{"id":2963,"date":"2008-02-25T15:33:59","date_gmt":"2008-02-25T10:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200802\/in-defence-of-gandhigiri\/"},"modified":"2008-02-25T15:35:29","modified_gmt":"2008-02-25T10:05:29","slug":"in-defence-of-gandhigiri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200802\/in-defence-of-gandhigiri\/","title":{"rendered":"In Defence of Gandhigiri"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nitin Pai quotes Dr. Ambedkar <\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0rebut Raj Thackeray’s argument that there is nothing wrong with breaking the law while running political movements.<\/p>\n

I’m afraid I have to disagree with Nitin, and also with Dr. Ambedkar.\u00a0 Indira Gandhi tried to use the same argument against Jayaprakash Narayan during the emergency. She claimed that because India had adopted a legitimate and democratic constitution, there was no longer space or need for civil disobedience, the satyagraha or any of the various instruments that got us our independence. Narayan disagreed, and which is more, he had Gandhiji on his side. Gandhiji himself had stated that satyagraha was a weapon against oppressive governments everywhere, not just against foreign ones.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Now, I am no admirer of Gandhiji, but his idea of non-violent, civil resistence to unjust laws is one of the two aspects of his philosophy I see merit in. I do not believe in non-violence as a universal philosophy. I do not think that one should be peaceable in the face of Nazi or Stalinist tyranny. But when an otherwise liberal government (legitimate or not) does unconscionable things or forces you to obey laws that you cannot, in good conscience, obey, then the option of openly and non-violently disobeying the laws should be open to you.<\/p>\n

The key terms are “open” and “non-violent”. The disobedience needs to be open, because the whole point is to change the law, not evade it. By publicly taking an action that you think is legitimate, but which your fellow citizens have made illegal (like, for example, drinking beer in Gujarat) you force them to choose between acknowledging your right to do it or using repressive measures to stop you from doing it. It needs to be non-violent, because your aim is to persuade others, not to force them to do it at gun-point. Open and non-violent also mean that you are willing to accept the consequences of your actions.<\/p>\n

The argument that now that we have a constitution, the rules of the game have changed does not hold water. First, no constitution is perfect, and our constitution is very imperfect. Second, the political system, the difficulty of changing the constitution, and the undeniable possibility that your fellow citizens may have made, what is, in your eyes, a wrong choice, mean that the constitutional route to change the constitution will often be inadequate. We have a choice of using words to persuade our fellow citizens and our government to change the law or to amend the constitution. We also have a choice of leading a revolt to overthrow the constitution. We need one more choice between the two, and satyagraha provides it.
\nNow, this point still leaves many questions unanswered. Obviously, we will always have a constitution that is not completely to our liking. We will always find that some laws are not to our liking. This does not mean that we should offer satyagraha against every single one of them. Where we draw the line is a difficult question which we can answer only by looking at the law in question (and acknowledging grey areas) And here too, “open and non-violent” provide a useful guide. Is the violation of your right so severe that you are willing to go to jail to protest it? Is the law in question such a greivous wrong that when others see you being hauled off to jail for performing what (in your eyes) is a harmless and legitimate action, they might be persuaded to change their minds and change the law? If so, then go ahead and protest.<\/p>\n

None of this lets Thackeray off the hook. His invocation of Gandhiji is as insincere as the rest of his movement is cynical. It is one thing to disobey a law (openly and non-violently – I must emphasise) that you disagree with. It is quite another to use violence to enforce a law that you happen to think ought to be passed by the government. If he really thinks that North Indians are a blight on Maharashtrian society, then he does need to ask for government action and he does not need to beat up North Indians. He just needs to ask his fellow Maharashtrians to enforce a social boycott against North Indians. If he is right in his view of North Indians, then he ought to have no doubt in his mind that most of his fellow Maharashtrians would see his way and participate in the boycott.<\/p>\n

Thackeray is invoking Gandhiji where it suits him (civil disobedience) and ignoring him where it does not (non-violence). But in a democratic society, non-violence and civil disobedience are a package deal. The whole point of civil disobedience is to persuade others, your fellow citizens and your government. Any small group can inflict violence on others. In a country like India, it can do so at very little cost to itself. The violence says nothing about the depth or breadth of support for the cause, much less about the legitimacy of the cause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nitin Pai quotes Dr. Ambedkar \u00a0to\u00a0rebut Raj Thackeray’s argument that there is nothing wrong with breaking the law while running political movements. I’m afraid I have to disagree with Nitin, and also with Dr. Ambedkar.\u00a0 Indira Gandhi tried to use the same argument against Jayaprakash Narayan during the emergency. She claimed that because India had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[35,75,76],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2963"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}