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Ramo
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Austin, Texas, USA
Oct 1999
time: 23:33
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quote:
I think Ghandi was very much a participant in violence, he was just a general and not a footsoldier. In fact, his strategy RELIED on the opposition using violence against him. It was a very clever way of using violence unconventionally. |
He didn't use violence, he advocated everyone not to use violence, thus he's a pacifist. QED.
And it didn't rely on the opposition using violence against him. Violence was how the Brits kept control of India. If they didn't use violence, they would lose India, and the goal would be accomplished with absolutely no bloodshed.
Last edited by Ramo on 12-01-2004 at 10:00
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Patroklos
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Back home in good ole Norfolk VA
Dec 2001
time: 05:33
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Well Ramo, if you had any formal education in political science you would understand its definition in that medium as compared to others (ie violence). However, physically placing yourself somewhere and refusing to leave, in fact resisting with your mass or whatever other means when someone tries to move you, is violence by any definiton. Perhaps not what we are used to seeing, but that matters not.
Look in Websters if you need to see such a definition of Pacifism, or just scroll up a dozen posts or so, I gracioulsy provided it for you. But your right, you won't find ANYONE who either believes that to be pacifism or is capable of conforming to the definiton if they do. Pacifist are deluding themselves or just hipocrits who haven't had the opportunity to prove it yet. Or as I believe Ghandi to be (you believe what you want), someone that has an ideal to strive for even if he knows it is not practical to achieve it, but you can make it as close as you can. Other people call this God.
Ghadi needed:
a) the British to use violence against him as I say or...
b) the Indians to use violence against the British to remove them as you stated. But they were not going to leave without one.
Either way violence would ensue, and Ghandi being as smart as he was (I wasn't with those claiming he was stupid) more than knew this. Th genius of Ghandi is that he reduced by magnatudes the amount of violence needed by reducing it from epidemic amounts of small acts to isolated, symbolically pivotal acts against him and a few others.
So in other words he wasn't a practicioner of violence, rather a manipulator of it. But either way, he used it for his ends.
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Ramo
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Austin, Texas, USA
Oct 1999
time: 23:33
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quote:
Attaching any single label like "Pacifist" to someone as dynamic as Ghandi is always a bad idea. If that makes it easier for you to categorize great people in your head go ahead and do so, just understand you are missing most of the underlying truth attached to the meaning of their acts. |
Gandhi was a pacifist, and a logically consistent one. He was not simply pragmatic who used non-violent (yes, they were non-violent) tactics because they worked; for instance, when asked [in the late '30's, IIRC] what the Jews should do in Nazi Germany if violent resistance is immoral, he said that they should committ suicide, to shame the Germans into stopping their repression. Saying that he was a pacifist does nothing to diminish any details about him. This was an intrinsic aspect of his personality and ideology.
As for the "missing most of the underlying truth attached to the meaning of their acts," that's meaningless liberal arts garbage. Typical of political scientists. 
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East Street Trader
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London, United Kingdom
Jun 2000
time: 05:33
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Orwell held passionate political views and fought in the International Brigade against the fascists in Spain.
Which makes it unsurprising that he did not think much of pasifism as an idea.
My own stance is a simple one. My father was a bomber pilot in WWII and my grandfather was an artilleryman in the Great War. As a boy I could not understand why they had killed strangers. The fact that the strangers were German did not seem to me to be a any sort of a reason.
And I still don't understand it now.
I used to ask them what would have happened if all the people fighting on each side had just up and refused to do so and they did not know. As far as I could see the result would just be for everyone to have been a great deal better off. And that is what I still think now.
The two world wars seem to me so hideous that I fear war between nation states more than any other thing. And I would not wish to play any part in any such war - whatever reason I was given.
Happily major war has skipped my generation. (The first, I think, for a thousand years and more).
Whether I would have had the courage to be a conschy had it been otherwise I don't know. As Orwell says, it seems ridiculously easy for political leaders to mobilise public opinion behind a war. I suppose the threat makes people desire cohesion and makes them willing to ostracise anyone who does not conform. Anyway, for whatever reason, the lot of a consciencious objector is always a very hard one.
Maybe I would have chickened out.
But I hope not. The notion that I, in my turn, should have gone and dropped bombs on whomsoever might be underneath, man woman or child, is altogether horrible.
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12-01-2004 09:46
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