Gandhi’s Nightmare

The PADs protest raise questions and doubt for people who heard that it was nonviolent. As we have seem television and website broadcast, it did not seem to be so. Does nonviolent simply mean unarmed or that no one is physically hurt others.

Sharp end of a flag pole

When Gandhi said “You must be the change you want to see in the world,” it seemed so easy to me at first. Later my personal refection to his “be” was more developed (over the years after leaving nonviolent class, which started so early that my brain was and will not function before 10 am.) It is important to change the world by embracing that change– being that change. When someone said “I want to change the regime by nonviolence, that person must also be nonviolent.” The end and the mean have to be translated into being and living the principle.

Considering what PADs have been proclaiming that they want to bring about “democratic” change, can they be the change and democratic?

I remembered that in Gandhian’s protest or march, he urged people to face threatening authority with calm and even willing to embrace suffering He’d rather fast than let other people starved because of his action. People attending protests led by Gandhian principle will rather be hit by opposition or authority or willingly jailed if they block the road or conduct civil disobedience that also violate the law. They respect rule of law and willing to be accountable and responsible for the consequences.

What is non-violence

Back to the modern peace research, I think Johan Galtung’s definition of violence, when dichotomous definition is still needed, was clear enough to understand:

“I understand violence as the avoidable impairment of fundamental human needs or, to put it in more general terms, the impairment of human life, which lowers the actual degree to which someone is able to meet their needs below that which would otherwise be possible. The threat of violence is also violence.”

[Johan Galtung, Kulturelle Gewalt; in: Der Bürger im Staat 43, 2/1993, p. 106]

Despite the definition is very broad, it is clear to see that Galtung pushed definition of violence beyond armed-unarmed or cause visible harm-harmed. With this foundation, many may have heard his principle of physical/ structural/ cultural violence (either in a triangle chart or otherwise). Using this principle of “impairment of human life,” a nonviolent strategy should step beyond avoiding physical damage.

Using physical/ structural/ cultural violence theory, it could have been explained that Samak government cause structural and cultural violence to PADs, so PADs broke into a physical eruption of or their “non-violent” that also disrupt well being of other people. What could they do to break such circle is much more important than what they have done to perpetuate the circle?

I am not in any position to judge what impairment had happened physically, structurally and culturally in the past two days. Earlier, yesterday morning I got up with faint noise of “get out” and realised that someone must have opened their tv, reporting live from the government’s house. Sleep deprived, I turned to an old lecture notebook and saw that triangle.

And I thought that is not my nightmare. it’s also Gandhi’s nightmare if he can feel, this time, how his ahimsa has been interpreted.

Filed under: Political Sciences , non violence, PADs, peace studies