Psst!--Pass it Along, It's the International Day of Nonviolence

 

Note—This this post first appeared in 2016 and is reproduced with minimal alterations.  The details have changed, but the song remains the same..

Did you know October 2 is the International Day of Non-Violence?  Neither did I until stumbled on the information during my daily scrounging for something—any damn thing—to write about.  My first thought was that it is such a good idea that it is no wonder it is obscure.

It’s one of those United Nations observances.  Right away that makes it deeply suspect here in good ol’ USA. where a huge chunk of the population is still convinced that UN black helicopters supported by the minions Barak Hussein Obama are poised to swoop down and rip the guns from the hands of patriots.  But other UN holidays get better press even here—International Women’s Day, International Children’s Day, the International Day of Indigenous Peoples—to name a few examples.

Maybe it’s because it is still pretty new and hasn’t had a chance to catch on—it was first observed in 2008 after being adopted General Assembly on June 15, 2007.  Apparently, the ambassadors of several countries were asleep.  After all protest—even non-violent protest—is not popular with a wide range of dictatorships and or with oligarchies posing as democracies.  It’s law breaking and anarchy to most governments and only to be encouraged in the realms of one’s enemies.  Take the US which got giddy in support of various color-coded non-violent revolutions where the old Soviet Union held sway or about, at least at first the Arab Spring until it threatened to spread to our Saudi and oil rich Emirates pals, but shovels riot gear and arms to dozens of repressive regimes when those being repressed are on our own shit list.

Around the world non-violent protest is often met by brutal state repression.

And in an era of militarized police, the general criminalization of dissent, suppression of and spying on Black Lives Matter protests and organizers, the targeting of the amorphous Antifa movement, the militarization of Federal police agencies into something with more than a passing resemblance to a secret police,  alleged Free Speech Zones safely caged away from political conventions and campaign rallies, and an Il Duce impersonator who made it to the White House, it is pretty clear that there is no commitment to respecting non-violent protest at home, either.

The very origins of the UN observance are, after all, suspect.

In 2003 Shirin Ebadi an Iranian lawyer, a former judge, human rights activist, founder of Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran, and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate met an Indian teacher, Akshay Bakaya in Paris.  Bakaya brought her an idea that he said originated with his students—an international observance honoring non-violence as a tool for social change tied in some way to its greatest modern proponent, Mahatma Gandhi.

 

                                    Nobelist Shirin Ebadi's award has since been seized and stolen by the Iranian regime.

On January 30, 2004 while in Bombay, India for the World Social Forum, Ebadi first proposed that the date, also the anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination by Hindi extremists in 1948 be designated as an international day of non-violence.

In tandem with South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Ebadi reiterated the proposal at the Satyagraha Conference at Delhi but changed the proposed date to October 2, Gandhi’s birthday which already was an Indian celebration known as Gandhi Jayanti.  The conference was cosponsored by Tutu and Sonia Gandhi, President of the Indian National Congress Party.  The term satyagraha was coined and developed by Mahatma Gandhi and translates as insistence on truth or soul force. It is a philosophy and practice within the broader scope of non-violent resistance. 

 

                                  

                                                Bishop Desmond Tutu.

With the support of the ruling Congress Party, India brought the idea to the UN General Assembly, which acted with unusual speed adopting the proposal on June 15 of the same year.  The resolution called on member states to commemorate October 2 in “an appropriate manner and disseminate the message of non-violence, including through education and public awareness.”

The first-year celebration was marked by the issuance of a postal cachet by the United Nations Postal Administration in New York City which was used on all outgoing UN mail between October 2 and 31 of that year

Since then, celebrations in most countries outside of India and South Africa have been, at best, muted.

Perhaps that is because the Non-Violence promoted by the commemoration is not just a sort of vague warm fuzzy pacifism, but an active strategy for social change.  The U.N. puts it this way:

 

One key tenet of the theory of non-violence is that the power of rulers depends on the consent of the population, and non-violence therefore seeks to undermine such power through withdrawal of the consent and cooperation of the populace.

There are three main categories of non-violence action:

protest and persuasion, including marches and vigils;

non-cooperation; and

non-violent intervention, such as blockades and occupations.

Gee, that sounds like the last thing most regimes want to happen as Shirin Ebadi herself found out after her criticism of Iranian persecution of the Baha’i, other Iranian minorities, and dissidents when the Ayatollahs literally stole her Nobel Prize, French Légion d’honneur, and other international awards from her Tehran safety deposit box.  Her organization, the Center for the Defense of Human Rights was raided and closed in 2008 and its employees threatened and harassed.  Ebadi, her husband, and daughter were all targeted by the Revolutionary Guard and threatened with bogus charges.  She was forced into exile in London in 2009 and has lived there ever since still threatened by the regime back home.

In the U.S. student-led gun violence protests, Extinction Rebellion, the Moral Monday movement, and Black Lives Matter among others have been inspired by the principles of Gandhian satyagraha

It is a sad tale echoed by the experiences of many others around the world.

Maybe today is a good day to dust off this neglected celebration….in the streets.  Seems to me we now have plenty of reasons to do it….

Mahatma Gandhi Assassinated—“The Father of the Nation is Gone”

Mohandas Gandhi--the Mahatma.  The Father of India and icon non-violent passive resistance. 

On January 30, 1948 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was shot and killed while on a nightly public walk in Delhi by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist enraged that the Mahatma promoted communal peace between India and Muslim Pakistan by fasting until the Indian government made a 550 million Rupee payment to Pakistan and paid reparations to Indian Muslims whose homes had been destroyed in the civil unrest following Independence and Partition.  It was the last great non-violent protest of Gandhi’s long life.  

One would think that the accomplishments of a man who since returning to India in triumph following campaigns on behalf of Indian laborers in South Africa, worked tirelessly for independence since joining the Indian Congress Party in 1915, and whose famous Salt March in 1930 was the opening of a long campaign of non-violent struggle and passive resistance which led ultimately to independence in 1947 would have been honored by nationalists.  You would, of course, be wrong.  Fanaticism, particularly inflamed by religious righteousness, is incapable of gratitude and intolerant of the slightest perceived attempt to bridge divisions. 

Gandhi leading the Salt March in 1930--one of his epic peaceful mass defiance of the British Raj in India.

And Gandhi had been doing that his whole life.  In the 1920’s he reached out to Indian Muslims becoming the first Indian leader to be truly national rather than sectarian.  He had opposed outbreaks of inter-communal violence and had repeatedly reached out to Muslim victims of Hindu rioters.  When the British Raj finally agreed to independence based on a partition into two states—India and Muslim Pakistan, Gandhi personally rejected the terms and refused to either celebrate Independence or recognize it on those terms.  He refused to take any official part in the new Indian government which his leadership of the Congress Party would have entitled him to. 

Upon Partition horrific inter-communal violence broke out across the Indian Sub-Continent, particularly in the Punjab and Bengal.  As many as half a million people were killed and 12 million Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs were displaced from their homes creating waves of refugees and abject misery. 

Gandhi launched a series of “fasts unto death” to protest the Partition and violence and to try and bring about peace and reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims who he considered to be one Indian people.  The last of these fasts was launched on January 12, 1948 and lasted until the 27th which was three days after the Indian Parliament had reversed a previous stand and released the money to Pakistan promised in a division of the former colony’s assets and the recompense to Muslim victims of the sectarian violence. 

                                                Gandhi's Hindu nationalist assassin Nathuram Godse.

The assassin, Nathuram Godse, was no lone wolf.  He was a member of the extremist Hindu Mahasabha and had several collaborators and accomplices.  And Godse’s hatred of Gandhi went far back—he was involved in the last four of five previous assassination attempts dating back to the 1930’s.  Just days before on January 20 Godse and his group bungled an attempt at Birla House in Delhi that involved a bomb which exploded at a podium from which Gandhi was scheduled to speak. 

Godse and Narayan Apte another of the plotters escaped to Godse’s native Pune via Bombay by rail.  Determined to make another attempt, Godse obtained a Beretta .38 caliber semi-automatic pistol with the assistance of other members of the group.  Godse and Apte returned to Delhi on January 29 and checked into a room at the Delhi Railway Station.  

On the evening of the 30th Gandhi was walking in the garden toward Birla House to take part in a prayer meeting.  As usual he was unaccompanied by any security.  Escorting him were young women including his nieces.  At 78 years of age the Mahatma was still recovering from his fast and somewhat feeble. 

Gandhi on his customary evening walk escorted by his nieces.

At 5:17 that evening, Godse approached Gandhi and bowed.  The old leader paused to acknowledge the greeting, as was his custom.  One of the young women with him, Abha Chattopadhyay, tugged at his arm and told Godse, “Brother, Bapu is already late,” but the assassin shoved her aside, raised his pistol and pumped three shots into Gandhi’s chest at close range. 

Gandhi reportedly cried out Hey Rama!—O Lord!—as he collapsed.  The phrase became a rallying cry for remembering the martyred leader in the days and weeks following his death. 

Godse himself called out—“Police! Police!” and waited to be arrested.  He was ready—eager to be a martyr for his cause.  He later told investigators that he knew he would be hated for his act in the short run but that eventually his “removal of Gandhi from Indian politics” would prove such a blessing that he would be honored for his “sacrifice.” 

Gandhi was taken to a hospital where he was officially pronounced dead two hours later.  In fact, he probably died at the scene, but the delay allowed government and Congress Party leaders time to be informed and prepare for the public reaction that was sure to follow. 

Jawaharial Nehru had been Gandhi's protégée and closest supporter in the Congress Party but had become estranged over partition of India and Pakistan.  It fell to the Prime Minister to announce the Mahatma's assassination on radio.

Later that evening Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, one of Gandhi’s oldest and closest associates from whom he had become estranged for agreeing to form a Congress Party government based on Partition, addressed the nation by radio: 

Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere, and I do not quite know what to tell you or how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the father of the nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that; nevertheless, we will not see him again, as we have seen him for these many years, we will not run to him for advice or seek solace from him, and that is a terrible blow, not only for me, but for millions and millions in this country. 

The shocked nation went into deep mourning.  Communal violence once again broke out until the Government assured the nation that it had arrested the murderer and his associates and that they were not Muslim.  The Mahasabha and other Indian religious parties, Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh were outlawed and upward of 20,000 secularist militants were taken into custody.  The Congress Party draped itself in the memory of Gandhi and built loyalty across India from the poor who had little previous allegiance to the new government.  Nehru was, for the time being, able to still calls for an invasion of Pakistan. 

Assassination head line in one of India's largest English language daily papers.

Over two million people joined the five-mile-long funeral procession that took over five hours to reach Raj Ghat on the banks of the Yamuna River in Delhi from Birla House.  Gandhi’s body was elevated on platform atop an artillery caisson pulled through the streets by fifty men.  At the site overlooking the river, his body was cremated on an open pyre.  Some of the ashes were scattered immediately in the river.  The rest were divided and placed in small urns distributed across India to be scattered in local rivers and bodies of water to unite the country in participation of the final Hindu ritual.  Some of those urns were misplaced or for other reasons not immediately scattered.  Over the last 30 years or so a few have been discovered and ashes scattered at other Indian holy sites, the Headwaters of the Nile, and even near the Los Angeles Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine.  The cremation site at Raj Ghat is now a national memorial and still attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims every year. 

Gandhi's body on his funeral pyre, his bullet wounds still visible on his chest.

Godse, Apte, and six others were tried for participation in the assassination plot.  After an eight-month long trial all but Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, a leading political figure in the Hindu nationalist movement, were convicted on at least some charges.  Dattatraya Parchure, a medical doctor and intellectual, later had his conviction overturned by the High Court of Punjab.  Godse and Apte were sentenced to death by hanging.  The remaining defendants received life in prison for conspiracy to commit murder or violating the Explosive Substances Act in connection with the January 20 failed bomb attempt. 

Despite appeals by the Gandhi family and Prime Minister Nehru to spare the lives of the assassins in the spirit of Gandhi’s non-violence, Godse and Apte were hung on November 15, 1949 at Ambala Jail. 

The Memorial at the Raj Ghat cremation site.

It must be said that 80 years later India has a Hindu nationalist government, however not as virulent as the Mahasabha.  But religious minorities are subject to punitive legislation, sectarian violence is on the rise, and tensions over Kashmir regularly threaten to plunge nuclear-armed India and Pakistan into war.