NB: The title of this post is inspired by a lecture on Gandhi’s ideal of resistance to oppression, delivered by my old friend Professor Bhagwan Josh. Please find below some words of advice to student protestors in the context of the global resistance to genocide. They are also relevant to all of us who resist injustice of any kind. Most are borrowed from other people, some living some dead. Some are my personal reflections, gained from decades of political activity and resistance to injustice.
I did not always have these ideas, and they are therefore not solely mine.
Human beings are fundamentally questioning, hence speaking animals. If we cannot speak, we cannot question; and if we cannot question, we cannot think about goodness, evil, justice, injustice, and how we should live. Tyranny prevents us from speaking and questioning. Hence tyranny is against our natural spirit, and is bad for society
We love justice and we do not like evil and to see pain inflicted on innocents. Hence it is our natural inclination to resist. Sometimes this becomes violent. This is when the big problem appears.
A point to remember: antisemitism is a Christian form of bigotry, based on the theologically-backed libel that Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. Antisemitism was going on for six centuries before the Prophet Muhammad was born. And the words ‘semite‘ and ‘semitic‘ are deeply misunderstood: they do not refer only to Jews. Here are some reflections on this issue.
Antisemitism is a fundamentally Western phenomenon, hence there is much more of it in the USA and Europe than there is in India. Indian students abroad should keep this in mind. Despite the bad things happening in our part of the world as in other regions, we have something to say about religion:
Sometimes cruel instincts come to the surface in the midst of complex situations – very often the police display these instincts. Sometimes people without scruples get inside movements without clarity on the need for discipline. That is why Mahatma Gandhi insisted on truth and non-violence in mass agitations. He called it satyagraha: which means ‘holding fast to truth.’ This also means maintaining a calm temper in the midst of grave provocations. Gandhiji called this sthithpragya, which means imperturbability. Here are two audio visual talks about his life and its significance. I assure you, he remains very relevant.
We are living in a nihilist time, with the destruction of language, time, and life, all going on side by side. It is my belief that satyagraha is the answer to modern nihilism. Ideology is a contemporary manifestation of nihilism. The collapse and implosion of ideologies imposes an obligation on us to understand it.
Martin Luther King on Mahatma Gandhi: “My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence”, September 1958
My young friends and comrades: please refrain from violence, in your words or deeds. But maintain your dignity in the face of injustice. It is our moral duty to resist cruelty and injustice. I salute you all.
Shruthi Kumar delivers her senior English address | Harvard Commencement 2024
The world needs more of you to stand up and be heard. DS
Stand up, Say No
It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honour, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character: Joseph Heller, Catch-22
You hold on to hatred like its a prize, when its a weight around your neck – Messiah S1 E1
एक अजीब-सी मुश्किल / My Uncanny Paradox
And then again there are such as consider it virtuous to say, “Virtue is necessary”; but at bottom they believe only that the police is necessary: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra)
When a nation is filled with strife, then do patriots flourish: Lao-Tzu, 601-531 BCE
Christianity, Violence, and the West
What you run away from, runs after you – Romanian proverb
People all seek to know what they do not know yet / They ought rather seek to know what they know already: Zhuang Zhou (369-286 BC)
Stand up, Say No
It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow human beings: M. K. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth
I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice: Albert Camus; Letters to a German friend, 1943
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light: Anonymous
But now our requirements have changed, and the facts have changed behind us: Hilary Mantel in Bring Up the Bodies
Kautilya’s observations on the causes of discontent in a polity
And why should Caesar be a tyrant then? / Poor man, I know he would not be a wolf / But that he sees the Romans are but sheep / He were no lion, were not the Romans hinds: William Shakespeare, in Julius Caesar, (I.iii.103-6)
Stand up, Say No
It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I’m looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling: Robert Pirsig
In fact it is more correct to say Truth is God than to say God is Truth – Mohandas Gandhi
DO NOT ADJUST YOUR MIND – THERE IS A FAULT WITH REALITY: Slogan on the walls of Paris, May 1968
But as soon as a man, through lack of character, takes refuge in doctrine, as soon as crime reasons about itself, it multiplies like reason itself and assumes all the aspects of the syllogism. Once crime was as solitary as a cry of protest; now it is as universal as science. Yesterday it was put on trial; today it determines the law: Albert Camus, The Rebel
Seamus Heaney’s Advice to the Young. By Maria Popova
To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves: Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715 – 1771)
The tree on the height is its own enemy: Lao Tzu
The search for new time: Ahimsa in an age of permanent war
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it: George Orwell, 1984
Stand up, Say No
Duty of disloyalty. M. K. Gandhi (1930)
The perfectly just man, the man who is as just as is humanly possible, is according to Socrates the philosopher and according to the prophets the faithful servant of the Lord. The philosopher is the man who dedicates his life to the quest for knowledge of the good, of the idea of the good; what we would call moral virtue is only the condition or by-product of that quest. According to the prophets, however, there is no need for the quest for knowledge of the good: God “hath shewed thee, o man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.” (Micah 6:8). In accordance with this the prophets as a rule address the people and sometimes even all the peoples, whereas Socrates as a rule addresses only one man. In the language of Socrates the prophets are orators while Socrates engages in conversations with one man, which means he is addressing questions to him: Leo Strauss; Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy; Chapter 7, Jerusalem and Athens
What is truth? asked jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer – Francis Bacon
Baldev Singh Mann: My darling daughter! (1986)
The truth never dies, but is made to live as a beggar: Yiddish proverb
Truth – the word has an incomparable magic. It seems to promise what really matters to us. The violation of truth poisons everything gained by the violation: Karl Jaspers
Stand up, Say No
Does time pass through us; or do we pass through time?
The Old Astronomer to His Pupil / Stunning New Footage Of Earth
You can always make money, you can never make time
Javed Akhtar recites Waqt, his poem on Time
Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present: Albert Camus, The Rebel
We can rewrite history books, but we cannot rectify history: The Crisis of Ideology
Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility: Lord Acton
Stand up, Say No
What I have learned (humans aged 6 to 92)
The soul needs love like the lungs need oxygen: James Gilligan
Only love can save those who are infected with anger: Svetlana Alexievich
Sicilian fishermen risk prison to rescue migrants: ‘No human would turn away’
The kindest thing I ever saw …
Daya Ram Gidumal of Sindh: A silent servant, a silent sufferer. A good man
Kerala: Muslim woman’s Hindu children inspire an Indian film
There is one striking example of a prophet talking in private to a single man, in a way addressing a question to him. 2 Sam. 12:1~7: “And the Lord sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him, and said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds: But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had brought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter. And there came a traveller unto the rich man and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but took the poor man’s lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come unto him. And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die; And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity. And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.” Leo Strauss; Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy; (1983); Chapter 7, Jerusalem and Athens
उड जायेगा हंस अकेला / जग दर्शन का मेला – Remembering Mahatma Gandhi
Khuda Hafiz means May God be your guardian. Whether or not you believe in God, it is a noble sentiment
to be continued…
After the truth-shower 