“Nonviolence is a weapon of the strong”: Gandhi’s Views on Non-Violence

Abstract

There are many causes I would die for. There is not a single cause I would kill for.

             M. K. Gandhi

 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhis name (18691948) is synonymous with the notion of non-violence (ahimsa). Whether one talks about the fight against the racial discrimination in South Africa against which Gandhi stood up or the independence struggle against the British colonial regime in India, M. K. Gandhi came up with a strategy of non-violence which was unique in its own way. More interesting is the fact that the martial west / British did not know how to react to the non-violent strategies of M. K. Gandhi as a mode of protest. The strategy of non-violence is not merely a tool of colonial protest, but it is also a mode of building ones own character and also a society which is just and peaceful. It is thought that Gandhis non-violence has three main elements:

 self-improvement, that is, an effort on ones part to make oneself a better person ethically and morally,

• constructive programme, that is, humanitarian social work to create a just social order which will not oppress and suppress others; and
• campaigns of resistance against evils / oppressions/ suppressions / exploitations / discriminations etc. that is detrimental to the growth of a man and a just society