On Thu, 11 Apr 2002, Carrol Cox wrote:
> Yes, "become a Gandhi." This implies a number of things.
There is something to what you say, Carrol. Gandhi's movement did seem to depend in large part on his charisma, and his charisma to depend on his religious beliefs, that his religious beliefs -- while extremely tolerant and syncretistic themselves -- to elevate Hindu symbols that, in other hands, fanned separatism. But three points:
One, if you blame if him for the RSS, which he was literally dead against, then I think you also have to give his method credit for India's enduring democracy. There are advantages in your state having a non-military genesis.
Two, I'm not sure what you mean by
> 2) That no independent decisions on the part of any individuals, local
> groups, etc. occur
Actually Gandhi left behind a very broad and very capable political elite and a lot of grass roots activism. As with democracy, his legacy in this respect compares very favorably with third world armed revolutions.
Lastly, it is not clear to me that religious charisma is necessary for this method to work. A more germane example for Arafat might have been Abdul Gaffer (or "Badshah") Khan. He was a Northern Frontier Pashtun (interestingly enough in today's context) who organized 100,000 Pashtuns into a nonviolent army to fight first against the British and then the Pakistanis. And although most people emphasize how he squared non-violence with Islam, what strikes me more is how he squared it with, and seemed to base it on, military ideals, in such a way that it appealed to what we all know are a very warlike bunch of tribes. He brought out the fact that real satyagraha -- the kind of non-violence that doesn't just abstain, but which walks into blows -- which provokes violence and absorbs it in order to demoralize the enemy and sicken him with himself -- is not at all a spontaneous thing, but something that requires training. And that this training is very similar to military training in essence. It requires you to suppress your natural instincts in order to be part of a more successful military machine.
In his version, it seems to me, satyagraha doesn't require anything more religious than nationalism. And the faith in one's leaders need be no higher than the faith soldiers place in their military leaders. And the willingness to sacrifice ones life for a cause nonviolently would have the same basis on which a soldier's -- including a guerilla soldier's -- has always been based.
Furthermore, there is no need to love one's enemy in this model. You could have contempt for him and his morality. But the practice of the tactic would still build the foundations of a new civil society in the carcass of the old.
Lastly, it has the advantage over other forms of guerrilla resistance that you could train in the open. Guerilla war has usually required for success in the past a suitable terrain, one that allows one to hide, e.g. mountains, jungles, or untraversably long distances. And that is something the West Bank doesn't offer.
Michael