E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi's 'Theory of Trusteeship… 202already "carrying on a revolution" on behalf of the peasants andworkers. "Some have called me the greatest revolutionary ofmy time. It may be false, but I believe myself to be arevolutionary -a non-violent revolutionary. My means are noncooperation”42 The Satyagrahi relied on persuasion as well asnon-cooperation. Non-cooperation itself was a form ofpersuasion.Those who advocated a violent revolution believed thatthe capitalists would not consent to any change in the conceptof ownership that prevailed in the capitalist or acquisitivesociety; that to expect this was to expect the impossible since itasked for a change in human nature; that a class war was aninevitability; that violence was inevitable in the class conflict;that the successful termination of the conflict would comewhen the working class violently dispossessed the holders ofproperty, eliminated the class of exploiters and transferredownership of all property to the State.Gandhi did not believe that it was impossible to changehuman nature. He did not believe that man was essentially andincurably selfish by nature. 43 No man is incorrigible. Man hasclimbed the ladder of civilisation only by learning to controland sublimate selfishness. Even the survival of the speciesdepends on the balance between self-interest and the altruisticinterest in posterity. The mother is the symbol of this balance.It is love that enables the mother to keep this balance. Truenon-violence or positive non-violence is another name for thislove. There is no reason to believe that true non-violencecannot awaken this realisation in the adversary. If one fails, itwill not be because non-violence is ineffective, but becauseone's non-violence is inadequate or imperfect." 44 If parity orsuperiority in the quantum of violence is relevant in a violentencounter, the purity and quantum of the non-violence that theSatyagrahi uses are also determining factors in the efficacy of