[lbo-talk] [Pen-l] Todd Gitlin: the most pompous ass ever?

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Thu Jun 9 09:49:42 PDT 2011


Ravi: "without non-violent struggle and civil disobedience, the entire freedom struggle might well have been the equivalent of Jallianwala Bagh."

[WS:] I do not think that there is a direct relation between the two.

Jallianwala Bagh took place when the Brits were still determined to stay in India, nonviolent movement took place when they for the most part lost that resolve . While it is history that nonviolent struggle was successful in bringing Indian independence - I am not sure what the counterfactual to that would be. Perhaps an armed struggle would have resulted in another Jallianwala Bagh as you suggest, or perhaps would lead to independence anyway, as Mau Mau did in Kenya. In fact, Mau Mau can be quite instructive here - the Brits crushed the uprising in a rather brutal way with the support of local factions, but after that they granted far reaching concessions to Kenyan nationalists that quickly led to independence.

My point is not to pit non-violent protest against armed insurrection, but to argue that each has different advantages and disadvantages in different socio-historical contexts. If you re-read what I wrote about Polish and French resistance in WW2, you would clearly see that.

Wojtek



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