missionary Esther Faering had an intense personal relationship with Gandhiji who treated her like his favoured daughter.
Gandhiji had high respects for Premabehn Kantak, Prabhavati and Rajkumari Amrit Kaur. Prema was known as the field marshal of the Gandhian army and true defender of faith. She often debated brahmacharya with Gandhiji.
Prabhavati, the wife of distinguished socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan, was a married brahmacharini all her life. She was the subject of discord between Gandhiji and JP. She was torn between two loyalties but preferred Gandhiji over her husband. Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, the Kapurthala princess, had established a remarkable degree of rapport with her mentor.
There were several minor characters who survived a long association with Gandhiji. The “crazy daughter”, Bibi Amutussalaam of Patiala, was asked to bring peace to riot-torn Sind. She was commissioned by her mentor to go to riot-ridden region to bring about the normalcy.
She was, however, given to frequent bouts of depression. Gandhiji’s ashram companion, Lilavati Asar, termed “a limpet” by him, divided time between her studies and keeping her mentor’s company. Kanchan Shah, the Mahatma’s role model for practicing brahmacharya, was as defiant as her husband Munnalal was submissive.
Among the younger of the Mahatma’s women associated were Sushila Nayyar and Manubehn Gandhi. Sushila was his personal physician, and in constant attendance. Sushila, her brother Pyarelal and Gandhiji constituted an “unstable triangle” with years of association dotted with prolonged periods of quarrels, recriminations, and reconciliations as reflected in their correspondence.
Manu Gandhi, the granddaughter of the Mahatma’s brother, was the youngest and most lovable of his woman associates. She was ready for the hard grind of tapasya throughout Gandhiji’s sojourn in Noakhali. She was his closest associate during his last few years.
Above all was the towering figure of Kasturba Gandhi, the Mother Courage. Popularly known as ‘Ba’, she was the stabilising factor throughout Gandhji’s life. She was overwhelmed by his personality in the first years of their relationship, but gradually came into her own.
She exercised subtle control over him at the critical moments of his life. While the other women were sisters and daughters, Ba was his dharmic wife who subsequently substituted for his mother. The Mahatma’s most difficult years were after her death in 1944.
Women in brahmacharya experiment
In the 1920s, Gandhiji had started resting his hands on the shoulders of young women during his morning and evening walks. He affectionately called Manu Gandhi and other girls his “walking sticks”. The next step on the same road was his elaborate daily massage, performed by young women.
The massage was followed by bath with presence of a woman attendant almost essential. Sushila Nayyar was the usual fixture on such occasions. She would take her bath at the same time. On such occasions Gandhiji would keep his eyes closed to save him embarrassment. Gandhiji has given a graphic description of the bathing ritual in his own words after it gave rise to “bathing gossip” among the ashramites.
The further step on the road was the ritual of young women sleeping next to him, close to him, or with him. What started as a mere sleeping arrangement became, over time, an exercise to obtain the nirvana state of perfect brahmacharya. Gandhiji was brutally truthful about his “experiment”.
He shared information with his closest associates, knowing the world would come to know about it.
Joint family incorporated
Gandhiji had no daughter of his own. He had adopted a young Harijan girl, Laxmi, as his daughter. She was, however, marginal to his existence and forgotten immediately after she was married off. The other women were far more important. They flattered him, laughed with him, cajoled him and endorsed every word he spoke. They were totally besotted with him.
They sought his attention all the time. He was definitely a father-figure to them. Possibly a few of them viewed him as a mystical lover. He was very informal and carried on voluminous correspondence with many of them.
With a rare exception or two they volunteered to live as spinsters and those who were married chose the path of physical brahmacharya, denying conjugal rights to their spouses.
Charismatic Gandhi
The renowned feminist Margaret Sanger interviewed Gandhiji in 1936 and she had to say the following: “He has an unusual light that shines in his face, that circles around his head and neck like a mist with white sails of a ship coming through. It lasted only a few seconds but it is there.”
It is interesting to note that his charisma was widely diffused. It rested not only in his eyes, but it was also in his ramrod body, his artful gait, his perpetual toothless smile and his gentle and meandering style of conversation.

Of hartals
The New Nation – Bangladesh – by Matsushiro Horiguchi – May 26, 2006
UNDP issued a report entitled “Beyond Hartals: Towards Democratic Dialogue in Bangladesh.” This report provides the main findings of an opinion poll on hartals that surveyed about 3000 people, analysed hartals from various viewpoints, and suggested towards democratic dialogue beyond hartals. I would like to introduce the contents in two parts as I found them very informative.
Hartals originate in Mahatma Ghandi’s civil disobedience against British colonialism during the Indian Independence War, and in the Language Movement in Bangladesh.
During the independence war of Bangladesh in 1971 and also during the overthrow of the Ershad Administration in 1990, hartals played very important roles. However, after the birth of democratic government through the election in 1990s, hartals have increased sharply.
The report mentions the background of hartals, stating that the political culture in Bangladesh is very authoritarian and that antagonistic political attitudes have become a custom.
Many people think hartals are not only inefficient to achieve the political goals, but they also greatly damage and affect people’s economic activities and daily lives. Especially, low or middle-income groups such as rickshawpullers, hawkers, and other people who live from hand to mouth suffer the most from hartals.
The report shows interesting facts on hartals. Once the executive committee of the opposition party decides to call a hartal, student fronts of the party take a leading part in a pre-hartal preparations from three or four days before the hartal day. The pre-hartal preparations consist of meetings and demonstrations in and around university campuses, but armed students explode “cocktail” explosives in and around the campuses so that other students are frightened and feel uneasy.
On the day of the hartal, students go out of the campuses through rallies. They march up to the police barricades with chanting slogans. Then, they throw explosives on the police to provoke them. In response to this provocation, the police take action. This is the start of the disorder.
On the other hand, in some specific areas such as the Press Club, the Secretariat, Motijheel, Mohakhali, Farmgate, and Old Dhaka, the disorder is brought about in the same way. The mob causes such great disorder, hurling explosives, burning tires, destroying rickshaws and cars, and sometimes setting ablaze buses. If the lifelines of Dhaka stop functioning, the hartal “succeeds.”
To make a hartal successful, the number of people belonging to the opposition parties’ organisations is not enough. Thus, through mastaans, who act as agents in procuring hired hands, they mobilise many people from somewhere like slums. These mastaans or hoodlums get Tk. 35 per head to walk in the demonstration; Tk. 50 per head to throw explosives, destroy rickshaws or cars; Tk. 100 per head to set ablaze cars throwing bigger bombs; Tk. 20 per head for women to stage sit-in demonstrations during the meetings.
The report says a twelve-year-old boy earned Tk. 300 in a year to work during hartals. At every hartal, he stands by at the specific spots, setting fire on tires and rickshaws at the signals.
In this way, lot of money is spent on a single hartal. The report points out that this money flows into criminal organisations. Besides, today’s hartals are motivated by money or trifling political problems, not lofty political goals and ideals such as the Language Movement or the Independence Movement as before. In the next issue, I will introduce about the 3-4% of economic -toss in GDP incurred in a year due to hartals, the actual situation that the students, who bear the future Bangladesh, are disturbed by hartals to stay behind in graduation several years, and upset their life plans. I will also introduce the concrete suggestion to quit the bad habit, hartals. (April 5, 2005)
I would like to start where I left off in my earlier note with reference to the UNDP report entitled “Beyond Hartals: Towards Democratic Dialogue in Bangladesh.”
The report says that the national economical loss brought about by hartals is estimated at three to four percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). Let’s now look to each sector.
In the transport sector, the income of people working for buses or auto-rickshaws decreases considerably, but only rickshaw pullers increase their income because other transportation cannot be used. However, they also oppose hartals because prices of daily necessities increase due to the sudden disruption in the distribution chain.
In the garments sector, which accounts for 76 percent of export, the damage of production by hartals can be managed, but the loss of reliability of Bangladeshi industries and the damage of export and investment by political instability are irreparable.
In rural areas, rich farmers and fishermen can live without working for a few days, but the poor have to borrow money to live on. Once they borrow money, some of them cannot pay back their debt.
In the education sector, the damage is also severe. On the day of hartals, public schools are closed. Although extra classes are given on other days, students cannot catch up on their study. As a result, many young people not only cannot finish studying what school could offer, but also stay behind in graduation, and upset their life plans.
However, the report says, controlling hartals is not an easy issue. Freedom of speech and assembly is not an unlimited right. Respect for other people’s rights to own property, action, and work is also important. On the other hand, although use of speech and assembly should be controlled by law, it is difficult because of the current context of highly confrontational politics in the country. The report recommends that ruling and opposition parties should reach a consensus through continuous dialogues and consultations.
The report makes the following five proposals to stop hartals:
1. To modernize the constitution to change the electoral system to proportional representation,
2. To strengthen the parliament to reinforce the opposition parties’ voice,
3. To make the government more transparent and accountable,
4. To reform the party system that empowers a handful of powerful people to decide everything, 5. To adopt legal measures so that the host parties compensate for the damage done by hartals.
Besides, instead of hartals, the report proposes “human chain,” “silent protests,” “mock Parliaments,” and “mock courts.”
The above is the major points of the UNDP report. However, my frank question is: Given the current context of highly confrontational politics, how can both ruling and opposition parties reach an agreement on a code of conduct to control hartals?
Rather than this, the following process seems more effective to control hartals. Namely, the ruling party, either BNP or Awami League, first prohibits the violation of other people’s rights to own property and work by law in exercising those of expression and assembly. And then the party obeys the law even if it goes to the opposition. I will try to seize an opportunity of raising this proposal at an appropriate platform in future.

Salutatorian Gupta, inspired by Gandhi, will go to Harvard
Star – USA – by Jim Kilpatrick – May 24, 2006
Priya Gupta is the salutatorian at Plano West Senior High School for 2006.
Born on March 23, 1988, she began her education in Plano by attending Jackson Elementary from kindergarten to Grade 3 and Shepard Elementary in grades 4 amd5. She attended two middle schools , Wilson for Grade 6 and Renner for grades 7 and 8. High school was at Shepton High School and Plano West Senior High School.
Her parents are Chitra and Sudhir Gupta.
Priya Gupta will attend Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., in the fall, majoring in economics and government.
Gupta has been inspired by numerous people but there is one she feels is very significant.
“I have been inspired by a wide variety of people,” she said. “But one of the most significant ones is Mahatma Gandhi, because of his perseverance despite seemingly impossible obstacles.”
Her desires for the future include helping others.
“I would like to pursue a career in law and possibly go into public service after that,” she said.
Being named the salutatorian has been the result of hard work and those around her.
“The support of my friend, family, and teachers has been crucial to my academic success thus far,” Gupta said.
She is involved with numerous activities outside the classroom. She is a member of the debate team, National Honor Society, Students Engaged in Volunteer Activities, Spanish Honor Society, Future Business Leaders of America and Young Democrats.
Her most inspirational teacher was her government teacher.
“The teacher who has inspired me most has been John Scott, my AP comparative government teacher,” she said. “Because he encourages students to learn more and goes beyond just the material in a textbook.”
Her parents also have played a role in her academic success.
“My parents have been integral to my academic success because they always push me and encourage me to do my best,” she said.
The biggest challenge she faced during her school years handling distractions.
“My greatest challenge has been staying focused on school at a time when there has been a multitude of outside distractions,” Gupta said.

Following Gandhi’s footsteps
The Chapel Hill News – USA – by Valerie Schwartz – May 23, 2006
Last month, Kant Bangdiwala of Chapel Hill completed a walk his father began 76 years ago in India with Mahatma Gandhi.
In 1930, Kant’s father, Ishverlal, lived in a town that Gandhi passed through while making his famous 240-mile long march to the sea to protest the British salt tax. As Ghandi traveled through India on his way to the sea, where he would take a cup of sea water to make his own salt, his entourage traveled ahead alerting people of his approach and encouraging them to join.
“My dad was 8 years old and he was interested in doing it,” Bangdiwala said. “His mom, a widow with four kids, wouldn’t let him go.”
Inspired by Gandhi’s resolute act of nonviolent protest, young Ishverlal went anyway.
“Daddy disobeyed his mom and joined the march for a little bit,” Kant said. “His mom never found out.”
It was the beginning of a life of activism and commitment to non-violence that Ishverlal has passed down to his son Kant.
In April, Kant, a research professor and biostatistician at UNC, participated in the World Congress on Injury Control and Safety Promotion in South Africa. Ela Gandhi, a granddaughter of Mahatma, sent e-mail invitations to all conference participants to join in the annual Walk for Non-Violence that she organizes each year to symbolize her grandfather’s march and remind people of the movement he started.
Kant wrote back, saying, “My father joined the Mahatma during the original salt march as it traveled through his home town of Surat, India, and I would like to honor both the Mahatma and my father. Please count on me.”
Ela Gandhi responded by inviting him not only to participate but to light the torch at the beginning of the march.
The event warranted an article and photo in the local newspaper, which shows Kant lighting the torch with Ela, with her grandson standing between them.
The group walked from Durban, South Africa, where Mahatma had lived, to the sea, like Mahatma had done in India. The distance, 23 kilometers, symbolized the 23 days it took Mahatma to make his journey.
This was not the first time Kant had followed in his father’s footsteps.
In 1949, one year after marrying, and two years after India achieved independence from Great Britain, Ishverlal hitched a ride on a cargo boat to come study at UNC-Chapel Hill. While working on his doctorate in statistics and complaining of the cold weather, a fellow student convinced him to visit Puerto Rico. Ishverlal wrote his dissertation in Puerto Rico, and after his wife joined him there they decided to stay.
Their two sons were born and raised there and both came to Chapel Hill for higher educations. Kant arrived as a freshman in 1971. He received his master’s degree in biostatistics, married Becky Teeter, and they raised two children here. His brother, Kumar, became a doctor and returned to Puerto Rico.
The work Kant did in South Africa as a Fulbright Senior Specialist award-winner, helping people from 96 countries assess ways to prevent injuries (the leading cause of death among people in their most productive years), excited him, but the highlight of the trip was the march.
“The best part was talking with the locals,” Kant said. Durban, where the march started, has one of the greatest concentrations of Indians outside of India, he said.
The living conditions stunned him.
“Injustices continue,” Kant said. “Especially in South Africa. It is important to keep in your consciousness that these are not things that just occurred in the past. Apartheid only ended 12 years ago. Everywhere, we have a lot of work to do.”

The Gandhi Foundation AGM and Workshop
The Gandhi Way – UK – by George Paxton – Summer 2006
London – You are warmly invited to an AGM and Workshop on SATURDAY, 10th JUNE 2006: 10for10:30 am to 4:30 pm at KINGSLEY HALL, Powis Road, London E3 (5 min walk from Bromley-by-Bow tube (District/Hammersmith & City): to left out of station, to end of ramp, bear left and first left into Grace Street, follow round to KH)
If not on tour, actress RUTH ROSEN will perform a Gandhian reading to delight the heart
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING – Annual Report 2005/06 reviewed – your questions, comments and participation welcomed
12:30-1:45 pm – please bring a picnic lunch – drinks and biscuits available
Visits to the Gandhi Cell and Office encouraged – Musical Interlude
AFTERNOON WORKSHOP with Susan Denton-Brown 2:00-4:30 pm: “THE ETHOS OF GANDHI IN EDUCATING FOR PEACE”
Susan was a teacher of religion, philosophy and ethics by profession. Her beliefs in educating for peace grew out of training as a conflict resolutionist in Israel. Last year she won a fellowship at Oxford to research an educational resource based on the ethos of Mahatma Gandhi.
An introduction will explain how Gandhi’s ethos can make, and is making, a crucial contribution to modern education. Opportunities for us to reflect upon our own identities and approaches to situations of conflict and non-violent protest will follow.
Small groups and an open forum will be used for simple activities or discussion as appropriate to the group on the day. It is hoped that the experience will increase aspects of self-awareness and be thought-provoking enough to raise issues for future exploration.
“WE must be the change we want to see in the world” as Gandhi said!
To book a place, return the form below. Cost: between £12-25 depending on circumstances – please be fair! We have to cover costs Maximum: 30 people – book soonest!
Contact: Denise Moll, secretary (phone: +44 (0)1932 343614, email: denise.gandhifdn@phonecoop.coop)

Sonja Schlesin: Gandhi’s South African Secretary, by George Paxton
The Gandhi Way – UK – by Margaret Chatterjee – Summer 2006
Pax Books 2006, pp101, ISBN 0 9519022 1 0, £7.50
Available (post free) from Pax Books, 2/1, 87 Barrington Drive, Glasgow G4 9ES
This is a gem of a book. The author has given us a short but very well researched account of the life and work of one of Gandhi¹s most diligent associates in South Africa. So far, we knew that Kallenbach was wary of her, that Gokhale admired her, and that she had a spirited relation with Gandhi who relied greatly on her excellent secretarial skills. This biography fills in many of the gaps. Born in Moscow, Sonja arrived in South Africa in 1892, matriculated at the University of the Cape of Good Hope and started work with Gandhi on the, rather guarded, recommendation of Kallenbach who knew her mother. She was subsequently much involved with the birth and growth of the satyagraha campaigns, and Gandhi paid tribute to her when he said ³Miss Schlesin … taxed herself to her utmost by labouring day and night². She was the first woman in South Africa to apply for registration of her articles of clerkship, having trained in Gandhi¹s office as shown in one of her best known pictures. But the application was turned down, typifying the long worldwide struggle women had to have the right to enter the professions. Her organisational work in the law practice, along with collection of funds for the campaigns, editing articles for Indian Opinion, keeping in touch with the leaders of the movement, and visiting prisoners in jail, is now recorded succinctly for the first time.
The fourth of the nine chapters brings together the many interesting details about her life against the background of Gandhi’s activities between 1909 and 1913. In March 1909 Sonja became Secretary of the Transvaal Indian Women¹s Association, witnessing to her remarkable identification with, and acceptance by, Indians in South Africa. The author does well to include Prabhudas Gandhi¹s recollections of her teaching days in Phoenix. He brings out her sense of fun, energy, and tireless participation in all aspects of life at Phoenix. The author has also unearthed an endearing titbit about Gandhi. It seems that he organised football matches between groups of satyagrahis. Thus fits in well with what we hear about his game of tennis on a Sunday afternoon in Lancashire so many years later.
Sonja was one of those friends who Gandhi hoped would participate in his work once he was back in India. But this was not to be. However they corresponded. Sonja eventually earned first class BA and MA degrees from the University of Witwatersrand, and taught at the High School at Krugersdorp, specialising in Latin. She had requested an employment reference from Gandhi and in his response he highlights her sense of responsibility, integrity and ability.
Throughout the book the author sets out a very competent outline of Gandhi¹s activities in South Africa, and this provides the background for his main focus of study. We learn from one of Gandhi¹s letters to Sonja that in his study of St. Matthew¹s Gospel he consulted not only the Authorised Version but also Moffat¹s and Weymouth¹s translations. This is informative not only about Gandhi¹s very careful study of Biblical texts which he was sharing with students at the Gujarat Vidyapith, Ahmedabad, but indicates an interest in Christianity on Sonja¹s part which was not evident at all in the early part of her life. Even so, that she eventually became a Methodist comes as rather a surprise, as Paxton himself notes.
His treatment of nonviolence, the Nazis and the Jews in Chapter VII is scrupulously fair. Sonja, no doubt, would have been happy to have a career in law. But, as it was, by all accounts she was a highly successful teacher, and had the privilege of association with Gandhi in perhaps his most formative years in South Africa. There was a certain austerity about her personality that sets her apart and which is the source of her dignity, and this Paxton recognises. From the biography we certainly get the impression that she was a remarkable woman who used her opportunities wisely and who deserves recognition for her contribution to Gandhi¹s satyagraha in South Africa.
The value of the book, moreover, is enhanced by the pictures included, profiles of the main characters in the narrative, bibliography and index. In short, George Paxton has provided an excellent addition to the literature on Gandhi and his close associates.

A Writer’s Conviction
OneWorld – by Fawaz Rob – May 23, 2006
‘I am a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, and a Jew’. This eternal hymn has been uttered by Mahatma Gandhi, whose faith in universal brotherhood was unshakable. It is not only a mere idea, but rather a conviction of civilization that human beings often attempted to follow and unfortunately human beings often failed.
It is not my idea to render this note to confirm or reject any religion, or the lack of it. It is also, not my duty to defend or attack any faith or disbelief. In an attempt to portray my conviction as a writer, I believe, my only duty lies in observing human beings of all race, creed and color. To watch human beings in their absolute forms, without any hesitation, prejudice or conformity and along the way attempt to compose in simple alphabets what surrounds us within and beyond our eyes.
Fear has always remained a universal commodity for our world. Today, it has become a driving force to increase the suspicion among each other and contributed to the deep division between fellow human beings. Surprisingly however, we have remained constantly apathetic towards the causes of fear or the powers that manipulate fear.
Like anytime in human history, a utopian would confirm that the world has reached its peak of civilization. An American billionaire can now call a Bangladeshi farmer in his cell phone just by pressing a combination of numbers. It is of course, an unquestionable advancement in human communication.
However, I am not convinced that the gaps between human beings are closing at the rate of technological pace; rather, I see that the spaces between human souls are expanding to a point of despair.
With all our technological gadgets, we can see or listen to anyone at anytime, and yet we are isolated as individuals more than any time in human history. We can receive news from anywhere in the world and information about almost anything, and yet we are choosing to ignore all that has less of an entertainment value.
Human beings are diverse and will always remain diverse. Instead of embracing the diversity of ideas, we are constantly driven to build a wall around us of indifference. We are blinded by the sea of information from various devices, and yet they seem to be proving anything but overwhelming. This contagious blindness of soul is so epidemic that a portion of human beings are steadily reaching a superficial perception of supremacy.
A writer’s responsibility is to show that there is no supremacy or inferiority between human souls. It is only when the idea of dominance or being dominated penetrates us, the space between human beings becomes wider and our collective human spirits become weaker.
The soul, the constant one that resides inside us, the atman, the spirit within – whatever we chose to call it, is the most wonderful gift we possess as human beings. From the sheer power of its conviction, we are capable of accomplishing any unthinkable task, and yet often the idea of recognizing it is thought to be a form of weakness. It is our only link to connect to the world of collective consciousness and yet we are taught to be threatened by the world of human diversity.
The innumerable possibilities of defeat, over stylized by all forms of media makes us afraid – afraid of human beings possessing different values and eventually afraid of our own selves.
Human beings cannot afford to be afraid of each other anymore. In the course of human history, the powerful few have always engendered fear among people by referring to the differences of religion, creed and color. In this new world of mass communication, we can not allow a powerful few to generate fear to the powerless many.
We are being told to be scared of all the desolation and disparity of this world, we are not being told to discover the causes for all the disparity. It is therefore, never an option to take apathy as a solace. Apathy is simply obliging to the powers that manipulate fear.
It is imperative, for our own eventual endurance to battle what threatens to destroy the collective soul of human beings. As a writer, it is my obligation to believe in the champions of humanity, regardless of faults and failures and show that the diversity of human differences is not something to be afraid of, but rather something to celebrate commonly.
Ultimately, it is not ‘I’, ‘You’, ‘He’ or ‘She’ that is left to exist or perish from our civilization, or to tell a tale of humanity. At the end, it is only ’we’ that prevails. Man is not made perfect and never will be. It is the struggle to overcome the imperfections, is where the true beauty of spirit lies.
In the end, it is the achievement of collective human souls in harmony that remains as the designation of humanity. As a writer, who is often humbled to witness the greatness of individuals, it is my lifelong attempt to illustrate that we have as much differences as individuals as we have similarities as human beings. If we chose to embrace and battle the fear among us, between us and fear that divides us, we will have more of a chance to survive mutually.
My only faith lies, therefore on those human souls who are capable of attempting truth, compassionate to any and all human beings and who have chosen to embrace human differences. My conviction as a modest writer is to pay homage and direct attention to these unknown human souls, who construct the highest and truest essence of humanity.

Prince, ‘Veronica Mars’ Star Named ‘Sexiest Vegetarians’
NBC5.com – USA – May 22, 2006
NEW YORK — Prince has been voted the “world’s sexiest vegetarian” in PETA’s annual online poll, the animal rights group announced Monday.
Prince, 47, shares the honor with Kristen Bell, the 25-year-old star of “Veronica Mars,” which is being carried over from UPN to the new CW Network this fall.
A strict vegan, Prince recently wrote in the liner notes of his latest album, “3121,” about the ills behind wool production. He closed the disc with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi: “2 my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.”
Bell, in a statement, said of her vegetarianism: “I had a hard time disassociating the animals I cuddled with – dogs and cats, for example – from the animals on my plate, and I never really cared for the taste of meat. I always loved my brussels sprouts!”
Runners-up in the poll, which PETA said received over 40,000 votes, include Natalie Portman, Nicollette Sheridan and Joaquin Phoenix.
Last year, Coldplay singer Chris Martin and “American Idol” Carrie Underwood were picked as the two “sexiest vegetarians.” Other previous winners include Andre 3000, Tobey Maguire, Josh Hartnett, Alicia Silverstone, Lauren Bush and Shania Twain.

Gandhi’s Interpreter: a life of Horace Alexander, by Geoffrey Carnall
Textualities – UK
Former Edinburgh University Reader, Geoffrey Carnall describes how he came to write a biography of the Quaker and diplomat HORACE ALEXANDER, and what so fascinated him about the man in the first place.
Horace Alexander (1889-1989) was a British Quaker who was well known within the Quaker community for his work in India. He was a close friend of Gandhi and on good terms with a fair number of Indian and Pakistani politicians. In the 1930s and 1940s he was much involved in lobbying on behalf of India’s claim for independence, and during the Cold War he was a devoted supporter of Nehru’s policy of non-alignment.
Outside the Quaker community he was little known, and this is unfortunate as his experience as an unofficial diplomat has a great deal of relevance in the conflicts and stresses of the 21st century. He collected a huge archive of letters and papers related to his work, most of which is housed in the library of Friends House in London. This has formed the basis of the biography I have completed.
He was for many years a lecturer at Woodbrooke, the Quaker study centre in Birmingham, and it was members of the Woodbrooke staff who encouraged me to undertake the project. My main qualification was that I had seen a good deal of Alexander in India in 1949-50, when I was a member of the Friends Service Unit based in Calcutta at that time. I travelled with him and observed his technique as a mediator and fact-finder at a time of great political tension, with India and Pakistan on the brink of war. I was fascinated by the quiet detachment with which he sought to detect the possibility of an acceptable solution to a ferociously contested dispute, and impressed by the deference with which the disputants attended to his opinions. His manner, incidentally, contrasted strikingly with that of his equally respected Quaker colleague Agatha Harrison, whose sense of drama and lofty speech had prompted a colleague many years before to describe her as ‘a tragedy queen’. I’m afraid that the young people in the Friends Service Unit found her rather entertaining (though her solemnity was offset by a mischievous sense of humour), but looking back on her I can see that her irrepressible belief in the integrity of those with whom she was dealing must have made a powerful impact. She died in 1954 at the Geneva conference on Indo-China, making contact with the Chinese Communist delegation. No one else could do it: she did, but the effort killed her.
Alexander had a strong Quaker inheritance, his father being a barrister who devoted himself to two major causes. One was the peace movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which found its main expression in large international conferences. The other was the campaign to end the opium traffic, which led him to spend long periods in India and China. Horace Alexander himself was profoundly influenced by another brand of internationalism, that of the liberal ideology that prevailed in Cambridge in the years before 1914, and is associated with J.M. Keynes, G. Lowes Dickinson and E.M. Forster. They were encouraged by the work of Norman Angell, whose book The Great Illusion argued that war was no longer in anyone’s interest, so it would never happen again.
The First World War was a shocking challenge to this kind of optimism, but the Cambridge men gamely turned their attention to ways of preventing another such catastrophe, and their efforts fed into the creation of the League of Nations in 1919-1920. Alexander himself spent the first half of the war acting as secretary to a succession of Quaker peace committees, and the second half working as a schoolteacher – that being the condition imposed on him by a tribunal for conscientious objectors. He also got married, and the most engaging part of his archive is the correspondence between him and his future wife, Olive Graham, very much a modern woman with little time for conventional ideas of female propriety.
In 1919 Alexander was appointed to his post at Woodbrooke, and initiated the first course in international relations to be established in Britain. He placed great emphasis on the League of Nations, seeing it as the most hopeful way of preventing future wars. Its strength lay in the mere fact of bringing national representatives together so that they could sort out their conflicts in a rational way, much as Norman Angell had advocated. The League took it upon itself to control drug trafficking, and Alexander found himself involved in passing on a message from Gandhi to an international conference, criticising the opium policy of the British-controlled Government of India. This led him to spend the best part of a year on a fact-finding mission to South Asia, when he met Gandhi and formed a low opinion of the administration of British India. He began to see India’s nonviolent campaign for independence as something that gave more substance to aspirations after a just and peaceful world than the League of Nations could by itself.
In 1930 India was in turmoil because of the Congress Party’s campaign of civil disobedience against British rule. Thousands were in gaol, including their leader Gandhi. In Britain the legitimacy and effectiveness of the foreign government were fiercely debated, not least among the Quakers. Alexander’s father-in-law John William Graham was deeply antagonistic to Gandhi’s ‘subversion’, and thought the Indians quite unprepared for self-government. At the Quaker Yearly Meeting in May there was an address by Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel prizewinning poet. He was supposed to speak about his educational work at Shantiniketan in Bengal, but instead he launched into an attack on British rule in India. The intervention of this immensely impressive reincarnation of an Old Testament prophet rather stunned the thousand or so Quakers present, and John William Graham was particularly outraged. But the meeting agreed to send a representative to India to see if some reconciliation could be effected between the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, and Gandhi himself. The task was assigned to Alexander, and the story of his attempts at mediation is one of frustration and depression. He managed to see all the relevant people, but with no clear result. However, somehow or other Gandhi and the Viceroy did subsequently reach an agreement that allowed Gandhi to come to the second Round Table Conference in London, on the future of India.
Alexander was released from his duties at Woodbrooke to help with the organisation of Gandhi’s time in Britain, and towards the end of the conference a group, mainly of Quakers, set up an organisation to maintain contact with Gandhi and his associates. This was the India Conciliation Group. Agatha Harrison was appointed secretary, and the ICG was tireless throughout the 1030s and in the early years of the Second World War in trying to persuade the British Government of the validity of Indian aspirations. Harrison was skilful in her handling of civil servants, while Alexander exploited his friendship with R.A. Butler (the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the India Office) to influence politicians. When in 1942 the Friends Ambulance Unit offered to go to Calcutta to assist in organising civil defence against threatened Japanese air raids, Alexander was appointed leader because of his good relations with Indian nationalists, who might otherwise have been uncooperative. He managed to persuade Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India, that it would be all right for him to meet Gandhi and other ‘old friends’. There was some feeling in the India Office that Alexander might persuade Gandhi to think again about the offer brought by Sir Stafford Cripps on behalf of Churchill’s government. The offer was based on the granting of independence after the war, and had been rejected earlier in the year. Amery, perhaps deliberately, failed to mention this to the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, who was not best pleased when Alexander unexpectedly walked into his secretary’s office in New Delhi. Nor did the Linlithgow appreciate Alexander’s well-meant efforts to dissuade Gandhi from persisting in his demand for the British to ‘Quit India’. An embarrassed Amery admitted that, well, yes, he had agreed to Alexander’s being in touch with Gandhi, a confession that probably saved Alexander from deportation. And after the Congress leaders were locked up there wasn’t much harm he could do anyway. So Alexander remained, and helped organise efforts to deal with the terrible Bengal famine of 1943-44. Returning to England in 1943 to promote an appeal for funds for famine relief. He also did his best to inform the British public of the current state of Indian politics, writing a ‘Penguin Special’ paperback entitled India since Cripps.
Alexander was on good terms with British officials in Bengal, but New Delhi was a different matter and he had always irritated the Viceregal staff. The irritation was mutual, and if we can believe Alexander’s secretary at the time, Dorothy Hogg, the first drafts of India since Cripps contained passages of such ferocity that they took her breath away, and she told him he couldn’t possibly publish such things. On reflection he moderated his tone, and the published book is a temperate and objective analysis of the situation which still reads well today. It certainly showed how well qualified he was to play the part he did behind the scenes in the Cabinet Mission negotiations of 1946.
When a Labour government was elected in 1945, independence for India became official policy, and in the summer of 1946 three senior Cabinet Ministers were sent to India to negotiate the arrangements for achieving this. The three were the Secretary of State for India, Lord Pethick Lawrence, Sir Stafford Cripps and A.V. Alexander. The negotiations proved to be extremely difficult. All parties in India distrusted the British, doubting whether they really meant to withdraw, while Congress and the Muslim League were fundamentally at odds with each other, Congress insisting on the unity of India, and the Muslim League insisting on the creation of an independent Pakistan in Muslim-majority provinces.
Alexander and Agatha Harrison knew Cripps and Pethick-Lawrence well, and the Congress negotiators saw in them people who could be useful intermediaries. So when the negotiations moved from New Delhi to Simla, British India’s summer capital, the two Quakers were invited to join the Congress team. Alexander and Harrison both left vivid accounts of their experience, which make clear how difficult it was to convince Gandhi and his colleagues of the good faith of the British mission. The Viceroy, Lord Wavell, was extremely irritated by their presence, for it made it look as though Congress had better access to the mission than the Muslim League, so that Jinnah, difficult enough already, became impossible. Wavell was right there, but on the other hand without the two Quakers Congress might have been impossible too.
Alexander witnessed at first hand the huge violence that developed in the Punjab and elsewhere in the year between the Cabinet Mission and the eventual transfer of power in August 1947. He also witnessed the extraordinary skill with which Gandhi managed to prevent a blood-bath in Bengal, being present with him in Calcutta at the time of independence. He was strenuously involved in efforts to limit the violence in the Punjab, acting with his FAU colleague Richard Symonds in a joint observation team to brief the two new governments on the situation and on the measures needed to cope with it. The experience he acquired here he applied in the 1950 Bengal crisis, where I was able to see him in action.
Alexander stayed on in India to see the first stages of its efforts to establish itself as an independent nation. He did a great deal to keep in touch with his contacts in Pakistan, realising that Nehru’s ambitions for the building of a just and peaceful world order were jeopardised by bad relations between the two countries. In the mid-1950s he settled in England again, and devoted himself to countering ill-informed hostility to Nehru’s foreign policy. His first wife had died in 1942, and in 1958 he married Rebecca Bradbeer, an American Quaker. After ten years they moved to Pennsylvania, where he spent the last twenty years of his life, indefatigably supporting peace activities. He was consulted about the early stages of Richard Attenborough’s film commemorating Gandhi, which was finally released in 1982. He repeatedly insisted that the scripts he saw undervalued the remarkable people around Gandhi, and he was downright furious about the way John Gielgud played Lord Irwin as a stiff English aristocrat. But Ben Kingsley’s performance in the title role delighted him, and he was moved by the response of audiences to the film (he saw it four times), invariably remaining quietly in their seats while the credits rolled, as though they could not bear to leave.
The biography has a kind of subplot in the story of Fritz Berber, who had been a student in Woodbrooke and after the Second World War became a Professor of International Law in Munich. Although denounced by Nazi legal authorities as an unreconstructed liberal, he was protected by Ribbentrop, who believed him well-informed about Britain. Berber survived, precariously, as a member of the Nazi bureaucracy until 1943, when he was seconded to the International Red Cross in Geneva. Alexander greatly overestimated his influence on German policy, but Berber’s situation throws some unfamiliar light on Nazi Germany, and the man was himself a fascinating character.
We live in a world where governments spend so lavishly on military hardware that it is almost impossible for the human imagination to comprehend what is being squandered. But there is a reaction against this, for environmental reasons particularly. That reaction has much to learn about alternatives to the military mode. The experience of people like Horace Alexander offers models of action too little appreciated in the big world, though whether a publisher can be found who will believe that the biography of an unknown Quaker can serve as a corrective is far from clear. What I can say with total conviction is that Alexander’s archive is full of entertaining material which often presents a fresh insight into several aspects of twentieth century history.

Democracy, Injustice, and Nonviolent Civil Disobedience
PeaceJournalism.com – Nepal – by Bhupal Lamichhaney – May 21, 2006
Democracy does not automatically ensure justice and equality for all. However, people are certainly freer to correct injustices within a democracy than within any other form of government. Aligning its noble principles with equally noble practices is an unending duty for any democracy interested in sustaining itself. It requires a vigilant yet patient population who understands democratic process and is willing to work non-violently to reconcile and transform itself. The same qualities are required of a population caught within a terrorist, despotic regime. History proves repeatedly how non-violent people-power wins over any tyranny in the end. Individuals, who resort to violent methods to achieve their so-called justice, merely swap injustices thwarting an opportunity to win true social fairness and equality.
The pursuit of citizen justice and fairness began more than 2000 years ago in the ancient Greek city-state known as Athens. It was there the Greeks began a new governmental experiment they called Demokratia, from the combination of the word demo, meaning popular, and kratia, meaning government. This experimental ‘popular government’ vested supreme power in the people themselves, who through a free electoral system executed direct democratic rule. For two hundred years Demokratia flourished. It ushered in a Golden Age for Greece, yet to be duplicated anywhere in the Western world. Only the crush of Rome could destroy its glory, but not before it set a lasting benchmark to influence the creation of future democracies rising many centuries later.
Therefore, it is that modern democratic states bear certain similarities and characteristics to their early Athenian counterpart. For instance, modern democracies continue to set geographic boundaries around a designated territory in which their population lives free and independent under an elected government exercising power and authority therein according to the majority will of the electorate. The Athenian city-state practiced a style of democracy, referred to by many historians as polis. The term polis referred to an entity having the following qualifications: (1) territory; (2) population and (3) government. As such, Athens was free to develop any style of government it wanted as were its sister city-states.
Therefore, it was that Athens developed a system of government that included active participation of her people and called it a democracy. The early Athenian lawmakers and representatives in the government craftily carved the phenomenon of citizenship in their polis. They determined a citizen could only be an adult male who had completed his military training. Interestingly, this rule barred the majority of the population. On the one hand, women, slaves, foreigners, and aliens living within the city were permanently disenfranchised. Yet, at the same time, they were considered equals. Evidentially, such inconsistencies were not determined as such at that time. Even the great philosopher, Aristotle, though an alien himself, never argued against the citizenship rule. However, that equality and inequality coexisted at the dawn of democracy should not surprise us in the 21st century. Have we not stumbled over a multitude of our own inconsistencies in the ever-evolving process of forming a perfect government?
Regardless of modern political criticisms, Athenian citizen rule attained powerful transformation in governance and contributed untold progress toward the process of empowering and freeing humanity from political injustices.
Injustice, the unjust, unfair action or treatment of others, violates their inalienable human rights to live in peace with their neighbors, free from political oppression, tyranny, and terrorism. At every moment of time, throughout the course of human history, inequality, suppression, and the denial of human rights prevail in some fashion, somewhere in the world. Societies, even living in natural stages, are not free from injustice. Strong ones at any moment can inflict harm in many ways upon another of lesser strength. Weak and vulnerable people must either submit their rights to the authority of the strong ones or bear horrible consequences, even death.
Although injustice, disregard, and inhumanity to life remain a perpetual sorrow in the course of human events, there have always been people who understood these prevailing elements to be the societal evils they are, and who have courageously stood to fight against them for the sake of freedom and justice. Multitudes of known and unknown people have lost their lives fighting injustice. According to Rousseau, “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.” Why such enchainment happens and how may these chains be broken is the quest of humanitarians in every age.
Modern conceptualists of democratic theory came to support the principle that all people are created equal and entitled to justice and protection of their human rights. However, as in Athenian democracy, contradictions and inconsistencies arise in every democracy in the world as to the actual practice of these noble principles. Within modern democracies, political debate continues as a means to improve their society’s interpretation of citizen rights and freedom. In the US, we hear much today about the need to transform hearts and minds of people to grasp the depths of injustices done within and without the society that they may become a more compassionate electorate. The great movements for civil rights, workers’ rights, women rights, gay rights, animal rights, environmental protection, and now immigration reform all represent a democratic society being asked if not forced to look into its soul to find better ways of practicing the principles for which it stands.
John Stuart Mill, in his essay, “Subjection of Women” (1869), presents a then outrageous idea to the conservative minds of his day regarding the unequal status between men and women. He considered the reality of men’s treatment of women was to place them in a far worse condition than endured by slaves. He was convinced that in democracy people could feel freedom and enjoys liberty for the moral and intellectual advancement that would result in greater happiness for everyone.
Mill believed everyone should have the right to vote. He argued that the reason people should be able to vote is to be able to defend their own rights. This argument he applied to both men and women. Mill as an MP of the British Parliament often demanded the vote for women, a revolutionary position for his time.
Women were subject to the whims of their husbands and/or fathers during Mill’s time. There endured a prevailing social norm that “might was right.” Therefore, women were considered inferior, both physically and mentally, to men and therefore needed to be “taken care of.” Survival of the Fittest and Biological Determinism drawn from the biological theory of evolution and religious views supporting a hierarchal view of men over women within the family system also contributed to this view. In addition, the standard of the ideal woman as mother, wife, and homemaker was a powerful idea strongly upheld in 19th century society.
Mill considered the inequality of women as an historical hangover from an antiquated past, which had no place in the modern world. Mill saw inequality of women as a hindrance to human development; since, in effect, generally half the human population was unable to contribute to society outside the home. Of course, this practice still prevails in many countries of the world where women are considered inferior.
While we talk about democracy and some of the paradoxes within it, we cannot forget to think of an independent America in quest of freedom and liberty for all. Thomas Jefferson, the visionary leader who fought for the freedom for himself and for all Americans, had his own inconsistencies in the paradoxical matter regarding the emancipation of his own slaves.
Dr. Cornel West in his book, Democracy Matters, scathingly criticizes Jefferson. He writes, “The Declaration of Independence, principally written by thirty-three-year-old revolutionary, Thomas Jefferson — who himself embodied this paradox, being both a courageous freedom fighter against British imperialism and cowardly aristocratic slaveholder of hundreds of Africans in his beloved Virginia — offers telling testament to this complex and contradictory character of the American democratic experiment.”
What can we learn by studying the paradoxes of the American democracy? Perhaps it is that no matter how young a democracy is or how mature it may become, injustices will inevitably occur. For this, the electorate must not fail to be educated in compassion, justice, and human rights. Polarization around only one’s own point of view at the expense of understanding another’s is also dangerous as it leads to exclusionary actions and prejudice toward selected segments of society.
Henry David Thoreau, in his essay, “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” (1849), described the very gloomy paradox the United States found itself regarding the democratic principles of liberty, freedom and equality for all for which it stood and the slavery for which it practiced. He passionately supported the abolishment of slavery. Thoreau could not abide his democratic government supporting the principles of liberty and freedom while defying them in practice. Thus, his famous essay he wrote of a new and exciting way to defy injustice in a nonviolent way. He described his method of disobedience a new peaceful revolution in human history.
The same method Thoreau prescribed to pressure the American government to abolish slavery has now become globally accepted as a powerful, non-violent democratic means to force unjust opponents to incorporate change. People in various countries have adopted this peaceful political tool to unseat unjust, tyrannical governments. How could Thoreau have imagined the legacy he would leave to peace loving people a century later and beyond? This was another great leap forward in democracy.
Thoreau in his essay came out with a very new revolutionary approach to fight against injustice and tyranny. For him, such a practice as slavery was fundamentally immoral and even if it would be, difficult and expensive to stop it then so be it. He wrote, “This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.”
He was proactive in search of liberty, equality, and justice. He advised people through his essay, “Don’t just wait passively for an opportunity to vote for justice. Voting for justice is as ineffective as wishing for justice; what you need to do is to be actually just. This is not to say that you have an obligation to devote your life to fighting for justice, but you do have an obligation not to commit injustice and not to give injustice your practical support.”
Thoreau was of the view that paying taxes was one way in which well-meaning people collaborate injustice. People who proclaimed the war in Mexico was wrong and that it was wrong to impose slavery contradicted themselves by funding both with their taxes. The same people who congratulated soldiers for refusing to fight the war were willing to fund the government that started the war. Thus, the government got legitimacy for injustice by the collaboration of people.
“If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.” Thus, Thoreau introduced this new way of nonviolent resistance to injustice by disobeying its rules. A new approach to achieve political goal for human dignity, freedom, and liberty was presented to the world.
Commonly, governments engage evil practices they use their corrosive power to force people into obedience. Democratic governments are less forceful in this regard compared to non-democratic ones. However, they can also use oppressive power tactics in the name of preserving the constitution or maintaining law and order. Any form of government could fail, past and present, if care for human rights is neglected in any way.
It is, therefore, not surprising at all, to find the famous quote, mistakenly attributed to either Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine, “That government is best which governs least.” Actually, Henry David Thoreau coined this great quote in his essay on the duty of civil disobedience.
Democrats all over the world take his quote as the guiding principle of a democratic rule. Many political leaders, reformers, writers from all over the world are influenced particularly from his views on civil disobedience. Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy, Martin L King, John F Kennedy, and B P Koirala spoke about his influence on them. B. P. Koirala, the leading freedom fighter from Nepal is famous for his quote “A system which rules less can only guarantee civil liberty and individual freedom. Breaking the laws issued by unjust governments is the moral duty of an enlightened citizen,” We find similarities in these great men of the world regarding freedom, equality, and justice.
As Thoreau wrote, “If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth–certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, and then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.”
Thoreau was a firm believer in the moral autonomy of an individual. He seemed convinced that whenever one sees injustice happening in the society whatever law it is one should use his/her autonomy to fight against it. To wait for a majority to build up can do more harm. Thoreau wrote, “Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?” He further questions, “Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt?” He is a peace loving man and therefore does not want to wait for amendment to happen after bloodshed.
However, the debate whether Thoreau was anarchist or not can be very lively in the present context of globally appreciated the path of nonviolence civil disobedience to achieve political goal of any nature. From changing dictatorial regimes to wining freedom from foreign occupation and letting rulers hear the people’s voice this active civil disobedience method is used. For example, the peoples’ strike in Russia in 1905, the movement for self-rule in India, confronting communism in Poland, are the examples of the use of nonviolence method in the movement for power. The same method was used in resistance to terror in Denmark, El Salvador, and Argentina. Nonviolent actions were selected for the campaign for Civil Rights in the USA, and against apartheid in South Africa. For restoring democracy and people’s power in Philippians, twice in Nepal and many former Soviet States like Ukraine and Georgia the nonviolent civil disobedience tool was used. Thoreau has shown the path that gave millions of people freedom, liberty, equality, and hope for betterment.
Civil disobedience includes the active denial to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government or of an occupying power without physical violence. It is not only a tactic to win a political struggle but a path of reform for the life of millions of people around the world. Mahatma Gandhi led Civil disobedience nonviolent resistance movements in India in the fight against British colonialism. Actually, Thoreau’s concept theorized and practiced in Indian movement for independence. Most notably, Mahatma Gandhi developed civil disobedience as an anti-colonialist tool. In his later days, he gave a new political philosophy of nonviolence for governance also.
Civil disobedience has served as a major tactic of nationalist movements in former colonies in Africa and Asia prior to their gaining independence. Gandhi said, “Civil disobedience is the inherent right of a citizen to be civil, implies discipline, thought, care, attention.” In seeking an active form of civil disobedience, one may deliberately choose to break certain laws, by forming a peaceful blockade or occupying a facility illegally. Protesters practice this nonviolent form of civil disorder with the expectation that they will be arrested, attacked, or beaten by the authorities. Protesters often undergo training in advance on how to react to arrest or to attack, so that they will do so in a manner that quietly resists without threatening the authorities.
Mahatma Gandhi called this path of active disobedience as ‘Satyagraha’ meaning quest for truth. He states that untruth is injustice and quest for truth is the fundamental rights of people. If this right is denied people, have all right to cease not to obey injustice, which is evil. He was also of the view that governments often tend to use force for making people obey them. He further said that only cowards used forces to make people obey them. The government’s people are always in fear of some unseen power or strength. That unseen strength in the form of fear is the key factor the governments use in order to keep status quo ante in the society. This unseen fear force is the hindrance to the freedom and liberty of the people. The fear within a human being is what has to be given up in order to be a nonviolent practitioner. Therefore, people in governments cannot be nonviolent at all because they do not have such moral courage and strength as people does.
We find similarities between Gandhi and Thoreau regarding moral strength of an individual compared to the physical strength of a government. Once an individual leaves fear of being hurt for good no physical force can make him/her, obey the unjust law and orders. Gandhi wrote, “It requires more courage and strength to be nonviolent practitioners.”
However, even the Gandhi led ‘Quit-India Movement’ could not remain completely nonviolent as Gandhi wished. Although, civil resisters did not use force and were nonviolent, the suppression used by the British Raj was very violent. Many people were injured and hundreds died. During the Quit-India Movement, some political pundits criticized Gandhi for shepherding people into the lion’s den, referring to the Jaliya Walla Bagh incident where the British Government massacred three hundred peaceful Indian citizens at one time. However, the truth is, India won her independence with Gandhi’s nonviolent peaceful civil disobedience movement with relative low casualty during the long struggle for Independence. This epic achievement of self-rule in the large nation of India is her enduring hallmark to the greatness of nonviolent civil disobedience– the force more powerful than any weapon.
Martin Luther King was to America as Gandhi to India. The American Civil Rights Movement in the fight against segregation and disfranchisement was at its peak from 1955-1965. Civil rights are those rights that all inhabitants of a nation expect to enjoy by law. However, the term is even broader than “political rights,” which refer only to rights evolving from the authority and are enjoyed usually only by a citizen. Civil rights have a legal as well as a philosophical basis. In the United States, civil rights are thought of in terms of the specific rights guaranteed in the Constitution such as freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, the rights to due process, and to equal protection under the law. After nearly a decade of nonviolent protests and marches, ranging from the 1955-1956 Montgomery bus boycotts, to the student-led sit-ins of the 1960s, to the huge March on Washington in 1963, Congress finally passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, guaranteeing basic civil rights for all Americans, regardless of race.
The civil rights movement in the US has shown the power and the need of constant vigilance in order to achieve and sustain freedom and equality. In modern politics, it is understood one of the fundamental principles of democracy is equality. Most regimes known to human beings claim they are for the good of the people, but only democracy is the government by the people. Government by the people implies people are equal. Although Plato thought guardianship a better alternative to democracy, he was still convinced democracy stood for freedom and equality.
Although equality was in practice in the Athenian era as an inherent principle for governance, it was after Locke’s statement “That all Men by Nature are equal,” intrinsic equality was ascribed as the basis for rule, particularly in collective decisions. According to Dahl, Locke’s “Intrinsic equality evidently means that no one is naturally entitled to subject another to his (or, certainly, to her) will or authority”. However, we see in many instances the notion of equality has also been taken away. There is always a fear that those achievements can be squashed away in practice. Political rights, once achieved, also need safeguarding through strong and constant activism.
The slaves in America were emancipated after President Lincoln’s bold step, long before Martin Luther King was born. In the eyes of the law, they became equal in all respect. However, in practice the African Americans were segregated in every sector of the society until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Had African Americans, along with other liberal Americans, not staged a nonviolent Civil Rights Disobedience Movement that persuaded the government for a change, the situation would not have improved by itself.
Even early 20th century democracies of the US and Britain were not inclusive enough to accommodate all their people as citizens. True, the classical democracy of Athens and American democracy in 1950s, if compared in terms of the exclusiveness and equality they practiced toward the minority population or non-citizens, they both appear very inhumane today. Keeping in mind democracy and its fundamentals such as equality, Robert A Dahl in his book ‘ Democracy and its Critics’ describes the Strong Principle of Equality as follows: “The conviction that ordinary people are capable to govern themselves is the basis of rule by the people — democracy. Until this notion is justified, people’s rights for ruling will not prevail.”
Democracy is not only an instrument to maximize freedom but also maximize human development and protection of individual interests. The political system in which a government ensures one hundred percent general freedom, freedom of self-determination, and moral autonomy without any interruption, is an ideal system. No such ideal state and system has ever existed. However, democracy is open to incorporate changes with innovations and experiments that maximize freedom for all. Civil disobedience activism constantly gives power and moral strength to the public to stand against any kind of injustice. This political tool hits the government at its center point without bloodshed. One can adopt and steer the movement thinking of the situation and what level of injustice they are facing and participation of the people in it.
As mentioned before, the nonviolent tool of civil disobedience is used in day-to-day political, as well as civil policy formations. If a policy can affect people and if people find it unjust what do people do? If people just surrender to the authority, there is the chance that injustice will be prolonged. People suffer and sacrifice for democracy to get rid of injustice. Democracy cannot ensure total justice.
As time passes, knowing and unknowing injustices will definitely surface in societies. Governments may stage many impositions like raising taxes and cutting social welfares. If the culture of nonviolent civil disobedient movement remain active and present, at any given moment one can be optimistic about incorporation of intuitional change without loss of life and property. Thus, we keep moving toward better defining and practicing justice and equality.
Injustice is a worldwide phenomenon, existing in every society, even in democracies. From century to century, the definition of injustice has changed according to the era’s political and philosophical climate of opinion. Yet, within the enlightenment of human virtue, the true definition of injustice has never changed, no more than the cry for freedom and justice within the heart of the oppressed. However, regardless of the time or cause of injustice, history has proven repeatedly, the most powerful force for true transformation of political, social, and economical order for justice is not the violent swapping of injustices, but rather the united people power of non-violent civil disobedient activism. In Nepal, we have recently experienced the return of democracy through nonviolence means, which has been active in between brutal violence of the Maoists and the Monarchists.

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