The International Day of Non-Violence
The International Day of Non-Violence
October 2, 2024
October 2nd, 1869—at least by the Gregorian calendar—was the day Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born. (By the Vikram calendar, it was Bhadarva Vad 12, which usually fell in late September.) In 2007, the United Nations declared it the International Day of Non-Violence. Although the official resolution makes no mention of Gandhi, his birthday is of course the reason.
Tonight, at 7pm ET, I’ll be speaking on a livestream about how nonviolence can be applied to America’s political system: here’s the YouTube link.
(This seems like a reasonable place to address hyphenating the word non-violence. While I’m a guy who likes to get facts right, I was persuaded some years ago to excise the hyphen from Gandhi’s writings. Chris Moore-Backman pointed out that while Gandhi always used the hyphenated form, it was “increasingly understood to represent the most rudimentary expression of nonviolence,” i.e. simply abstaining from violence. “Nonviolence (no hyphen) has come to denote the holistic and comprehensive approach to nonviolent living and struggle” in the Gandhian tradition. That’s the concept I’m trying to communicate.)1
Gandhi was born in Porbandar, India, a small town surrounded on three sides by the Arabian Sea. The Gandhis’ home had been in the family for a hundred years, and his father, Karamchand “Kaba” Gandhi, was a diwan, or minister, to the peninsula’s prince. It was an influential role, and an 1876 promotion moved the family to Rajkot.
Monia, as the little boy with curly hair was known, was the youngest of Kaba’s six children by four wives. The first two wives had died; the third became ill and gave permission for him to take another. There was a huge age disparity between Karamchand and Gandhi’s mother, Putliba. He was over forty, while his new bride was still a child. Perhaps Putliba reached her teen years by the time she gave birth to the first of her four children in 1862, but records are fuzzy.
Gandhi, too, was a pre-teen when he married Kasturba in 1882. Most biographies state the marriage took place at 13, since that’s what his autobiography says, but his birthday seems like a good time to address that question, too. The answer depends on how you count. In the European tradition, we start counting a child’s age from zero; only after a full year they are one year old. Some Asian traditions, including 19th century India, counted inclusively. Gandhi was aware of the cultural differences, and in London, had no trouble explaining the marriage took place at 12.
A more troubling question was his current age. Gandhi was committed to truth, 21 years and eight months after his birth, but unwilling to make himself appear younger. Therefore, he answered honestly, “I am now about twenty-two.”2
Other than tradition, can you make an argument for NOT counting age inclusively?
The Gandhian Iceberg (Chris Moore-Backman, 2018) p. 16n
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Interview to “The Vegetarian”, June 13, 1891) p. 42