(108) S7E5 Nonviolent Action: Gahndi's Salt March
Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. Today, we are continuing our series on nonviolent action by taking a look at Gandhi's famous Salt March. Now the facts of Gandhi's Salt March are are really pretty simple, so we're gonna dig into to kind of the deeper meaning behind it. But first of all, let's let's get to the facts here. So the British had a bunch of laws and taxes that they placed on the Indians which revolved around salt.
Derek:The tax was not only hefty for poor Indians and impacted the poorest the most, but it also prevented people from making their own salt. They essentially had to pay the British even if they could go to the ocean and make their own salt themselves, however you do that. So this was viewed as oppressive and paternalistic, and the colonizers oppressing the colonized. That was the view that the Indians had because I think that was the truth, right? That's what was going on.
Derek:Now, Gandhi identified this tax as one of the many oppressive laws which he wanted to focus on for nonviolent action. So lots and lots of oppressive laws, and Gandhi's like, that's the one I want to go after, the salt one. So Gandhi started to march to the sea, he grabbed 80 people to go with him, and they started walking like 200 or 300 miles or something. And by the time they got to the sea, there were thousands of people who were with them. And then he grabbed a pinch of salt from the sea.
Derek:Sounds life changing, right? Right. Now, the British weren't too worried about it. Other people weren't worried about it. They said, well, and Indians were like, this is stupid, what good is this going to do?
Derek:And certainly it seems that way, we're going to talk about that on this episode. Because what ultimately happened is that the movement led to marches on salt works, it led to protests in India, economic boycotts, and this movement of self reliance where people would not only boycott other goods, but they would make their own goods. So it had a profound impact on the populace. And as we've seen before, one of the reasons that this happened is because they were able to get a very diverse group of people to participate in this movement, as well as a large number of participants. We could take a look at a lot of aspects of this movement, But I want to focus on the aspect of Gandhi's movement that I think highlights what we've been talking about throughout this season.
Derek:And that concept that Gandhi employed, and I'll try to say it right because I've only ever heard the computer voice on my computer say it, but satyagraha. So this concept of satyagraha or soul force, maybe I'll use that, I'll use that one. And I think as we look at what soul force is, as Gandhi called it, I think we're gonna be able to begin making lots of connections for how non violence impacts the world. It might give you ideas for how to go about doing that, give you this kind of creative vision for what that looks like and why it works. So Sathyagraha combines two Sanskrit words, the first part meaning truth and the last part meaning firm adherence or insistence.
Derek:So to Gandhi, this idea of truth implied love with firmness, right? So or as he later called it life force or soul force. And this life force or soul force was an important term because at this point, people called what Gandhi and others did passive resistance. And that's why, you know, we've talked about this before but that term pacifist makes it sound like, Oh, well what? You're just gonna not do anything?
Derek:Right? And that's not at all what we mean and Gandhi didn't like that. So he liked the idea of this force or firmness showing that something is being done. Non violent action is used a lot today because love force and soul force kind of sound hippie and I don't know, eastern mysticism, I don't know. But that's kind of what we're talking about, same thing, trying to show that what we're doing here is loving but it is also, it's not doing nothing.
Derek:We're not using this vacuous term for love. And this soul force is thought by Gandhi to have done five things in particular. First, it and I'll give you a quote from the article here just to kind of lay out the things that Gandhi thought they did. So quote, first, soul force seeks to remedy not trivial errors but specific laws or power exercises that are significantly and demonstrably unjust. Second, soul force is designed to reveal truth, to reveal the presence of injustice resulting from application of unjust law.
Derek:Third, soul force is not passive but active, firm and courageous, willing to bring about creative tension and face risk. Fourth, soul force is non violent in method, anticipating and even accepting punishment for civil disobedience. And fifth, soul force refuses to treat opponents as enemies as it seeks to convert opponents and foster a reconciled relationship. End quote. So we're going go through each of these points, the first two of which are going to be quite lengthy and and then we'll end with the the last three points.
Derek:So first of all, sole force attacks specific unjust laws. In systems of injustice, it is sometimes difficult to place one's finger on specific problems. And I think that we're seeing this in The States right now with the idea of systemic injustice. When the topic of racism is invoked, those who feel oppressed oftentimes can't point to specifics which can't be interpreted different ways or which can't be gaslighted. So you can say, well, that was racism and somebody else could say, no, that wasn't, it was this or here's an explanation, there's an explanation or why do you have to import these negative motives from somebody?
Derek:How do you know what he was thinking when he did that? And so racism has become not overt and aggressive, but it has become covert and passive aggressive. It's these things that you can always, like I said, gaslight and always say, No, that's not what's really going on here. So you know, the war on drugs, it hurt black families. Well, people shouldn't be doing drugs and it was fine that they were sent to jail.
Derek:Wages are unfair in the black community and poverty leads to crime. Well, people should finish school and get better opportunities. But schools aren't equal in staffing and equipping, and minority schools tend to send the message to students that education is pointless. Well, that's the family's fault for not instilling appropriate values in kids or moving to a place with better schools. And so we end up having this cyclical injustice where problems are caused both by the history of events and the systems that we currently have, as well as personal decisions.
Derek:Like, a lot of times both things are true. If there are drug laws, should, people not choose to take drugs? Yeah, that's personal responsibility. You go to jail, that's on you. But we also need to recognize that certain communities are targeted with not only more enforcement, but their sentencing is significantly different.
Derek:And they live in circumstances that we know foster those kinds of things without the social support and governmental support that they ought to get to help them get out of that. And it's kind of this bothand was like, Well, yeah, they did deserve to go to jail under current laws, but why are the laws the way that they are? Why are they enforcing it the way that they are? And why are they living in the communities that they are with the in the poverty that they are? And certainly we can then we just get into the cyclical, there are personal decisions involved as well as systemic issues.
Derek:And so my group at least, the conservative Christian group, tends to lean more towards, it's all personal responsibility and there's zero empathy for people who make bad personal decisions and there's really no desire to understand the background for what put people in those situations. And ultimately, we can reinterpret any set of injustices to reflect wherever we want the blame to lie. So in such a system, it's oftentimes difficult for people to be specific about the injustices because the injustices can be dismissed easily, but also because it can be hard to identify the injustices, like you know that something's wrong but you can't really put it into words. So what ends up happening is that you have large groups of the population who rather than put their fingers on specific issues and pursuing the resolution of those issues, we get kind of broad general complaints that sound ludicrous to the opposition. Sometimes the oppressed don't do a good job of of trying to help be specific so that the oppressed can more clearly see what's going on.
Derek:Now whether they choose to see that or not is a different question, but specificity is vital for the oppressed. So for example, what's the problem? The police. Well, F the police. All of them.
Derek:Now, that lack of nuance is understandable in a community that is very frustrated and has had a particular experience over generations, but it usually tends to get at the real problems substantively. It doesn't get at the real problems substantively. Let me say that again, substantively. There we go. On top of that, it has the problems of not being able to draw as diverse a group of supporters because they're like, Well, I don't think we should F all the police, maybe we shouldn't F any of them, right?
Derek:So just like with the American Revolution, you have people who drop off when you start to get violent in your speech when you're laying these generalizations out there. And it certainly isn't gonna convert enemies, which is one of the points of Gandhi's soul force. And it can discredit you. Now when the opposition can look at your over generalized complaint, it's easy for them to dismiss the complaint out of hand as being an exaggeration, being naive or just altogether untrue, right? You're disingenuous, you're dishonest.
Derek:So a lack of specificity really harms the cause. And beyond all of these internal problems in gaining followers and converts, a lack of specificity will also perpetuate injustice. It does this in a number of different ways. First, it fails to give the oppressors or the offending party feedback on how to change. They're already defensive and therefore, they probably lack self reflection and not having clear grievances and a clear path towards reconciliation will prevent progress.
Derek:It will seem hopeless to them like, first of all, I don't know what to change, and second of all, even if I did, it's hopeless because like I can't just snap my fingers and change. So without a clear path, it's easier to ignore the problem than it is to try to figure out how to go about doing it. Whereas if you lay out expectations, then it's like, Okay, let's take this first step and then we'll see about the second one. Another issue is that when the oppressed don't take the time to fully hash out what it is that their problems are, resorting to mere generic frustration at their situation, then that tends to foster hatred and animosity in themselves. And hatred and animosity does not breed good things.
Derek:A victim without specific grievances oftentimes latches onto the emotions and pain rather than looking to the future for reconciliation. When that's the case, though the victims may not have the power to kill their enemies, they do so in their hearts and that ends up playing out in actions and that undermines progress towards justice. And while I understand that this can kind of come across what I'm doing right here can come across as victim blaming, you have to understand that when you look at people like Gandhi or King, they were victims and they took the initiative on themselves to be the bigger person and to be the best that they could be because like we see in Christianity, know, Philippians two, which I talk about a lot, is just this laying down of our lives and sacrificing for other people. Part of non violence, and especially Gandhi's version and the Christian version, you are laying down your life for other people even when you're the victim. You take the first steps, you take the biggest steps, you do the right thing.
Derek:This isn't about victim blaming, this is saying, how do we, even when we're persecuted, sacrificed, offended, how do we take the steps that need to be taken so that we can bring reconciliation? And you can call that victim blaming if you want, but the Christian notion is that when we're victims, we submit ourselves and we do the right thing because that's ultimately the only thing that brings about true reconciliation and restoration anyway. And that's just not that's not just me talking here, this is what you see once we get to Gandhi and King and other people who at least have kind of a religious background to how they implement nonviolence, that's what you're going to see. And even if you want to hate your enemies, for nonviolence to work, being specific is vital. Ultimately, specific is going to help both the victim and the enemy have a clearer picture and hope for change.
Derek:Because if you can't see the goals in mind, the steps to take, things can seem hopeless like, Well, I just I can't do anything to fix this. Specificity is huge. The second aspect of soul force is to reveal truth, specifically the truth of injustice. And I'm gonna step outside of Gandhi here for a minute and talk about some other people that speak to this very, very well. And these were people who in their own way were oppressed.
Derek:They were oppressed under the USSR. The first guy, Alexander Sultanizen, he has an essay entitled Live Not by Lies, and he says the following about truth and injustice in it that is going to help to bring about Gandhi's second point of soul force into the light here. Sultanizen says the following, quote, Since violence can conceal itself with nothing except lies and the lies can be maintained only by violence, Violence does not lay its paw on every shoulder every day. It demands from us only obedience to lies and daily participation in lies and this submissiveness is the crux of the matter, The simplest and most accessible key to our self neglected liberation is this: personal non participation in lies. Though lies may conceal everything, though lies may control everything, We should be obstinate about the one small point.
Derek:Let them be in control but without any help from any of us. This opens a breach in the imaginary encirclement caused by our inaction. It is the easiest thing for us to do and the most destructive for the lies because when people renounce lies, it cuts short their existence like a virus that can survive only in living organisms. So what does that mean? We've had a number of episodes on lying and consequentialism, and I've got a really good one coming out on Augustine's work, his piece called On Lying.
Derek:And why do I spend a lot of time on lies? Because I don't think that people see truth as generally all that important. It's important truth is only as important as the issue to which it's referring to. So, truth about where a bomb is, right, that's important that I tell the truth. Truth as to the toxicity of a substance that a kid is about to ingest, that would be important, right?
Derek:Because we're dealing with somebody's lives. But little truths, in fact convenient truths like, Do I look fat in this dress? Lying would be completely appropriate for most of us. But lies for the Christian, even small lies are extremely problematic. Augustine goes into that, Sultanizen highlights that too.
Derek:According to Sultanizen, violence or injustice and lies go hand in hand. Injustice is able to persist not because it has the power of one really strong person behind it, but because the power of the multitudes refuse to speak truth. There's that saying that I'm sure everybody knows, evil prevails when good men do nothing, right? And that's kind of what Sultanizen is saying right here. Evil is only able to prevail because lots of truth is left unspoken.
Derek:And turning a blind eye to truthfulness and exposing the lie is complicity within justice. Vaclav Havel, in his work Power of the Powerless, written a few years after Solzhenitsyn's work, expounds on Solzhenitsyn with a very poignant example from Havel's life under communism in the Eastern Bloc. The example that Havel gives is this store owner who receives, you know, fruit from the government and everything from everything from the government including this sign that he's to hang up in his window. And the sign that the the store owner hangs just says, workers of the world unite. That sounds great, right?
Derek:But I want to read you a pretty extended quote, several paragraphs from Havel's work because he elaborates on how even the small subservience and complicity props up the power of injustice. The store owner's hanging of the sign, hanging of this this lie, and the refusal to tell the truth by not hanging it is significant. And it's it's what makes society under communism or dictators, it makes that society go. I was just talking with somebody about this yesterday, I think, and they gave the example of like, Oh yeah, do you remember oh, was my cousin David, yeah. Was talking with him and he's like, Oh yeah, this sounds a lot like basically that American citizen in North Korea who took down the poster of Kim Jong Un, I think it was.
Derek:And he ended up dying as a result of his imprisonment in North Korea for taking down a poster. How stupid is that? But in here, Havel discusses why those types of things are very significant. These things that seem small to us, right? Faithfulness on these tiny things just seems inconsequential.
Derek:But as you know from my series on consequentialism, I think inconsequentials are the most consequential because they're what build the foundation for the decisions on the consequential. But listen to Havel's words here, and I'll try to read it a little bit slow so that you can wrestle with his words. But I'll also put a link to his work in the show notes, as well as Sultanizen's work. Havel says the following, quote, I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions. That poster was delivered to our green grocer from the enterprise headquarters along with the onions and carrots.
Derek:He put them all into the windows simply because it had been done that way for years, because everyone does it and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper decoration in his window. Someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life.
Derek:It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life in harmony with society as they say. Obviously, the green grocer is indifferent to the semantic content of the slogan on exhibit. He does not put the slogan in his window from any personal desire to acquaint the public with the ideal it expresses. This of course, does not mean that his action has no motive or significance at all, or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such, it contains a subliminal but very definite message.
Derek:Verbally, it might be expressed this way, I, the green grocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore, I have the right to be left in peace. This message of course has an addressee.
Derek:It is directed above to the green grocer's superior and at the same time, is a shield that protects the green grocer from the potential informers. The slogan's real meaning, therefore, is rooted firmly in the green grocer's existence. It reflects his vital interests. But what are those vital interests? Let us take a note.
Derek:If the green grocer had been instructed to display the slogan, I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient, he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics even though the statement would reflect the truth. The green grocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window. And quite naturally, so, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome his complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction. It must allow the greengrocer to say, what's wrong with the workers of the world uniting?
Derek:Thus, the sign helps the green grocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something high, and that something is ideology. Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. As the repository of something super personal and objective, it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true position and their inglorious modus vivendi, both from the world and from themselves.
Derek:It is a very pragmatic, but at the same time, an apparently dignified way of legitimizing what is above, below, and on either side. It is directed toward people and towards God. It is a veil behind which human beings can hide their own fallen existence, their trivialization, and their adaptation to the status quo. It is an excuse that everyone can use from the green grocer who conceals his fear of losing his job behind an alleged interest in the unification of the workers of the world, to the highest functionary whose interest in staying in power can be cloaked in phrases about service to the working class. The primary excusatory function of ideology therefore, is to provide people both as victims and pillars of the post totalitarian system with the illusion that the system is in harmony with the human order and the order of the universe.
Derek:End quote. That is powerful stuff right there. That just kind of rips open the truth of what power, governmental power in the world are, especially dictators, but probably all power. Truth exposes evil. We need to get it through our heads that truthfulness is vital for a just world.
Derek:Even little truths like hanging a sign up in the store window that has so many other implications, It's sending so many subliminal messages that we're buying into, just like commercials do, the commercials that we watch and the shows that we watch. And so often, non violent action is discounted because its methods don't seem powerful enough. I mean, all they do is they essentially just expose darkness to light. And what people advocate instead of non violence is that we fight lies and violence with our own propaganda, lies and violence. We probably don't see this any more clearly than than we do in the in the Cold War.
Derek:American propaganda during the Cold War picked up. In the fifties, early fifties, we inserted God into the pledge, into the Pledge of Allegiance. We started to print God on our money and God we trust, and we began the Presidential Prayer Breakfast and the courting of Christians. What else happened around this time? Well, civil civil rights were granted and the voting age was lowered, not to legitimately combat injustice, but to appease certain rowdy segments of the population and to appear more human rights conscience than our godless counterparts in The USSR.
Derek:Once people got their right to vote, these college students who were rowdy got the right to vote at 18 and they felt like they had an outlet for for action, they started voting and they started shutting up, at least more so than they were. Civil rights, once civil rights were given over, riots and other sorts of actions started to go down because look, we didn't have humanitarian issues, we were becoming a godly nation again and we were doing justice. We had to set ourselves up in contrast to the godless Soviet Union. And you can go back to the, I think it was the last season, one of the last episodes on legislation. We talked about the argument that civil rights was really just an appeasement, but that extends to other aspects as well, like voting age lowering.
Derek:Meanwhile, while all these things are going on, our propaganda machine pumped up at home. We while it's pumped up and while we're getting all this rhetoric, we supported coups of democratically elected officials, we exploited poor countries and oil rich countries, we engaged in wars and invaded countries to stop those atheist communists, we engaged in and still engage in proxy wars, sacrificing the lives of expendable foreigners and creating humanitarian crises where over there as opposed to over here with our own people. And we supported groups like Al Qaeda against Russia, doing what we label as terrorism when someone like Iranian General Soleimani does it against us. So we essentially were terrorists, and the list goes on. So we have this wonderful beautiful facade of justice for minorities, of being a godly nation, of coming back to God and all of these wonderful things, which are really just facades and masks for the horrendous things that we're doing in the world and the horrendous injustices we allow to perpetuate here in The States.
Derek:But so long as the president or the vice president is a Christian or holds up a Bible, that's what matters to us. That's why prayer in schools is such a big thing for a lot of conservative Christians. We like this tokenism, we like these symbols. Why don't we want the 10 Commandments taken down from courthouses? Because we want to appear Christian.
Derek:We like we like these appearances. And all of this unfortunately gives us only one appearance which is that of a whitewashed tomb. So essentially, the path that The United States has taken to fight evil power is evil power. And that conflict of two evil powers has left tens of millions dead. It's given the world dozens, if not hundreds of humanitarian crises.
Derek:It's a United States where truth doesn't exist anymore. You believe whatever you want to believe, where Christians bow down to politics and the lies of our own propaganda, and we have a world which is at enmity just as it was before, if not worse. So somebody explained to me how this is better than unflinching moral integrity and a refusal to compromise with evil as we speak truth to power, as we are light to darkness. You don't accomplish all of these terrible things in one day and you don't do it with just one person buying into the lie, you do it when a society fails to call out truth and fails to live out truth. And that's what Sultanizen and Havel, people who lived in societies where they understand the power of the state and empire and they understand what it means to be oppressed.
Derek:And they've also, I don't know when they died, but I assume at least one of them probably was able to see it topple. I mean, you're talking about people who know what they're talking about here, and speaking truth to power, speaking truth is vital. Sultanisen and Havel, two men who lived in the Eastern Block, helps to see philosophically that truth is ultimately the only remedy to evil and violence. And what they help us to see philosophically, Gandhi and King help us to see more practically as they lived out that truthfulness. The Salt Marches are one of the best ways I think that you can you can see this point played out, that truth spoken to power is itself power.
Derek:When Gandhi selected the issue of salt, a lot of people thought he was crazy. Some Indian officials thought that the salt issue was absolutely unimportant, and they wanted them to focus on, you know, land issues or something else. And the British laughed off the SALT idea as inconsequential. Go ahead, let them do that, who cares? So why did Gandhi select a salt march as opposed to bringing to light some other injustice like land or revenue reform.
Derek:And a big part of the reason was because of salt's ubiquity. Gandhi said, quote, next to air and water, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life, end quote. Whereas fighting land injustice might be important, it wouldn't resonate with as many people because the truth of that injustice would be harder to put one's finger on, harder to make clear. It didn't mean that no reform was needed there, it's just that when the world is so blind, you have to start with something that's more universal and easier to see. One statesman who supported Gandhi said it like this, quote, Suppose a people rise and revolt, they cannot attack the abstract constitution or lead an army against proclamations and statutes.
Derek:Civil disobedience has to be directed against the salt tax or the land tax or some other particular point, not that. That is our final end, but for the time being it is our aim and we must shoot straight. So he's just saying, look, you can't fight legislation, that's an abstract idea. You have to make something tangible. And maybe a land tax would have been tangible, but salt is even more tangible and is more tangible to more people because it directly impacted all Indians from the rich to the poor, and it also affected Muslims and Hindus alike.
Derek:So the potential unification and not political theater, but I guess yeah political theater, the tangibility of salt, like you can hold it in your hand and you use it daily and it unifies everybody, it had the potential to bring together a lot of people from a very diverse segment of the population, which as you know, from our episode on why civil resistance works, that is extremely important. And then of course besides these unifying principles, course, SALT did boycotts of SALT and such did hurt the British economy because there were taxes on SALT. And so because of the amount of taxes and revenue that the British were able to get from that, Gandhi also picked this because it was going to have some impact. The British would be able to feel the impact of this representative act. So it turned the act not just into political theater, though there was some of that, but it turned it into something that the British could feel as well.
Derek:Now, while while this doesn't change the heart, right? While while the economic pressure and ultimate policy changes wouldn't change the heart, heart changes are often only brought about when an issue impacts you enough that you are forced to take another look at the topic. And that's what Gandhi was pushing for. Now I had a former pastor explain it something like this. There was an issue, one of our elders had committed adultery, and so of course, somebody asked the question and I was thinking the same question in my head, but you know, the question is, well, he repentant because he was caught or did he just acknowledge and admit this and come forward with it?
Derek:And our pastor said, Look, that information is we don't even need to talk about that because what you need to understand is that if somebody is caught, that is God's grace on them to confront them with their sin. And while we could discuss, well, if you're caught, you probably only say you're sorry because you were caught, at the same time, pastor recognized that when we are caught in our sin, God is gracious to us to not allow that sin to go on any longer. And that is an opportunity for true repentance to come forth. And we don't know if true repentance is going to come forth, but it's not good to scoff at the means that God uses to change hearts. And I think the same thing is true here with the salt tax.
Derek:Okay, so there's economic pressure on the British and who knows why they ultimately change their policy, but I think as a Christian, it's not necessarily a bad thing that people are forced to deal with injustices by being negatively affected because sometimes that is God's grace to help them be confronted with something that they would not have otherwise seen. So Gandhi's Salt Marches helped to reveal a somewhat tangible injustice in the form of salt. It's an item that everyone used and an item of interest to the oppressors. But Gandhi's methodology also helped in the cause. There's a lot of training that went into the marches, at least with some of the people, and when they marched on the salt works eventually, the command was very clear that they were not to lift a hand, not even in defense because doing so would be construed as aggressive.
Derek:And the book Is There No Other Way? Has a beautiful depiction of this story which, you know, I'm not going to get into. A lot of the things that I would like to get into due to time and such, but definitely check out that book because it talks a lot about Gandhi and gives some great stories. It also gives a cool story of how Gandhi influenced this one tribe or group of people that has been like violent through their whole history. I think I think they have they have connections with the Taliban in Afghanistan, but it talks about how basically this like warrior tribe was influenced by Gandhi and laid down their arms.
Derek:And so they're they're really cool stories centered around this, but we're just sticking to Gandhi and the Salt March today. So anyway, when these salt marchers were trained and they went to the salt works, they were told not to lift a hand, and when they did, because if you lift a hand, then it might look like you're going to hit somebody and if somebody snaps a picture of that, they're going to be excused in their shooting of you or in their beating of you. But if you just walk into it and they just hit you, it's going be clear who the correct party was. And so people were trained and they did, they walked right into the blows of the British, and all without lifting a hand. And we're gonna see something similar to this in the civil rights movement, but one thing that nonviolence does is that it speaks the truth through images about who the oppressed and who the oppressors are.
Derek:When violence is done against someone who poses no threat and doesn't even try to defend themselves, it's clear who the oppressor is and where the evil lies. It reveals that violence and seeming power are really built on on fear, which is what we laid out in our very first episode here. How else do you explain the beating and killing of unarmed people than fear of of your power being exposed, loss of power and control? Nonviolence highlights the fear behind violence and oppressive power and it exposes it for what it is. It's a lie, it's a facade, it's a weakness, it's not power.
Derek:As Havel and Sultan Nietzsche highlight, speaking truth to power is not only a powerful weapon, but is the only weapon that ultimately has a hope of stopping the cycle of evil. Alright, let's move on to point number three here. Soul force is not passive but active. It's not cowardly but courageous. It doesn't avoid conflict, it confronts evil.
Derek:At the time Gandhi started using non violent action, passive resistance was the going term used. But Gandhi didn't like that, as we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, and he preferred satyagraha or soul force. That's a bit cliche and cheesy, but it's it's the power of love. Yet as as Christians, the fact that enemy love would have such power, it it really shouldn't be surprising for us. Not only because of Paul's description of love in first Corinthians 13, but more specifically because that's the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Derek:We love Him because He first loved us, and He loved us by laying down His life for us while we were His enemies. Nonviolent action, as you can see from the last point when Gandhi calculated what to target, is not at all passive, it's very calculated. And oftentimes, it's very creative. But unlike violence's precision strikes, love's precision intends to foster reconciliation rather than create devastation and destruction. Now if you ask me what takes more courage to enter into battle with a weapon to defend myself and only attack when I'm most certain that we have a chance to survive?
Derek:Or march head on into, head on unarmed towards a trained army who intends to do me violence without lifting a hand to defend my body, the nonviolent position takes far more courage in my opinion. And as I've referenced a number of times on the show before with General Patton's quote, The goal of the violent is not to sacrifice their own lives, but it's to sacrifice the lives of others. The violent do not consider their lives as lost. The violent or the nonviolent however, they do count their lives as already lost for the sake of all others, friend and foe. Not only is this nonviolence the opposite of inaction, but it is action for more people as it is on behalf of all, including enemies, not just some.
Derek:The fourth point of Soul Force is that it is nonviolent, which at this point I don't think I need to elaborate on much at all. It's obvious as we've discussed it up to this point. I would just add that while I think for Gandhi, love was at the core of his intent for the, you know, him being non violent, for the non violent secularists today, enemy love might really not be emphasized here. They might kind of like the idea of loving their enemies if their enemies become lovable, but I don't know that enemy love is a guiding principle for why something is nonviolent. I think a lot of secularists would argue for nonviolence because it works better and it has less ultimate devastation.
Derek:But for the Christian, of course, nonviolence is a result of enemy love. That is why nonviolence is a part of it. And because it works, because it works within the grain of the universe that a good God created, but we're non violent because we love as our Savior loves, as God loves. Alright, point number five. Finally, soul force refuses to treat opponents as enemies because it seeks to convert opponents and foster a reconciled relationship.
Derek:Now we've mentioned a number of times in this series the importance of enemy love. While a secular version of non violence could get by using non violence purely as a strategy, and many do use it in this way, enemy love is vital to a more powerful non violent action. While Gandhi's enemy love position wasn't exactly Christian, it certainly overlaps with Christianity and is something not just any person or religion can replicate. When enemy love is present, it provides the opportunity for more powerful force because it seeks not only to ultimately convert enemies, but it lays the groundwork for their conversion by not using them disposably in the meantime. Nonviolent action with enemy love in view will seek restoration and it will foster that, and it won't burn bridges, and it will will include more people.
Derek:So let's let's wrap this up now. I think Gandhi's work, and particularly the SALT campaign, clues us into how non violence can work. It helps us to see how something that seems so simple and pointless to others like marching to the sea to get a pinch of salt can actually unmask the powers that unite millions. Gandhi's campaign shows us what Christians who read Jesus should already know from his life and teachings. Darkness runs from the light, the truth sets us free and power fears truthful integrity.
Derek:It also shows us what I think many non violent campaigns lose today, maybe because they're they're more secular, I I don't know. But many non violent movements today are mere power plays without love. They're less compelling in part because they don't seek the betterment of the enemies too, but simply are looking for a different power to exert over them. There is a ton more that I could discuss and elaborate on, but that's gonna be it for the moment. I will put lots of resources in the show notes.
Derek:You can check those out. That's all for now. So peace, and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.
