[Vision2020] Gandhi, King, and Thoreau: Principles of Civil Disobedience

[Nick Gier]

Greetings:

I'm getting my King Holiday column out early this year, so that I can 
improve my chances of placing it.  I'm now a weekly commentator on 
KRFP.  Tune in at 92.5 FM on Wednesday mornings at about 7:45 (repeated 
later in the AM).  I'll read this column on Jan. 11.

By the way, Phil, I really enjoyed your piece on Wendt.  My former wife was 
a potter and was really inspired by him.  We also bought lots of clay from 
him.  My garage is still wired for super high wattage 240 volts.

Also a note to Mr. Crabtree:  I assume that the retired philosophy 
professor you referred to was yours truly.  The only agenda I have, sir, is 
that people be honest in their intellectual discourse and their civil 
dealings. Period.

GANDHI, KING, AND THOREAU:
FOUR PRINCIPLES OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

By Nick Gier
True peace is not merely the absence of tension;
it is the presence of justice.Martin Luther King, Jr.

I'm sure that people have protested unjust laws ever since the first laws 
were promulgated.  Some scholars claim that Gandhi was influenced by an 
ancient tradition of civil disobedience in his own country, and we now know 
that Gandhi protested South African pass laws a year before he read Henry 
David Thoreau's famous work On Civil Disobedience in 1907. But it cannot be 
doubted that Thoreau's work did in fact give an intellectual framework for 
Gandhi's program of active non-violence as well as new ideas for specific 
forms of non-cooperation.

Thoreau proposed that people, when faced with unjust laws, could "obey 
them, amend them, . . . or  transgress them."  With respect to the Fugitive 
Slave Law of 1850, Thoreau chose to transgress.  In eventually supporting 
the violent acts of John Brown, Thoreau broke with the non-violence 
resistance to which Gandhi and King consistently adhered.

In July, 1846, Thoreau refused to pay a poll tax and spent one night in 
jail for his crime.  Thoreau proclaimed that "under a government that 
imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in 
prison."  Gandhi and King would go to jail for much longer terms and 
willingly accept the punishment for breaking the law.

We can now begin to discern several principles of civil disobedience.  The 
first principle is that you maintain respect for the rule of law even while 
disobeying the specific law that you perceive as unjust.  Gandhi very much 
admired Socrates' respect for Athenian law and his decision not to flee 
when his prison guards were bribed. King was always confident that American 
democracy would eventually treat his people as equal under the rule of law 
that he always respected.

The second principle of civil disobedience is that non-violent activists do 
not seek to undermine the rule of law, but only the repeal of unjust laws. 
Gandhi and King's demands were clear and simple: laws that discriminated 
and  disenfranchised must abolished. Indian outcastes, African-Americans, 
and gays do not want "special rights"; they simply want the rights that all 
others enjoy.

The third principle of civil disobedience is that one should plead guilty 
to any violation of the law.  As Gandhi explains: "I am here to . . . 
submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for 
what in law is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest 
duty of a citizen."

Gandhi instructed his disciples to take the penance of their oppressors 
upon themselves.  Gandhi's tactics were a form of moral and political ju 
jitzu. Some of Gandhi's judges felt as if they were the ones charged and 
convicted. Thoreau said that his one night in jail made the state look 
foolish.

We have now arrived at the fourth principle of civil disobedience: you 
should attempt to convert your opponent by demonstrating the justice of 
your cause.  Active nonviolence does not seek, as Gandhi says, "to defeat 
or humiliate your opponents, but to win their friendship and understanding."

Gandhi would have agreed with King's axiom that "there is within human 
nature something that can respond to goodness." This is what gave King hope 
that "the aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved 
community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness."

There was a strong spiritual dimension to Gandhi's and King's political 
activism that was absent in Thoreau's. One could criticize them for 
violating the hallowed separation of politics from religion. The 
establishment clause certainly does not ban the expression of religious 
views; rather, it proscribes the favoring of one religion over 
another.  Gandhi's and King's vision was inclusive and nonjudgmental, 
rather than declarations, such as a recent one by an army officer in 
uniform that "our God is greater than Allah."

Non-violent resistance to oppressive regimes had a good track record in the 
late 20th Century.  From the Baltic States, to the Ukraine, and east to the 
Philippines, ordinary people in dozens of countries have proved Thoreau 
correct: "When all subjects have refused allegiance, and all officers have 
resigned from office, then the revolution is accomplished."

Nick Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 
years.  Excerpts from his book The Virtue of Non-Violence: from Gautama to 
Gandhi can be read at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/vnv.htm.


"The god you worship is the god you deserve."
~~ Joseph Campbell
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