Satyagraha is a faith, a force, a fire. It is not merely a weapon of the weak to supplant violence. It is the weapon of the strongest.
Satyagraha is soul force, truth force or non-violent resistance. It is passive resistance to evil in its active forms and was developed by Mahatma Gandhi to promote self-rule for India from British rule. The term was coined by Gandhi from two Sanskrit words, satya (meaning “truth”) and agraha (meaning “insistence” or “holding firmly to”). Satyagraha is usually translated as “insistence on truth” or “holding onto truth” or “truth force.”
The essence of satyagraha is that it seeks to eliminate injustice by awakening the sense of justice in the opponent rather than by inflicting punishment on him. In other words, it seeks victory through love instead of hatred. At the same time satyagraha does not eschew violence if its use becomes an unavoidable necessity.
Satyagraha never loses sight of the fact that it must deal with human nature as it is and not with an idealized version of human nature. Hence it
Satyagraha, or as it is popularly known as “Non-violence”, was first introduced by Mahatma Gandhi in the Indian struggle for independence. If we ask anyone about Satyagraha, they would answer that it is equivalent to non-violence. However, the concept of Satyagraha was not an idea coined by Gandhi but an idea that has been around since the times of Buddha and Christ. In fact, Gandhi himself has said in his writings that he learnt the idea of Satyagraha from the Bible.
Satyagraha is a Sanskrit word which can be translated as “insistence on truth”. The father of Satyagraha was Bal Gangadhar Tilak who used this method against the British rule in India. This was prevalent even before Gandhi took to politics. But for some reason it failed. When Gandhi joined politics he observed this failure and realized that people had lost faith in their own means of struggle. He gave a new dimension to this method and made it popular all over the world with his experiments in South Africa and India.
Satyagraha was the method by which Gandhiji fought against injustice. The Untouchability Offence Act, passed in 1927, was not being implemented rigorously. In 1930, Gandhiji decided to begin a satyagraha movement against the British in India to demand a right to make salt.
He began this historic Dandi March from Sabarmati Ashram on 12th March, 1930 and reached Dandi (a coastal village in Gujarat) on 6th April, 1930. On that day he violated the Salt Law by picking up a handful of mud and salt. This act of his was symbolic of his protest against the British salt monopoly.
The same act was repeated by thousands and lakhs of Indians all over India. A quarter of a million people were sent to jail during the Civil Disobedience Movement and an equal number were arrested for breaking salt laws alone.[1]
In 1931, Gandhiji went to London with a few delegates to talk about the new constitution. An agreement called the Gandhi-Irwin Pact was signed between Gandhiji and Lord Irwin on 5th March, 1931]on certain conditions. The movement was temporarily called off when Gandhiji went to attend the Round Table Conference in London on behalf of the Indian
Satyagraha is a term used by Gandhi to describe a nonviolent method of direct action, which he believed could be used by an oppressed people without having to resort to violence. He developed it from the teachings of Leo Tolstoy, who taught that all people are equal as children of God and should therefore love and forgive each other. Gandhi also expanded on Tolstoy’s ideas about the way that one should live a moral life and how to resist injustice.
Satyagraha was first tested in South Africa, where Gandhi experimented with civil disobedience as a means for resisting British rule. It was here that he founded the satyagraha ashram in Johannesburg, where he lived with his family and associates. The ashram taught that “Truth” (satya) equals “Love” (ahimsa). The word satyagraha is derived from the Sanskrit words satya (“truth”) and agraha (“firmness”). Satyagraha is often translated into English as “soul-force”.
In the Indian language Hindi, satyagraha translates literally as “holding onto truth”, while the related word satya translates as “truth”. Other scholars give slightly different definitions: “love-force” or “truth-force”;
The Rowlatt Act, which gave the government of India sweeping powers to put down political agitation and to deal arbitrarily with anybody suspected of sedition, was passed on March 18, 1919. While most politicians were stunned into silence, Gandhi reacted immediately and decisively.
He called upon all Indians to observe April 6 as a day of fasting and prayer in protest against the new legislation. The following day, April 7, was to be a day of “hartal” or complete suspension of work.
The response was overwhelming, especially among students and the urban middle class. To Gandhi’s dismay, however, his call for non-violent protests against the new law was not heeded universally.
Violence erupted in several places especially in Punjab where people had suffered greatly as a result of World War I. This violence proved counter-productive as it played directly into the hands of the British who used it to defame Gandhi and the Indian National Congress.
As for Gandhi himself he believed that he had failed both in his effort to persuade the British to repeal their repressive legislation and also in his attempt to make non-violence an effective weapon of mass struggle against imperialism.
The Rowlatt Act or the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act of 1919 was a legislative act passed by the Imperial Legislative Council in Delhi on 10 March 1919, indefinitely extending the emergency measures of preventive indefinite detention, incarceration without trial and judicial review enacted in the Defence of India act 1915 during the First World War.
The Act gave to an executive council, headed by the British Viceroy of India Lord Chelmsford, wide-ranging powers of arrest and imprisonment for two years without trial.
The act was based on the recommendations of the Sedition Committee, named after its president, Lord Sidney Rowlatt and was aimed at strengthening the hand of British authorities in dealing with revolutionary activities. In India it is known as Black Act because it deprived Indians of all civil liberties. This was a time when Gandhi had just returned from South Africa and had joined Indian politics actively.
The bill came into force on March 23, 1919. The uproar of protest which followed its passage led directly to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre four days later on April 13, 1919. It also led to a nationwide protest day on 6 April 1919 called as “Hartal”. Later in 1921, similar protests took place during the visit of Prince of Wales Edward VIII to India.
The Rowlatt Act was a law that allowed the British government to imprison anyone
suspected of terrorism without a trial. On March 10, 1919, in the city of Amritsar,
India, thousands of nationalists gathered to protest and demonstrate against the
Rowlatt Act. General Reginald Dyer ordered his troops to fire on the crowd. The
soldiers reloaded and fired again and again. When it was all over, nearly 400 Indians
were dead and more than 1,100 were wounded. In the wake of this massacre,
pseudonymously labeled “the Amritsar Massacre” by historian Joyce Marlow, Gandhi
launched a nationwide campaign of non-violent resistance against British rule.
