The previous installments can be read here: part one, part two, part three
I’ve been fasting this entire week from dinner Saturday, March 10, to breakfast Sunday March 18. It’s the fast for labor unions, running from the day Cesar Chavez broke his fast to dedicate the United Farm Workers to nonviolence, to the day Gandhi broke his first public fast. That fast was The Event, according to biographer Erik Erikson; the origin of militant nonviolence.
By March 14, 1918, many of the striking workers were losing faith after three weeks without work. With the lockout ended, some workers had accepted a 20% raise and gone back to work. Ambalal Sarabhai, the mill owner, had written Gandhi a letter which upset him; he destroyed it immediately after reading it. From his secretary we have a summary of Gandhi’s response – he had been accused of pressuring the workers to stop people from entering the factories.
At the next meeting by the Sarambati River, Gandhi reminded the workers of their own pledge to remain nonviolent. If threats were used to stop others from going to work, Gandhi and his companions would have to stop helping the workers. He explained, “It is very essential in this struggle that workers do not resort to coercion.” Like Cesar Chavez five decades later, nonviolence was essential to building a union.
Gandhi also received some bad news on the 14th. As his nephew had visited the homes of striking workers, encouraging them and inviting them to the next day’s meeting, he was mocked. “What is it to Anasuya and Gandhi? They come and go in their car; they eat sumptuous food, but we are suffering death-agonies; attending meetings does not prevent starvation.”
The union was reaching a critical juncture, members were begin to fold under the economic pressure brought to bear by the mill owners. His nephew’s report was still echoing in Gandhi’s mind as he arrived, in Anasuya’s car, at the meeting the next morning.
Have you ever discovered that someone had a lower opinion of you than what you presumed?