Last semester I took a course a course on Gandhi with Professor Diana Eck. Most students here at Harvard would relish at the thought of merely taking a course with her. I had, however, the wonderful luck of taking this course as a seminar with her, a seminar that had not been offered in approximately a decade. As a Gandhi enthusiast, I couldn't have asked for more. However, reading Gandhi's own writings, biographies on Gandhi, and then examining current applications of Gandhian theory all made me wonder about that ever-present annoyance: how practical is this all?
I held steadfast the whole semester, of course, that Gandhi's means of nonviolence via satyagraha were entirely practical and useful. Self-suffering, courage, discipline: these are obvious traits for a correct insurrection.
But then I read Gandhi's letters to the Jews during the Holocaust. In Harijan on 26 November 1938, Gandhi counseled the Jews to take after his own methods of self-suffering:
"If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German might, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this, I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance but would have confidence that in the end the rest were bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can." *
The letter continues in what I can only call a chilling and disturbing way. Lay down, he seems to say. Allow them to eliminate all those that they wish to eliminate, for even the German must reach a point in which s/he realizes the level of commitment that you possess.
It was incredibly difficult to read this counsel with the historical hindsight that we now possess regarding World War II, the Holocaust, and Hitler. I must grant that Gandhi may or may not have possessed the full extent of the details about the persecution of the Jews. For his words in this counsel clearly align the travails of the Jews in Germany with those of the Indians under British rule. That said, however, there is still the shocking realization that this document offers: what if the Jews had taken a Gandhian route? Well, I'm sure that all seven of you readers of this blog are probably in agreement of what the outcome would have been, counter-factual notwithstanding.
Flash forward to this semester. After all this nonviolence talk in the Divinity School, I decided to head over to the Kennedy School for a course titled "The Politics and Ethics of the Use of Force" with Fr. Bryan Hehir. An expert on Just War Theory, Fr. Hehir has been teaching this course every spring for several years. So jumping into this course, I have had to confront the arguments for the just employment of force, as Fr. Hehir puts it: the conscious, deliberate, and strategic killing of human life. From Augustine to Aquinas to the Treaty of Westphalia to the United Nations, from the early Christian church to nuclear weapons, this course tries to tackle the normative argument on the use of force while simultaneously bringing historical context into play.
So where do I stand now? Both Eck and Hehir have put excellent arguments to the fore. Both have instructed me on what could be considered somewhat antipodes of political/social aggression. When I look at myself in the mirror, can I say that I am truly a Gandhian? Or must I contend that Augustine had something going.
This is a preliminary thought that I wish to provide here, and I'm sure that (like most things I encounter) I am not the first one to think of this, nor am I the most eloquent in articulating this position. Basically, I am feeling these days as though nonviolent resistance can be effective, but only in a situation in which there is a kind of social contract in existence between the actors in play. Nonviolent resistance can be useful, but probably only when those in power have certain responsibilities for those that they power over, when the foundation of sand that is the populace is that which upholds the skyscraper of hierarchical power.
With Gandhi, it was the British government that held its power with the general consent of the multitude of its subjects. With MLK, the American government had certain responsibilities vis-a-vis its citizens (no matter how long it took to actually realize this). But in Germany, Jews became seen as non-citizens, as foreigners in their own land. There was no social contract, no responsibilities for their lives. In interstate conflict, one nation-state does not have any real responsibilities for the other. Indeed, an argument can be made that in an increasingly globalized and globalizing world, nations rely on each other for resources and economics, but ultimately no nation possesses a kind of social contract with the citizens of another nation. And this is where Just War comes into play.
All of this has come to a boil in my mind because of the many recent news stories on similar topics: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, etc. One New York Times article talks about the Egyptian uprising and the link it has to Gene Sharp, one of the most articulate voices for nonviolent resistance in the U.S. for the past several decades. The article describes, however, the mantra that Mr. Ghonim of Google gave to his readers on Facebook: "He repeatedly hammered home a simple message: 'This is your country; a government official is your employee who gets his salary from your tax money, and you have your rights.'" Yes indeed: there is a social contract in effect. They have breached said social contract. Therefore, rebellion must occur, most practically in the form of a nonviolent resistance.
These are just some thoughts that are, of course, still in motion. Feel free to dissect, but leave the deep surgery for any longer piece that might come of this idea. In the meantime, it lies in an inchoate state. Comments are welcomed, however, and greatly appreciated.
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*Chada, Yogesh. Gandhi: A Life. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1997: 363.
I don't disagree with you on this approach, though I often find it fascinating how nearly any theory on the use of violence has to pass the WWII test now.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was an officer in a pacifist organization in undergrad, I think the most common trump card anyone ever pulled out in debate was WWII. I've use it on occasion myself. It makes me wonder just what it is we see there which causes all theories to crash upon its shores.
Clearly, it's not genocide per se, since we've kept out of any number of international situations which involved 'ethnic cleansing'. I wonder.
Part of it is, yes, the idea of choreographed and executed genocide. But the other part of WWII was the very clear, nation-state boundaries that were involved AND the nearly-perfect historical "lead up" to the events. It's almost as though you can pinpoint the exact moments that led to the exact consequences that led to the exact results. It was a moment where "war" seemed to perfectly fit with the perceptions of "war" at the time. There was no "war against terror" or "war on drugs" at the time. It was just sheer "war."
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, it also brought a lot of war things into play: humanitarian intervention, the response to aggression, the inevitable participation of nation-states who were reluctant to get involved. So it's kind of the "perfect case scenario" if you will. Hence why we always go back to it.
It's also fairly ubiquitous in people's historical consciousness, for what's it's worth.