Word: satyagraha
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...century marked by brutality, Gandhi perfected a different method of bringing about change, one that would turn out (surprisingly) to have more lasting impact. The words he used to describe it do not translate readily into English: Satyagraha (holding firmly onto the deepest truth and soul-force) and ahimsa (the love that remains when all thoughts of violence are dispelled). They formed the basis for civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance. "Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind," he said. "It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity...
Those credos came together in the two principles that ruled his public life: what he called Satyagraha, the force of truth and love; and the ancient Hindu ideal of ahimsa, or nonviolence to all living things. He first put those principles to political work in South Africa, where he had gone to practice law and tasted raw discrimination. Traveling to Johannesburg in a first-class train compartment, he was ordered to move to the "colored" cars in the rear. When he refused, he was hauled off the train and left to spend a freezing night in the station. The next...
...philosophy of Satyagraha is both a personal and a social struggle to realize the Truth, which he identifies as God, the Absolute Morality. He seeks this Truth, not in isolation, self-centeredly, but with the people. He said, "I want to find God, and because I want to find God, I have to find God along with other people. I don't believe I can find God alone. If I did, I would be running to the Himalayas to find God in some cave there. But since I believe that nobody can find God alone, I have to work with...
...believes in the human capacity to change and wages Satyagraha against the oppressor, not to destroy him but to transform him, that he cease his oppression and join the oppressed in the pursuit of Truth...
...Tamils spent the 1950s and 1960s protesting peacefully, following the satyagraha method of peace pioneered by Mahatma Gandhi. The police spent the 1950s and 1960s beating them up. During the 1970s, the LTTE formed. In 1983, open fighting began. My parents grew up in a perpetual state of emergency--random police checkpoints, people disappearing, arrests and imprisonment without cause, questioning without reasonable suspicion...