Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Ultimately it is up to historians to judge the efficacy of methods of opposition to tyranny, but the impact that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has made on our struggle in South Africa and India can still be assessed in personal and political terms.

For me, the remarkable features of what happened in the afternoon of August 16 1908 have not been sufficiently grasped, even by revisionist historians. First, the change from petitioning and appeals to direct, non-violent action was without parallel in situations where emigrants, without roots or property or tenure, asserted their right to dignity in a hostile environment, especially in an empire which had no inhibition in suppressing revolts.

In the beginning Gandhi had accepted the good faith of a venal colonial politician with pretensions to statesmanship when then prime minister Jan Smuts undertook to suspend what Gandhi had described as the “murderous act”. Smuts lied -- as he did again and again. The burning of the registration certificate (with all the implied rejection of a vulgar racist policy), was therefore an act of revolutionary courage.

The second great lesson was the extent to which the agitation by Indians here took place on a non-sectarian basis. Hindu, Muslim, Parsee, Tamil and Telegu were united in their rejection of second-class status, thus averting the sectarian blight that afflicted many other resistance movements and which resulted in the tragedy of the partition of India. Good leadership and joint action averted the introduction of the poison that in India had led to the bloodletting of partition.

The third seminal effect, which Gandhi was to replicate to great effect in India, was the mass nature of the struggle. 1908 and then 1913 showed that carefully organised and highly motivated protests with a clear understanding of sacrifices entailed, could evoke the support of labourers, women, coal miners and the unemployed. Mass agitation became the preferred method of bottom-up agitation, which was not simply driven by an elite leadership.

The development of Gandhi’s opinions on discrimination and equality -- from an acceptance of a historically ordained caste system to a total rejection of dalitism -- has also brought a greater understanding of the need for unity between the oppressed both in South Africa and in the general worldwide struggle against racism.

Gandhi’s political activity in South Africa, as has been pointed out already, was directed at remedying specific grievances of the small Indian community. However, on his return to India, he repeatedly emphasised that the Indians should maintain relations with Africans and, if Indian rights conflicted with the interests of the African majority, they should not be pressed.

The seeds of a non-racial struggle and the adoption of a policy of non-discrimination were sown in this approach to unity of the oppressed.

This emphasis on the peaceful settlement of international disputes is now reflected in the United Nations (UN) Charter, force being allowed only in self-defence or in accordance with a collective decision of the Security Council. The adoption of the Nuremberg Principle of the crime of aggression by the UN reflects the repudiation by the moral community of the idea that war is the normal operation of politics by other means. And personal responsibility for international crimes, including crimes against humanity and war crimes, strengthened the case against those who espoused violence to the exclusion of all forms of peaceful change.

In his original criticism of the use of the phrase passive resistance, Gandhi referred to the static nature of the phrase. For him, there was a wider dimension of reaching out on a moral and philosophical basis to the oppressor, so that peaceful adjustment could take place. The great Palestinian intellectual, Edward Said, shortly before his tragic death, concluded that the struggle for freedom and self-determination in Palestine had reached an impasse, notwithstanding the basic correctness of the struggle of the Palestinian people.

In opposing the suicide bombers and the futility of the armed struggle, because of the overwhelming superiority of the Israeli arms, he adumbrated a policy similar to Gandhi’s, which was that the resistance movement should try to reach out to progressive and liberal opinion in Israel and build confidence so as to assist in recognising the respective rights of the people to self-determination and bring about a change in Israel’s attitude to its security.

Where one party has overwhelming power at its disposal and admits no restraints in protecting its interests, I believe that the approach eventually adopted by the ANC under the leadership of Nelson Mandela is the most appropriate. On the other hand, when the mass of the people are not involved and the struggle is largely an armed struggle, the foundations of the new regime are likely to be very unstable, with the new armed forces intervening to maintain the beginning of a particular social class -- examples are Algeria and Bangladesh.

One feature of Gandhi’s philosophy which has not received appropriate recognition is his emphasis on community and public involvement in decision-making. “Democracy”, he once said, “is not a state in which people act like sheep. Under democracy, individual liberty of opinion and activity is jealously guarded.”
When there is no such “guarding of individual activity”, communities rightly have recourse to direct action through passive resistance.

The enormous peaceful protest led by Meda Patkar in Gujerat against a massive dam project illustrates the truism that distant governance may often be unresponsive to local needs and that bureaucracy with particular ties to political or economic interests may be unbending or venal. The opposition to land acquisition for industrial “development” in West Bengal, to land grabs in the Amazon or the administrative cock-up in Khutsong have led to passive resistance which sometimes begins to deteriorate into violence either because the principles of non-violence -- no intimidation of those who disagree -- have not been fully assimilated, or, as in the case of Khutsong, a judgement of the Constitutional Court has not been implemented because of previous bureaucratic bungling. The rule of law, the basis of democracy, is being violated.

In a democracy violence or the threat of violence for political ends is incompatible with a constitutional order willingly, if not enthusiastically, adopted by the people. Non-violent action is a form of participatory democracy.

If [the] globalisation of the modern world is a threat to our economies, our environment and often our civil liberties, there is an alternative peaceful dimension of opposition to the destructive aspects of globalisation through what I call “globalisation from below”. We in the anti-apartheid movement -- the most successful example of international solidarity since 1945 -- recog-nised the need to work in different countries to get them to change their policies.

Now there is massive cooperation by civil society to object to violations of human rights by states in the guise of combating terrorism; there are civil disobedience campaigns to avert further environmental depredations; and use of the internet -- what a wonderful instrument of solidarity -- to avert criminal activity by states, such as the passage of arms to Zimbabwe.

This is an edited excerpt from a public lecture given by Kader Asmal, professor extraordinary, University of the Western Cape, at the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg this month

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