Non-Violence Is Still a Winning Strategy
Frustration is understandable, but there’s evidence that Gandhian tactics are changing minds in the U.S.
Peaceful tactics work.
Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Exactly one century ago, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi made a decision. He had decided that the British would not loosen control of India unless Indians themselves took direct and decisive action. The manner of that action is what set Gandhi, and the movement he subsequently led, apart. He chose to stop cooperating with an unjust state, to disobey unjust laws and throughout to pursue only non-violent means of protest.
Plenty of Indians who agreed with his goals disagreed with his ideas and his tactics. Some of them resorted to violence. The debate that has today broken out in the United States over whether violence is ever acceptable in the fight for change is hardly a new one.