Word: satyagraha
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...Where We Have the Weapons. . ." Satyagraha (soulforce, or conquering through love) was the name Gandhi gave to mass nonviolent resistance. Potently he applied satyagraha against the British Raj. "The British," he wrote, "want us to put the struggle on the plane of machine guns. They have weapons and we have not. Our only assurance of beating them is to keep it on the plane where we have the weapons and they have...
...outskirts of New Delhi, in the dingy, dungy Bhangi (untouchable) Colony, Gandhi was not jubilant, although the British were leaving at last. To him, the violence and disunity of India were a personal affront. To Gandhi, ahimsa (nonviolence) is the first principle of life, and satyagraha (soul force, or conquering through love), the only proper way of life. In the whitewashed, DDT-ed compound which serves him as headquarters, Gandhi licked his soul wounds: "I feel [India's violence] is just an indication," he told his followers, "that as we are throwing off the foreign yoke, all the dirt...
British repressive measures after World War I convinced Gandhi that the British would never willingly give India dominion status. So he organized satyagraha. This first campaign came near to unseating the British Raj. "Gandhi's was the most colossal experiment in world history, and it came within an inch of succeeding," admitted the British governor of Bombay...
...passive resistance always erupted into violence. When he saw the bloodshed that followed his call for resistance, Gandhi was overwhelmed with remorse. He called off his campaign in 1922, admitted himself guilty of a "Himalayan miscalculation." His followers were not yet self-disciplined enough to be trusted with satyagraha. To become a "fitter instrument" to lead, Gandhi imposed on himself a five-day fast...
When he changed, he went whole hog. Before joining Satyagraha Sabha (Gandhi's "League of People Holding to the Truth"), he gave up his law practice, and with it most of his income and all of its luxurious appurtenances. Life in the Nehru household became a chaos of conferences and political comings & goings, punctuated by arrivals of the police to pack Jawaharlal or his father off to jail. Says Krishna, "This was the beginning of a new life-a life of uncertainty, of sacrifice, of heartache. . . . Since then, going in and out of jail has become an incurable habit...