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Satyagraha
Satyāgraha (from Sanskrit: सत्याग्रह; satya: "truth", āgraha: "insistence" or "holding firmly to"), or "holding firmly to truth", or "truth force", is a particular form of nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. Someone who practises satyagraha is a satyagrahi.
The term satyagraha was coined and developed by Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) as early as 1919. Gandhi practised satyagraha as part of the Indian independence movement and also during his earlier struggles in South Africa for Indian rights. Satyagraha theory influenced Martin Luther King Jr.'s and James Bevel's campaigns during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, as well as Nelson Mandela's struggle against apartheid in South Africa and many other social-justice and similar movements.
Gandhi envisioned satyagraha as not only a tactic to be used in acute political struggle but as a universal solvent for injustice and harm.
He founded the Sabarmati Ashram to teach satyagraha. He asked satyagrahis to follow the following principles
On another occasion, he listed these rules as "essential for every Satyagrahi in India":
Gandhi proposed a series of rules for satyagrahis to follow in a resistance campaign:
The terms originated in a competition in the news-sheet Indian Opinion in South Africa in 1906. Mr. Maganlal Gandhi, grandson of an uncle of Mahatma Gandhi, came up with the word "Sadagraha" and won the prize. Subsequently, to make it clearer, Gandhi changed it to Satyagraha. "Satyagraha" is a tatpuruṣa compound of the Sanskrit words satya (meaning "truth") and āgraha ("polite insistence", or "holding firmly to"). Satya is derived from the word "sat", which means "being". Nothing is or exists in reality except Truth. In the context of satyagraha, Truth, therefore, includes a) Truth in speech, as opposed to falsehood, b) knowledge of what is real, as opposed to nonexistent (asat), and c) good as opposed to evil or bad. This was critical to Gandhi's understanding of and faith in nonviolence: "The world rests upon the bedrock of satya or truth. Asatya, meaning untruth, also means nonexistent, and satya or truth, also means that which is. If untruth does not so much as exist, its victory is out of the question. And truth being that which is, can never be destroyed. This is the doctrine of satyagraha in a nutshell." For Gandhi, satyagraha went far beyond mere "passive resistance" and became strength in practising non-violent methods. In his words:
Truth (satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement Satyagraha, that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence, and gave up the use of the phrase "passive resistance", in connection with it, so much so that even in English writing we often avoided it and used instead the word "satyagraha" itself or some other equivalent English phrase.
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Satyagraha
Satyāgraha (from Sanskrit: सत्याग्रह; satya: "truth", āgraha: "insistence" or "holding firmly to"), or "holding firmly to truth", or "truth force", is a particular form of nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. Someone who practises satyagraha is a satyagrahi.
The term satyagraha was coined and developed by Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) as early as 1919. Gandhi practised satyagraha as part of the Indian independence movement and also during his earlier struggles in South Africa for Indian rights. Satyagraha theory influenced Martin Luther King Jr.'s and James Bevel's campaigns during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, as well as Nelson Mandela's struggle against apartheid in South Africa and many other social-justice and similar movements.
Gandhi envisioned satyagraha as not only a tactic to be used in acute political struggle but as a universal solvent for injustice and harm.
He founded the Sabarmati Ashram to teach satyagraha. He asked satyagrahis to follow the following principles
On another occasion, he listed these rules as "essential for every Satyagrahi in India":
Gandhi proposed a series of rules for satyagrahis to follow in a resistance campaign:
The terms originated in a competition in the news-sheet Indian Opinion in South Africa in 1906. Mr. Maganlal Gandhi, grandson of an uncle of Mahatma Gandhi, came up with the word "Sadagraha" and won the prize. Subsequently, to make it clearer, Gandhi changed it to Satyagraha. "Satyagraha" is a tatpuruṣa compound of the Sanskrit words satya (meaning "truth") and āgraha ("polite insistence", or "holding firmly to"). Satya is derived from the word "sat", which means "being". Nothing is or exists in reality except Truth. In the context of satyagraha, Truth, therefore, includes a) Truth in speech, as opposed to falsehood, b) knowledge of what is real, as opposed to nonexistent (asat), and c) good as opposed to evil or bad. This was critical to Gandhi's understanding of and faith in nonviolence: "The world rests upon the bedrock of satya or truth. Asatya, meaning untruth, also means nonexistent, and satya or truth, also means that which is. If untruth does not so much as exist, its victory is out of the question. And truth being that which is, can never be destroyed. This is the doctrine of satyagraha in a nutshell." For Gandhi, satyagraha went far beyond mere "passive resistance" and became strength in practising non-violent methods. In his words:
Truth (satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement Satyagraha, that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence, and gave up the use of the phrase "passive resistance", in connection with it, so much so that even in English writing we often avoided it and used instead the word "satyagraha" itself or some other equivalent English phrase.