Under pressure (4/6)
March 14, 2024
(The previous installments can be read here: part one, part two, part three)
By March 14, 1918, the resolve of the striking mill workers of Ahmedabad, India was beginning to crumble under economic pressure. Gandhi and his companions had developed a routine of visiting their homes to offer encouragement and advice. In the afternoon, Anasuya Sarabhai, the sister of one of the mill owners, would drive Gandhi to the meetings in her automobile,1 where he spoke on the theme of the day’s leaflet.
It's worth remembering the global context for this labor struggle. World War One was still staggering on, and the Russian revolution was upending social dynamics. Gandhi reminded the workers to keep their pledge to hold out for a 35% raise, speculating on the pride their children would feel at their success. But some workers were accepting the owner’s 20% offer—insufficient to meet their needs—and going back anyway.
Ambalal Sarabhai, the mill owner, wrote Gandhi a letter accusing him of pressuring the workers to stop people from entering the factories. Gandhi was offended at the idea he was endorsing physical threats; like Cesar Chavez five decades later, nonviolence was essential to building a union.
So much pressure going on! The handful of mill owners were using economic pressure against 10,000 mill workers; they were trying to do the same in reverse with their strike. Gandhi, however, saw their efforts as applying moral pressure against the owners, trying to persuade them through voluntary suffering—this was satyagraha, after all.
Gandhi’s next leaflet muddied the waters further. If individuals wanted to return to work, that was their choice. The strikers should “keep away from the mills, and look for opportunities to work elsewhere.”2 So, no picket lines—social pressure—that would discourage mill-hands from returning.
Economic pressure, physical force or threats of it, social pressure, and moral persuasion; these can all be ways of getting a person to do something they otherwise wouldn’t. I agree with Gandhi that the best is persuasion, converting them to a just cause. But I also recognize that it can be difficult to tweeze out the precise proportions of pressure that allow for labeling the entire cocktail as “moral.”
Gandhi received some discouraging news on March 14th. As his nephew had visited the homes of striking workers, 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.”
His nephew’s report was still echoing in Gandhi’s mind as he arrived, in Anasuya’s car, at the meeting the next day.
Have you ever discovered that someone had a lower opinion of you than what you presumed?
Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (Erikson, 1969) p. 331
Ibid, p. 350