Word: satyagraha
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...nonviolent resistance to authority, is a dangerous weapon which, like poison gas, can blow back in the faces of those who use it. Last week India's Prime Minister Nehru decided that India had been soul-forced enough for the time being. Reliance on soul force, or satyagraha, had resulted in 22 deaths on the border of Goa, but it had neither led the Portuguese to give up their tiny 400-year-old colony, nor bestirred the Goans to do anything about their own liberation...
Besides, soul force had become too catchy. Across the border in Pakistan, 15,000 Moslems were planning to march in satyagraha fashion against Kashmir this month, in protest against India's occupation. And every local disgruntled Indian seemed to be threatening to use satyagraha as a weapon against Nehru's government: Socialists protesting the Congress Party's corruption, right-wingers protesting the Congress Party's socialism Communists protesting against anybody and everything. On a flying tour of Assam, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh states, Nehru was shocked to discover "fissiparous tendencies" among rebellious students, Sikhs Moslems...
Indians who believe in achieving their ends without resorting to violence put a great deal of faith in satyagraha, or reliance on soul force. Sometimes this takes the form of marching demonstrators who may provoke attack but won't respond to it. As a method of persuading Portugal to give up Goa, the Rhode Island-sized colony on India's west coast, satyagraha was a failure last year. So was diplomacy...
...differences by nonviolent means, and is reported to have boasted to Red China's Chou Enlai: "Watch how we get Goa without using force." This month, as India's Independence Day approached, in the absence of any better policy towards Goa, Nehru permitted his followers to try satyagraha again...
...once the India press was sharply critical of Nehru. The influential Times of India attacked him for "vacillation, contradiction and appeasement." The Bombay Free Press Journal accused the premier of "obliquely encouraging the satyagrahis with vague, irresponsible statements that satyagraha will solve the problems of Goan freedom." Many influential Indians, itching for a little direct action in Goa, were asking, "What do we spend $400 million a year on an army for?" But Nehru clung stubbornly to what he called his "basic policy of peaceful approach." He cautiously added: "Of course there may be variations...