Satyagraha

Throughout this entire unit on India the same question continued to run through my mind “ Would Gandhi’s method of satyagraha (peaceful protest) actually work?” In my heart, I really wanted to believe it would, but then I doubted whether it was too idealistic. Do humans inherently become violent over disputes?This question is close to my heart, as I am researching the peaceful people power revolution for my spring paper. So I know it is possible to make an immense impact on society without violence…but not many revolutions occur this way. Does humanity naturally incline towards brutality? I thought I’d explore these questions.

First of all, what is satyagraha? It translates directly to “soul truth” and was Gandhi’s philosophy of non violent resistance that he attempted to teach the people of India. We know that in the end, Gandhi’s satyagraha campaign was not successful, juding on the fact that The Partitioning of India caused huge strife between the Muslims and Indians, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Even Gandhi himself thought he was a failure.
I belive that Satyagraha does have the possibility to be successful, however, a country has to be in a certain amount of political and social stability. If a nation is in a state of chaos, the people are already aggravated and violence will breakout. I believe it is a part of human nature. We are not pacifists at heart, yet some of us choose to be.