What Gandhi Can Teach Today’s Protesters

Almost a century ago, Mohandas K. Gandhi – commonly known by the honorific Mahatma, the great-souled one – emphasized nonviolent resistance in his campaign for Indian independence.

Almost a century ago, Mohandas K. Gandhi – commonly known by the honorific Mahatma, the great-souled one – emphasized nonviolent resistance in his campaign for Indian independence.

Today, as my research shows, Gandhi has become an iconic figure for people seeking social change, including communities across the United States.

Explaining nonviolence

For Gandhi, nonviolence was not simply the absence of physical violence. Self-rule and radical democracy in which everyone participates in the governance process were also part of Gandhi’s idea of nonviolence.

He believed that self-rule should extend to all people, rich and poor, male and female, and at all levels of society. To him, authority over others was a form of violence. To achieve that vision, he encouraged participation of women and the lower castes in economic and political matters.

These ideas about violence and authority had circulated in the U.S. in the 19th century, especially among the Christian peace churches such as the Quakers and Mennonites. In this view, equality and the lack of hierarchical structures are forms of nonviolence.

For Gandhi, it was the Indian religions, Hinduism and Jainism, that shaped his activism. His mother, a devout Hindu, taught him the importance of fasting as a form of self-discipline and religious devotion. From the Jains, with whom he grew up, he learned nonviolence and nonpossessiveness. In particular, he drew on the Hindu text “Bhagavad Gita” (The Song of the Lord) for a religious framework on the values of simplicity, duty and nonviolence.

All this translated into Gandhi’s peaceful expression of protest of which the most potent “weapon” was fasting.

Nonviolent resistance

The Salt March of 1930 is one of Gandhi’s best-known acts of peaceful resistance.

Under colonial rule, the British taxed Indians for salt and declared that making or collecting salt was illegal. Since salt is necessary for survival, this issue affected each and every Indian. They considered this law unjust and morally wrong.

Gandhi organized a 241-mile march across western India to the city of Dandi in Gujarat, in western India, where he collected salt, illegally. He started with 78 people. But as the marchers proceeded, thousands more joined. Weeks later, his unarmed followers marched to a government salt depot, where they met violent retaliation.

In the words of American journalist Webb Miller,

“At a word of command, scores of native police rushed upon the advancing marchers and rained blows on their heads