Wondering about Gandhi

In 1962 when the military government took power there was and has
continued to be armed resistance amongst the ethnic groups in the
border regions. They remain battling in the longest running civil war
along the border region.

The Burmans however have offered a form of resistance symbolised by
Aung San Suu Kyi's stance of non-violence. Her commitment to
non-violence along with the influence of Buddhism in the country (and
perhaps the difficulty in getting hold of weapons in a country where
the state maintains a strict monopoly on arms) has meant opposition
amongst the Burman has been largely non-violent.

In September last year tens of thousands of monks and ordinary marched
on the streets of the cities of Myanmar asking for change. They
chanted Buddhist prayers. They held banners. Two weeks went by and the
protests grew. People were calling it the saffron revolution. Photos
of the saffron robes of the monks flooded the internet.

And then, in a sickening repetition of the 1988 protests, the military
clamped down. They raided the monasteries and shot the protestors. The
internet line was cut.

In interviews certain monks who remained started asking for AK47's.

I have always fundamentally believed that violence begets violence –
and that in order to train ourselves for war we risk becoming the
thing that we opposed and overthrew.

This country makes me question the lines between violence and
non-violence and peace and war. If a government has no qualms about
shooting its own people – how then does one oppose it? When should we
fight war in the name of peace?

Or as a friend put it to me today, "Would you play a harp to a pig? If
you don't like what a pig is doing you kick it – you don't reason with
it – "

Non-Violence

Gandhi 1920 – 46

1. "It is better to die helpless and unarmed and as victims rather
than as tyrants."
2. "The purer the suffering, the greater is the progress."
3. "It may be that in the transition state we may make mistakes; there
may be avoidable suffering. These things are preferable to national
emasculation."
4. "We must refuse to wait for the wrong to be righted till the
wrong-doer has been roused to a sense of his iniquity"
5. "One must scrupulously avoid the temptation of a desire for results."

Violence

Willian T. Vollman in Rising Up and Rising Down
- What if the suffering is not pure?
- What if I want results?

"If the violence is purely opportunistic, has no intellectual
expedient or ideological basis , then, it seems to me non-resistance
is meaningless, unless the moral commitment of the nonresister makes
up for the lack of moral commitment of the assailant."

"In short, satyagrapha is correct only if the sacrifice is FOR
something, and only if the oppressor will eventually be moved to cease
aggression should be sacrifice become of sufficient magnitude. If one
or both of these conditions remains unmet, then counter-violence is
justified."