In the Nov. 17 Citizen, Mark Chilton stated, “It was Satyagraha that brought an end to England’s imperialist rule in India, to Jim Crow in the Southern U.S. and to Apartheid in South Africa.†Truth values of those three claims range from questionable to false. Given stricter space constraints than Chilton’s, I must be unduly schematic; readers should do their own research.
Chilton’s account of South African history is astonishingly counterfactual. The initial tactics of the African National Congress were strongly influenced by the Gandhi-led struggle in Natal. Unfortunately, what worked somewhat against the British completely failed against the more determined, established Afrikaners: Increasingly efficient brutality suppressed the ANC’s principled, organized nonviolence over five decades. After the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, Nelson Mandela, et al founded the ANC’s military wing (Umkhonto we Sizwe), which, after three decades of armed struggle – sabotage, terrorism and regional war, not Satyagraha – forced the apartheid regime to sue for peace.
Gandhi returned to India in 1915, but the Indian National Congress achieved independence only after the Second World War. WWII not only drained British resources, it enabled the formation of the Indian National Army, which shattered Raj confidence in its native collaborators. (The INA’s leader – Subhas Chandra Bose, or Netaji – is ignored by the dominant U.S. narrative, but is well respected in India.) The INC did, however, provide the UK a more face-saving exit: Violent and nonviolent action can synergize.
The end of (de jure) U.S. apartheid was nowhere forced by civil rights campaigners; it was imposed by the national regime, driven by predominantly Northern elites. The charisma of King, et al clearly encouraged the superior power to impose change on Southern states. But many decades of nonviolent protest preceded King, and King’s tactics failed when confronting Northern segregation (in Chicago) and corporate power (with the Poor People’s Campaign). One should not ignore the historical context in which movements succeed (in this case, notably, the Cold War) and fail.
The difficulty of making change commands a decent respect for unpleasant realities. Nonviolence works sometimes, but often fails against those who, like Chilton, are sufficiently “prepared to use force to uphold the law.†Violence often fails, but clearly defeated (e.g.) African apartheid, European fascism and U.S. slavery. Chilton, a smart politician, is certainly telling folks here what we want to hear; too bad it just ain’t so.
Tom Roche
Carrboro