E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Five Fallacies … 127part of Satyagraha. It is both the moral duty of the devotee oftruth to desist from being a party to evil, and an operationalnecessity to rouse the conscience or sense of discernment of theevil-doer.There are occasions when resistance becomes the modeof assistance. When the Satyagrahi non-cooperates, he isresisting the will of the tyrant, resisting his effort to 'force' hiswill or view on him. Non-cooperation, thus, becomes resistanceto tyranny, and the situation created by non-cooperation hastwo consequences: one, the non-cooperation of the Satyagrahimakes the tyrant realise that the success of his tyranny dependson the cooperation of the exploited, and, therefore, compelshim to revise his stand in his own 'enlightened self-interest';two, the suffering that the Satyagrahi undergoes appeals to theheart of the tyrant, erodes his intransigence and promotesintrospection. Since assistance cannot include cooperation withevil, non-violent assistance can only be through non-violentnon-cooperation and the suffering that becomes incidental tonon-violent non-cooperation. To say that Satyagraha is nonviolentassistance makes sense only if non-violent assistanceincludes non-cooperation and non-violent resistance. If this isso, to distinguish between non-violent assistance and nonviolentresistance is to perceive a distinction without adifference, and to retreat from the Gandhian notion ofSatyagraha.The crux of the question then is Direct Action. It isDirect Action that constitutes resistance, or results in the needfor resistance. Gandhi believed in Direct Action. He believedthat it was impossible to achieve anything of fundamental valuewithout Direct Action or readiness for Direct Action. In SouthAfrica, he discovered that even prayers and petitions had novalue unless they were backed by readiness for Direct Action.Gandhi says, "up to the year 1906, I simply relied on appeal toreason" 13 In answer to a question from Horace Alexander,