This week I attended a webinar, How Nonviolence Won Independence: India & United States, hoping to learn something new about how nonviolence played a role in the US shaking off its colonial status. While the presenter enthusiastically highlighted the use of tools like boycotts prior to the Declaration of Independence, I was unpersuaded this was a victory for nonviolence. I’ve previously written about the contrast between Thomas Jefferson’s methods and Gandhi’s:
On March 2, 1930, Gandhi wrote a letter to the British Viceroy, Lord Irwin, who oversaw India’s administration. Addressing him as “Dear Friend,” Gandhi announced [the upcoming Salt March, and] … laid out his demands by which it could be avoided. First and foremost was a path to full Dominion Status for India, similar to Australia and Canada.
Gandhi’s letter did call British rule “a curse” and listed many reasons [including] the sale of alcohol, … a multitude of taxes, including that on salt, [and] … the costs of the military and civil administration. … Despite this, Gandhi’s tone remained respectful and gentle. “My ambition,” he wrote, “is no less than to convert the British people through nonviolence, and thus make them see the wrong they have done to India. I do not seek to harm your people. I want to serve them even as I want to serve my own.”
Contrast this to America’s Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson’s document is peppered with words and phrases like “tyrant,” “absolute despotism,” and “injuries and usurpations.” King George III is not a dear friend, but instead the subject of a laundry list of grievances prefixed “He has.” The united states held their “British brethren” to be “enemies in war,” and the first enumerated power for these “free and independent states” was to levy war.
Nonviolence seeks win-win scenarios, where both sides emerge with dignity. Listening is an important part of that process, and the colonies seemed lacking. The British, in debt after the French and Indian War, had legitimate financial concerns that resulted in the Stamp Act. When the colonies strenuously objected with boycotts, Parliament listened and repealed it, substituting the Townshend Acts. More objections and more repeals left just a small tax on tea. This could have been win-win; the East India Tea Company would be able to sell its wares even cheaper than before. Instead, a mob threw over $2,000,000 (in today’s dollars) worth of tea into Boston Harbor.
The efficacy of these competing tactics becomes evident in the aftermath. The British did, as Gandhi hoped, leave India as friends. However, the American Revolution left such bitter feelings that war flared up again in 1812. With the United States once again in a time of transformational change, I hope that nonviolence can be the method for delivering it.
On a personal note, today I’m celebrating my own transformational change eight years ago—the birthday of the Gandhi Guy.
Is there a day you remember as one of great personal change?