Through the social movements he led in South Africa and India, Mahatma Gandhi successfully justified the philosophy of nonviolence on both moral and pragmatic grounds. This essay will begin by analyzing the limits of nonviolence discussed by Gandhi and use critiques of his philosophy to better elaborate the nuance of his thought. This initial treatment will be followed by an engagement with the nature of power by fusing ideas found in the works of Gandhi and Hannah Arendt. Lastly, the utility of Gandhi’s resistance program will be discussed in its application to the uniquely modern ways in which is power exercised.
While Gandhi’s nonviolence is often framed by critics as “bordering on fanaticism” (as Lord Reading cautiously and respectfully stated upon his visit with Gandhi), upon reading Gandhi’s writings it is worthwhile noting how reasoned and calculated his plea for nonviolence is (142). When wishing to discourage the use of nonviolence critics often point to the poverty of the philosophy when confronted with an immediate physical assault requiring defensive action.1 Do you allow an assailant to kill a child or do you use any means necessary to intervene? Despite the dificulties of many practitioners of nonviolence to reconcile such a dilemma, Gandhi remains undeterred, in his words, “I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence” (137). Gandhi elaborates that in the event his son was confronted with the grim choice of watching his father die or active intervention, Gandhi states that it is the duty of his son “to defend me even by using violence” (137).
Many activists often issue a call for violence by reductively framing the situation in such a way that violence and cowardice are the only two potential responses. Such attempts at reductive logic no doubt occurred in India as well. It is appropriate then that with his call for steadfast nonviolence Gandhi offers a nuanced diagnosis of the problem India faces and with it an equally nuanced prescription. Gandhi presents a complex statement as to the nature of the British domination of the Indian people.
It is as amazing as it is humiliating that less than one hundred thousand white men would be able to rule three hundred and fifteen million Indians. They do so somewhat undoubtedly by force but more by securing our cooperation in a thousand ways and making us more and more helpless and dependent on them as time goes forward…The British cannot rule us by mere force…If we refuse to supply them with men and money, we achieve our goal, Swaraj, equality, manliness (138, my emphasis).
While the British used force to obtain Indian obedience, the disproportionality of population size, as well as the sheer geographic scope of India, make such rule exclusively by force woefully inadequate. The principal methods by which Britain maintained its hegemony were firstly, through securing the active cooperation of Indian subjects, and secondly, through the infantilization of India, that is, dependency cultivated by the British upon the colonized. From this specific problematization follows an equally specific plan of action: noncompliance with the structural forces that ensure British domination, and the assertion of Indian autonomy. Examples of these prescriptions in practice include Gandhi’s call for national day of fast and prayer (a general nationwide strike), as well as his call for a boycott of British clothing with a concomitant urging of Indian families to again begin spinning their own cloth.
Gandhi’s reflections on colonial India make clear that he does not believe a regime derives its power from its ability to wield brute force, but through the active cooperation of its subjects. Gandhi’s view is then quite similar to that espoused by Hannah Arendt in her book of essays On Violence, where she maintains that not only should violence be removed from any definition of power, but that violence is the opposite of power. The real source of power, she argues, resides in legitimacy, not so much in its normative sense, but in a power-holder’s ability to ensure compliance from its subjects. The instruments of violence and terror can engineer obedience through coercion, but only power in its true form can elicit complicity and cooperation. Like Arendt, Gandhi believes the state resorts to violence out of weakness, that is, when it lacks the ability to produce consent via legitimacy (134). Given the understanding of power provided by Gandhi and Arendt, the plan of action outlined by Gandhi is the rational way to undermine British rule. Since the British cannot rule by brute force alone, they require real power, real cooperation, real active consent to maintain control. It is only by a refusal to comply with such a system that the actual power of the British Empire in India can ever be undermined.
I hope to have established that the strength of Gandhi’s method of resistance does not only lie with its moral integrity but in its ability to undermine power at its roots. In light of this utility, I now wish to turn to how the implementation of Gandhian Satyagraha, or Soul-Force, could potentially be utilized in the undermining of other forms of power, namely, biopower. Throughout his work Michel Foucault chronicles the development of power, paying keen interest to the transition into modernity. At the beginning of such a transition the sovereign’s authority over the lives of his subjects derived from his ability to kill, that is, deprive them of life. However, as modernity blossomed, so did the ability of the political authority to regulate the lives of its subjects. The negative exercise of power through punitive measure of taking a life, gave way to positive forms of power. Instead of the threat of infringement or attack on life, life was now made to live through the active regulation, aid, and supervision of the state. With the institution of biopower war ceases to be the defense of the sovereign, instead, wholesale slaughters are demanded by the ‘mangers of life’ to secure the population’s very survival.2
If one aims to resist domination, one must get at the nature of that oppression and undermine the means by which it is exercised. Like British imperialism in India, the maintenance of biopower does not depend on violence, but achieves its control through profound integration with the most atomized, intimate and mundane activities of modern life. While biopower’s invisible, ether-like qualities allow for subtler manifestations than the power at work in colonial India, a similar application of “Soul-Force” will be necessary for its destruction. It is only through non-cooperation with the instruments that biopower uses to sustain itself that it can ever be undone. Thus, like British domination in colonial India, the only way to extricate the tentacles of biopower from society is through a systematic noncompliance with its administration of life on an individual level, accompanied with a collective assertion of autonomy that rejects its authority on ideational and moral grounds.
