Gandhi Journal Article - I

GANDHI : Rethinking the possibility of Non-violence

Prof. Sudhir Chandra, Centre for Social Studies

…Gandhi’s anguish was manifold. But it centred around his tragic discovery that the freedom struggle led by him had not been the unique non-violent struggle that he and the whole world had believed it to have been.

The discovery forced itself upon him when the country erupted into savage violence on the eve of Independence. Could decades of non-violence, Gandhi wondered, have produced such savagery? ‘No,’ was his categorical answer. Whence, then, had the savagery come? Gandhi came up with an answer that has left academic wisdom as well as popular memory untouched. But it is an answer that necessitates a radical re-examination of what Gandhi is believed to have achieved and, consequently, of his potential as a continuing historical presence. READ FULL ARTICLE…