The force of non-violence

NARRATED by Ben Kingsley, who acted as Mahatma Gandhi in the Academy winning film "Gandhi", the film "A Force More Powerful" focusses on three non-violent political campaigns, the first led by Mahatma Gandhi in the freedom struggle against British rule, the second led by the Rev. James Lawson to desegregate lunch counters in Nashville, Tennesse, in 1959 and the third led by Mkhusel Jack against White South African businesses in the Eastern Cape region in 1985-86.

Using vast and minute archival material and interviews with the participants in the movement, the film has turned out to be a warm and heartening tribute to the courage, dedication and determination to their cause by humble people who rose to great heights to sacrifice their lives, facing the baton and the bullet.

Mr. Richard H. Solomon, President of the United States Institute of Peace, Washington D.C., which provided a grant to fund the preliminary research for the documentary, said: "The documentary and the accompanying educational material and book were likely to serve as an inspiring manual for people around the world struggling for human rights and freedom against oppressive regimes."

The television version of the film is to be broadcast in the Washington D.C. area in two 90-minute segments. The first will be a shortened version of the film, the second will spotlight three additional cases: the Danish resistance to the Nazi occupation, the Polish Solidarity Movement, and the Chilean opposition to Auguste Pinochet.

Peter Ackerman, producer, was the co-author of the inspiring book, Strategic Non-Violent Conflict: The Dynamics of People in Power In The 20th Century (1994). The publication, which considers six comprehensive case studies, outlined a series of principles that showed why non-violence has succeeded or failed.

While everyone knew a lot about Mahatma Gandhi and the uniqueness of his determination to launch a struggle on a countrywide scale, the film's potent, and latent, strength lay in the section where Rev. Lawson teaches students how to engage themselves in non- violent and peaceful protests while anti-apartheid activists persuade their followers to strengthen their conviction to take recourse to peaceful means only and to totally renounce violence.

This brings into sharp focus Gandhiji's indisputable leadership in keeping the agitation free from any form of violence by his unarmed struggle and having the courage to call it off at the slightest sign of followers getting emotional and resorting to meet force with force. He would take up the case again only after getting firm assurances that there would be no repetition of such episodes.

The remarkable fact that is to be noted in the Nashville episode is that except for U.S. Representative John Lewis (Democrat- Georgia), who was a college student at the time of the sit-in demonstration, most of the participants were not then, and are not now, public figures. It is as if they came from nowhere for a particular cause and once their objective was achieved, just disappeared.

Mahatma Gandhi had a long-held spiritual commitment to non- violence and Mr. Ackerman noted that that commitment slowly, but definitely, developed into a strategic dimension.

Further elaborating on this point, he is of the view that "while there is a long tradition of discourse on the conduct of war, it seems reasonable, and even imperative, to apply the same logic and methods to non-violent resistance".

The expectation in this line of thinking is that, ultimately, the tidal force of non-violence will prove to be more powerful and will not fail to prevail in its mission.

The United States Institute of Peace was created by Congress in 1984 as an independent, non-partisan federal institution dedicated to research, education, professional training and policy development on matters of international conflict prevention, management and resolution. A 15-member, bi-partisan board of directors, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, governs the institute. Its programmes are funded by an annual appropriation from Congress.

S. RANGARAJAN

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