In truth lies the solution
S. THEODORE BASKARAN
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One hundred years after the movement was launched, Satyagraha continues to remain a powerful weapon to fight right against might.
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PHOTO: THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY AND A.M. FARUQUI
SATYAGRAHA: Gandhiji defying the salt law, the Chipko movement with women protecting trees and a protest march against dams being built across the Narmada.
How did Mahatma Gandhi lead Indians to freedom against a mighty empire, without using any force? What was the power behind this movement?
He used a method called "Satyagraha". It is a non-violent, passive resistance to oppression. Gandhiji employed this form of protest for the first time in South Africa in 1906.
The government of Transvaal, a British colony, had proposed a law to force Indians to register themselves and also to get their fingerprinting done. Along with other volunteers, Gandhiji protested against this by burning the registration forms.
After a long drawn struggle, this Act was repealed in 1911. Gandhiji had tested and found effective this new device of dissent — Satyagraha.
Gandhiji wanted to give this method, which was based on truth and non-violence, a name. He was keen that this form of protest should not be mistaken as a weapon of the weak. He invited suggestions through the magazine Indian Opinion and offered a small prize. His nephew Maganlal came up with the name Satyagraha. It literally means the passion for truth or truth and firmness.
Peaceful protest
Though Gandhiji used this method many times, the power of Satyagraha was dramatically demonstrated when he led a march for nearly 380 km, with a group of volunteers. He walked from Ahmedabad to the seaside village of Dandi to collect salt, thus deliberately breaking the Salt law. Gandhiji, known for his simple but powerful sentences, wrote at Dandi : "I want world sympathy in this battle of right against might." Hundreds of satyagrahis were beaten and imprisoned but they kept coming in groups to defy the law. The event shook the very foundations of the British Empire.
In different parts of the world, people have adopted this method to protest against injustice. Martin Luther King fought colour prejudice through the Gandhian method he called "Soul force".
The women of the Chipko movement in the Himalayas followed this method. They hugged the trees when the axe men arrived. Medha Patkar offered Satyagraha pleading resettlement for those who lost their homes due to the Narmada dam.
In Gandhi's words
In the application of Satyagraha, I discovered, in the earliest stages, that pursuit of Truth did not admit to violence being inflicted on one's opponent, but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For, what appears to be truth to one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of Truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but one's own self.
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