Model Research Paper
Gary Marvin Davison, Ph. D.
Director, New Salem Educational Initiative
With regard to the use of violence in promoting social change, the great leaders Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King were in accord: Violence begets more violence and casts those in disagreement with one another as spiteful enemies rather than as opponents engaged in a test of ideas.
Malcolm X had a different view: Although rarely invoked in the immediacy of the moment as the preferred means of action, for Malcolm X violence was one of those options among “any means necessary” reserved for the achievement of goals consistent with the long-term best interests of humanity, especially that portion of humanity long denied fundamental rights of citizenship. In this paper I advance the view that a commitment to nonviolence is preferable to the use of violence for the achievement of political and social justice, for reasons cogently argued by both Gandhi and King. In advancing this thesis, I acknowledge the impact that Malcolm X had on the political events of his place and time; consistent with my thesis, I explain the difference between the immediate benefit of the threat of violence for the achievement of social and political ends, versus the enduring benefits of the commitment to nonviolence as the means to attainment of a more peaceful and loving future for humankind.
In Chapter II of her masterful Conquest of Violence (1), Joan Bondurant discusses the fundamental tenets of Mohandas K. Gandhi’s philosophy of satyagraha, through which he sought to overcome the might of the British Empire. Satya means “Truth.” Graha means “holding firmly.” The term, satyagraha, therefore, means “holding firmly to the Truth."(2)
Gandhi regarded the Truth to be so important as to be in identity with God. And rather than echo the phrasing of “God Is Love” with a similar, “God is Truth,” Gandhi underscored the divinity of Truth with the expression, “Truth is God.”
For Gandhi, Truth with a capital “T” is the first great principle of satyagraha for which humanity must strive.(3) All that human beings can ever know, Gandhi said, is truth with a lower case “t,” that truth as it appears to a mere human being at any given moment in time. Since a mere human being can never know for sure that she or he is correct about a matter in dispute, there is always the possibility that one’s opponent is right.
Ahimsa is the second major principle of satyagraha, the Sanskrit term that comes closest to the English term, “nonviolence.” But in Gandhi’s conception and in the best rendering of the term, ahimsa means more precisely, “refusing to do harm.”(4) If no individual can ever know that she or he is right, violence could never be justified and must be refused: Truth would be destroyed with an act of violence.(5)
Further, ahimsa is such an act of devotion toward the best interests of one’s opponent as to be synonymous with “love”:
I accept the interpretation of Ahimsa namely that it is not merely
a negative
state of harmlessness but it is a positive state of love,
of doing good even to
the evil-doer. But it does not mean helping
the evil-doer to continue to do
wrong or tolerating it by passive
acquiescence. On the contrary, love, the
active state of Ahimsa,
requires you to resist the wrong-doer.(6)
Gandhi’s reasoned commitment to nonviolence (ahimsa) gave rise to the third great principle of satyagraha: tapasya or “self-suffering."(7) With the willingness to undergo self-suffering as necessary, the nonviolent proponent of social change commits to a course of action that inflicts no violence but receives violence as necessary. The willingness to receive violence becomes a powerful expression of love for one’s opponent, against whom one struggles to convert rather than conquer.
Martin Luther King, in the sixth chapter of his book, Stride Toward Freedom(8), gives powerful testimony to just how highly he regarded Mohandas Gandhi’s formulation of nonviolence in satyagraha. Dr. King details how he read and appreciated, if he did not agree completely with, the ideas of many Western authors: Henry David Thoreau(9), Walter Rauschenbusch(10), Karl Marx(11), Friedrich Nietzsche(12), John Stuart Mill, Thomas Hobbes, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Reinhold Niebuhr(13). But it was a lecture on the ideas of Mohandas K. Gandhi by Dr. Mordecai Johnson(14) that gave him his ideological framework for social action.
Dr. King identifies six aspects of Gandhi’s philosophy and program for action in satyagraha that are germane and inspiring for waging a social movement such as that for Civil Rights in the United States. First, he stresses that nonviolent resistance calls for courageous action, rather than passivity(15). Second, he emphasizes the appeal of converting the opponent to one’s viewpoint, rather than seeking to defeat one’s adversary(16). Third, he focuses on Gandhi’s emphasis on evil actions, rather than evil people(17). Fourth, he explains the need to endure suffering as additional proof of the courage that attends satyagraha, and stresses the sincerity that such sacrifice entails(18). Fifth, he finds appealing the Gandhian idea that thought, as well as action, is necessary in the commitment to nonviolence--- that one must seek to demonstrate internal, spiritual nonviolence, regarding harmful thoughts about one’s opponent to be as abhorrent as physical violence(19). Finally, Dr. King found enormously powerful Gandhi’s idea that the universe is on the side of justice, so that a commitment to satyagraha aligns one with the God who represents the ideal of just action in behalf of humankind.(20)
Dr. King found the Gandhian formulation of satyagraha to offer a commitment to the principles of universal love (agape) and sacrifice (as found most saliently in the Crucifixion) that follow the best inclinations of Christianity.(21)
In other works, Martin Luther King called upon the United States to turn away from the frontier tradition of violent retaliation(22), sought to promote nonviolence in all areas of human conflict (with implicit implementation on an international scale)(23), and made the case that nonviolence is paradoxically the most powerful of all weapons:
Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. It is unique in history,
which
cuts without wounding, and ennobles the man who wields
it. It is a
sword that heals (24).
Against this ethic of satyagraha advanced by both Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Malcolm X objected to nonviolence on the basis of what he saw as its irrational applications and its frequent situational ineffectiveness. In his “Address to Mississippi Youth,” Malcolm X tells an audience of thirty-seven adolescents,
My experience has been that in many instances where you
find Negroes
talking about nonviolence… they mean they’re
nonviolent with somebody
with else. They are nonviolent
with the enemy… a person can come out
to your home, and
if he’s white and wants to heap some kind of brutality
on you,
you’re nonviolent… but if another Negro just stomps his foot,
you’ll
rumble with him in a minute… which shows you there’s
an inconsistency
there.(25)
Malcolm X also raises the very real spectacle of vulnerability to white violence in the absence of armed resistance:
We of the Organization of African American Unitty are… with
the efforts
to register our people to vote one thousand percent.
But we do not go
along with anyone telling us to help nonviolently.
We think that… if some
kind of Ku Klux Klan is going to put
[Negroes] in the river, and the government
doesn’t do anything
about it, it’s time for us to organize and band together
and equip
ourselves and qualify ourselves to protect ourselves. And when
you can protect yourself, you don’t have to worry about being hurt.(26)
Malcolm X states that he is not driven by hate. But he recoils from the ethic of universally applied love:
I don’t have hate in me. I have no hate at all. I have some sense. I’m not
going to let someone who hates me tell me to love him.
I’m not that way out.
And you, young as you are, you’re not
going to do it either. The only time
you’re going to get in that
bag is if somebody puts you there. Somebody else,
who doesn’t
have your welfare at heart.(28)
Any differences in the thought and action of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King are those of emphasis and lexicon. Martin Luther King studied in great detail the principles of satyagraha of Mohandas Gandhi and understood those principles in their original context. But he applied those principles as a Christian pastor, seeing them through the prism of agape, the Greek term for universal love that Christians came to identify with the Spirit moving in the life, activity, and teachings of Jesus. Martin Luther King credited Gandhi for demonstrably moving the guiding force of love from the level of individual interaction to the social sphere. Dr. King clearly stated that Gandhi was his inspiration for the application of the principles of satyagraha and ahimsa to the Civil Rights Movement in the American cultural and political context.
In the manner of these fellow agitators for social change, Malcolm X was a man of tremendous courage and commitment. He shared with them a passion for a better world, one in which all people are accorded their proper dignity, a world in which those who historically have been abused permanently gain the respect that they deserve.
Malcolm X differed fundamentally from Gandhi and King, though, as to matters of nonviolence, love, and effective action. Malcolm X regarded nonviolence as an inconsistently applied creed that African Americans resorted to meekly when faced with white oppression but disregarded in responses to each other. He stated explicitly that he harbored no hate but would not be told to love his enemies.
And he saw those enemies as the other, not the same in constitution as friends. He thought that violence tended to be more effective than nonviolence when a person or group was faced with the starkly brutal actions of one’s enemies.
Malcolm X and this threat of violence in the absence of justice probably hastened passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, for which the nonviolent movement led by Martin Luther King is generally given credit. But in my view, the principles of satyagraha as a code of nonviolent thought and action are superior to those of violence, however effective the latter may be in terms of immediate effect.
Nonviolence requires great love, enormous discipline, and great sacrifice. Completely consistent application often falls away in the face of immediate and clear danger to those one most deeply loves. But pursued as an ideal, followed in most cases, applied broadly to all of humanity, nonviolence would make of this world a more loving, kind, and hospitable arena wherein humankind could dwell, living life much closer to the ideal in this one earthly sojourn.
Notes
1. Joan Bondurant, Chapter II (Two), “Satyagraha: Its Basic Precepts,” Conquest of Violence: The
Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 15-35.
2. Ibid., p. 16.
3. Ibid., p. 19. Here Bondurant quotes Gandhi as asserting, “As long as I have not realized Absolute
Truth, so long must I hold by this relative truth as I have conceived it. This truth must be my beacon,
my shield, and buckler.”
4. Ibid., p. 22.
5. Ibid., p. 25.
6. Ibid., p. 24.
7. Ibid., p. 26.
8. Martin Luther King, Jr., Chapter VI (Six), “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” Stride Toward Freedom: The
Montgomery Story (New York: Perennial/ Harper & Row, 1958), pp. 72-88.
9. Ibid., p. 73.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., pp. 74-77.
12. Ibid., pp. 77-78.
13. Ibid., pp. 79-81. On p. 79, King very briefly cites his reading of Mill, Hobbes, and Rousseau but on
pp. 79-81 gives a more detailed account of Niebuhr’s ideas concerning the propensity of humankind
for both good and evil.
14. Ibid., pp. 78-79.
15. Ibid., pp. 83-84.
16. Ibid., p. 84.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid., p. 85.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., p. 88.
21. Ibid., pp. 86-88.
22. Alex Ayres, ed., found according to the thematic alphabetization scheme under “Nonviolence” in
The Wisdom of Martin Luther King (New York: Meridian/ Penguin, 1993), p. 166. The quotation is taken from its original presentation in Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (New York: Harper & Row, 1964).
23. Ibid., p.167. The quotation is taken form its original presentation in Martin Luther King, Jr.,
The Trumpet of Conscience (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).
24. Ibid. The quotation is originally from Why We Can’t Wait, consistent with the full citation
information given above.
25. Warren Halliburton, ed., Malcolm X, “Address to Mississippi Youth,” Historic Speeches of African
Americans (New York: Perennial/ Harper & Row, 1967).
26. Ibid., p. 132.
27. Ibid., p. 133.
References
Note:
This listing of sources either cited specifically or used as general background material also frequently goes under such headings as “Bibliography” or ‘Works Cited.”
The following list includes the four sources I used in writing this paper (found in “Notes” on immediately previous pages), and in addition I have provided the full publishing information for the works that Alex Ayres consulted to obtain the quotations of Martin Luther King that I used from the Ayres book.
Ayres, Alex, ed. “Nonviolence,” The Wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Meridian/ Penguin, 1993, pp. 164-170.
Bondurant, Joan V. Chapter II (Two), “Satyagraha: Its Basic Precepts,” Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Social Conflict. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971, pp. 15-35.
Halliburton, Warren J., ed. Malcolm X, “Address to Mississippi Youth,” Historic Speeches of African Americans. New York: The African American Experience/ Franklin Watts, 1993, pp. 129-133.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. Chapter VI (Six), “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. New York: Perennial/ Harper & Row, 1958, pp. 72-88.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. The Trumpet of Conscience. New York: Harper & Row, 1967.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. Why We Can’t Wait. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.
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