Suggested citation:

Kelly, T. L. (2000). "Towards an Understanding of the Transformational Nature of Satyagraha." (Unpublished graduate paper, Portland State University, July 2000). Portland, OR: Author.

Introduction

Several important ideas contributed to the philosophy of "Satyagraha" which so influenced the turning point in the life of Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) while he lived in South Africa. This paper examines these ideas in order to contribute to an understanding of the transformational nature of Satyagraha, and further, for an understanding of the nature of transformation itself. It is important to understand the nature of transformation as it manifests in all cultural contexts because transformation of world view is such a critical component of global conflict resolution.

Gandhi's Philosophical Education

Gandhi's father was a principled man, and his mother was a deeply religious woman in the folk tradition of Hinduism. Gandhi drew moral and spiritual inspiration from his parents throughout his life. He did not read The Bhagwat Gita until he was a young law student in England, and at that time he began his formal philosophical education. The Bagwhat Gita (literally translated as "Song Divine") is a Hindu religious and philosophical text written between the 5th and 2nd century BC. The Gita preaches detachment from the physical senses as the path to liberation of the soul, Nirvana. After reading this and other Hindu traditional teachings, Gandhi, who had always been a vegetarian, began living a life of voluntary simplicity.

In his book Non-violent Resistance, Gandhi defines Satyagraha as follows: "Its root meaning is holding on to truth, hence truth-force. I have also called it Love-force or Soul-force." (4-7) Gandhi formed his concept of Satyagraha after studying several authors' works regarding nonviolence and voluntary simplicity. He read Ruskin's *Unto The Last*, which, he claimed, "marked the turning point in my life". He also read Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), whose books are about the virtues of love for humanity, non-violence against oppressors, and renunciation of worldly possessions. He read Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You in 1894. (Fischer 94-101) In a letter to Tolstoy, Gandhi presented himself as "a humble follower of yours." (Fischer 99) He also read works on civil disobedience and simple living by Henry D. Thoreau (1817-1862).

Dennis Dalton traces the development of Gandhi's concept of Satyagraha back to the Jain teaching of Ahimsa (never to inflict harm upon living beings), which Gandhi had observed in practice as a child in India. He explains that Gandhi realized Ahimsa as "non-violence," "love," and "charity." (Dalton 14) At some point in his philosophical education, Gandhi decided to give up all materialistic tendencies and worldly possessions. Gandhi's followers began to call themselves "Satyagrahis" and they joined Gandhi in living out the ideals of these works at the Phoenix Settlement and later at Tolstoy Farm. Gandhi took a vow of celibacy. (Dalton 67-73)

Satyagraha

Gandhi defined Satyagraha as follows: "Its root meaning is holding on to truth, hence truth-force. I have also called it Love-force or Soul-force." Gandhi advocated "self-suffering" as a means of protest against wrong. If your opponents'actions were wrong, Gandhi felt that they could be made to amend their wrong practices through acts of love and non-violence - the equivalent of "turning the other cheek" and "hate sin, not the sinner" in contemporary Western religions. This was Gandhi's principle of Satyagraha. Those who practiced Satyagrahi came to be known as Satyagrahis. If man-made laws are unfair, he wrote, the Satyagrahi "breaks them and quietly suffers the penalty for their breach." Gandhi was careful to distinguish non-violence, an active form of protest, from passive resistance, which he regarded as "a weapon of the weak." (Gandhi 4-7)

The transformative elements of Satyagraha include the development and liberation of self through "self-restraint, self-regulation, and self-dependence." (Gandhi 6) Dalton quotes Raghavan Iyer, who said Swaraj required "a demanding and continuous process of self-cultivation." (Dalton 7) Gandhi's Swaraj included spiritual freedom, which meant liberation from "illusion and ignorance." (Dalton 2) For the Indian masses, Gandhi also presented Swaraj as "a movement of self-purification." He meant that to achieve spiritual liberation, Indian would have to eliminate Hindu-Muslim clashes, untouchability, unequal distribution of wealth, and inequality between men and women. (Dalton 7) It was Gandhi's promise of Swaraj, provided they adhered strictly to Satyagraha, which appealed to the hearts of Indians of all religions.

For Gandhi, Satyagraha was a transformation for its own sake. In India he preached Satyagraha as the way to the end of political as well as spiritual independence. The end product of transformation through Satyagraha he called "Swaraj." Gandhi wrote: "We reap exactly as we sow." (Gandhi 10) Getting revenge on one's oppressor would not lead to Swaraj, because revenge is an act of hatred and therefore cannot be part of Satyagraha. According to Dalton, Gandhi felt that freedom from oppressors obtained through revenge would be a mere absence of external rule, but not true freedom.

The Phoenix Settlement

The twenty year period (1893-1914) Gandhi spent in South Africa has often been referred to as his "apprenticeship" as a Mahatma (literally "Great Soul").The Phoenix Settlement - the first ashram of nonviolence for Satyagrahis - was established by Gandhi near Durban in Natal, South Africa, in 1904. The settlement was inspired by a single reading of John Ruskin's Unto This Last, a work that extolled the virtues of the simple life of love, labour, and the dignity of human beings. (Bhana) Here, Gandhi and his followers practiced and refined the practical applications of voluntary simplicity.

This is an important time for Gandhi and also an important study in the finer points of transformative processes. The renunciation of materialistic concerns and worldly possessions is arguably the fountainhead of Satyagraha. The spiritual implications are plentiful and well-studied, but there is also the practical implication. That is, by reducing the noise and clutter of one's life, one has more time to think about solutions to complex problems, and one will be able to listen closely to the truth of what people are saying. The practical implications alone can lead to a transformation of thinking; based on having made enough "room" in one's mind, enough time to think deeply, and enough silence to think clearly on the human condition. These were the most practical successes of the experiment at Phoneix Settlement, and based on that success, Gandhi was able to unite the practical with the spiritual into an active Satyagraha that would propel him through the trials ahead.

The settlement had been damaged in 1985 riots when some African squatters occupied much of the settlement, and named it Bambayi. Though the Indian community was deeply distressed, it refrained from seeking the forcible eviction of the squatters. The Phoenix Settlement Trust, with financial assistance from the Government of India, recently restored Gandhi's first ashram and established a clinic and an HIV/Aids Center there to serve all the people in the area, African and Indian.

The Tolstoy Farm

Gandhi was not as personally involved in the daily running of the Phoenix settlement as he was to become in his stay of interrupted duration at the Tolstoy Farm, which lasted for about four years, beginning in 1908. Gandhi attributes the success of the final phase of the satyagraha campaign in South Africa between 1908 and 1914 to the "spiritual purification and penance" afforded by the Tolstoy Farm. He devotes a considerable number of pages in *Satyagraha in South Africa* to the discussion of the day-to-day activities on the farm as the experiment appeared important to him. (Bhana)

During the final phase of Gandhi-led campaigns of nonviolence in South Africa, the Tolstoy Farm was established. Gandhi's own growth became noticeable. During his three months of jail in 1909, he read about 30 books. He read more works of Tolstoy and Thoreau, among others, and of the Hindu religion. Gandhi had read some of Thoreau when he was a student in London, and had summarised the American's essay on Civil Disobedience in an issue of Indian Opinion in 1907. Now in jail, he explored Thoreau further. (Bhana) Ghandi attmepted to engage Tolstoy in discourse through correspondence, but he was apparently not aware of Tolstoy's failing health and political troubles, and no extended exchange of ideas occurred. Tolstoy soon thereafter died, in 1910. It should be noted here that in keeping with the practical implications of Satyagraha, Gandhi's stays in prisons during his campaigns afforded him the simple living and large blocks of time needed to further his philosophical education and contemplate the fate of his people. The issue of making time for study and activism by giving up material concerns will be the hallmark of the Voluntary Simplicity Movement in the West in the late 20th century.

Finally, Ghandi applied himself to the memorisation of the Bhagavad Gita and succeeded in committing to memory the entire part of the Mahabharata, the great Indian epic, that forms the basis of modern-day Hinduism. Gandhi was, of course, attracted by chapters that stressed selfless action, involvement, duty and discipline, that is karma-yoga, and raja-yoga (salvation through bodily discipline) and less by parts that dealt with bhakti-yoga (salvation through devotion), and jnana-yoga (salvation through knowledge). (Bhana) It is curious that he would not have been as attracted to salvation through knowledge, as it was his self-read philosophical education which led him to the concepts of Satyagraha that became so successful for he and his followers.

Qualities of Transformation

It is important to understand general qualities of transformation so that we may further understand how Satyagraha worked to transform the masses in India. Transformations of world views do not happen easily. There tends to be a need for some sort of personal suffering before transformation takes place. The result of that suffering may be some sort of breakdown, physical and/or mental, which is one way to achieve a transformation of world view. After a breakdown, one must rebuild one's view of the world, and it will probably not be the same as before the breakdown. Another way to transform one's views is through gnosis. Gnosis is a sort of spiritual awakening or enlightenment that goes beyond faith and into a *knowing* of God, not simply a faith in God. It is experienced as a sudden realization of how a previously unknown perspective is closer to the truth than one's current perspective, and then suddenly the new perspective takes hold. Physically, this realization can be experienced as an "aha!" sort of effect. It has been argued that the Buddha experienced this sort of gnosis under the Bo tree, "and that's why the Buddha laughed." Another example is Saul's gnosis (in the form of a vision) on the road to Damascus. On a contemporary scale, we experience gnosis on nearly a daily basis when we are in the first few years of formal education and we begin to learn about the world around us. As children, nearly every day we experience at least one "aha!" As an adult, once one has retapped into that ability to achieve gnosis, Gnosis becomes an end unto itself. This is akin to what Gandhi found in Satyagraha - that it is an end unto itself, not just a process for reaching a final goal. To live every moment as a gnosis is as close to Nirvana as one can get in this life. So, transformation of a world view can be achieved in a number of ways, but the most successful leaders of spiritual and moral movements have achieve their goals as a result of tapping into mankind's natural ability for gnostic enlightenment - an experience we all share but few remember and regain. Gandhi, through his philosophical readings of ideas he had previously not known, achieved this experience of gnosis. He read Ruskin's Unto The Last, which, he claimed, "marked the turning point in my life." It could be argued that at a point during that reading his world view changed as a result of a gnosis, an inward "flash of light," an enlightened moment.

The Transformational Nature of Satyagraha

An important addition that Satyagraha makes to transformations of world views is to acknowledge the necessity of the role of human suffering. When Gandhi realized that suffering must occur in order for a new world view to arise, he became free from his fear of suffering. Free of this fear meant that he and his followers could begin a process of intentional suffering that was based on active nonviolence and not simply on passive resistance. In short, it gave meaning and honor to the suffering, and a promise that the suffering would not be fruitless, because it was a part of satyagraha and not a suffering that comes from hatred or revenge.

Gandhi's Application of Satyagraha in Reforming India

Satyagraha worked in India because Gandhi had refined the practical implications of the process during his campaigns in South Africa. The practical side of Satyagraha are rooted in the principles of voluntary simplicity. With no noise and clutter to distract one from the truth, one can experience a gnosis of the truth which validates one's suffering and renews one's energy needed for a successful campaign against oppression. To achieve this gnosis on a mass scale, there must be a continual simplification of life processes and a continual shedding of material concerns and worldly possessions. It should be noted that a side effect of shedding of material concerns, in a society where material concerns had predominated, is a shared sense of vulnerability among the masses. This kind of vulnerability - so close to the very basic survival instinct - is fertile soil for gnosis. Whether or not Gandhi was aware of this advantage before he modeled the shedding of worldly possessions is not known by his writings.

Conclusion

It is important to understand the nature of transformation as it manifests in all cultural contexts because transformation of world view is such a critical component of global conflict resolution. Although it can be argued that good timing is partly responsible for the success of Gandhi's campaigns in South Africa and in India, it cannot be overstated that his ability to invoke transformational thinking was also largely responsible for his success. He found a balance between validation of human suffering, simple dignity, and a reawakening of the childlike ability to achieve gnosis, and applied this balance in his leadership. Along with his contribution to the precepts of the contemporary worldwide peace movement, his demonstration of the power of personal transformation should also be his legacy.

References

Bhana, Surendra. "The Tolstoy Farm: Gandhi's Experiment in 'Cooperative Commonwealth'. South African Historical Journal, No. 7, November 1975.

Dalton, Dennis. Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action. New York: Columbia UP, 1993.

Fischer, Louis. The Life of Mahatma Gandhi. New York: Harper & Row, 1950.

Gandhi, M. K. Non-Violent Resistance. 1961. New York: Schocken, 1967.