Civil Disobedience - Dharampal

Dharampal. "Civil Disobedience"

"It must also be admitted that non-cooperation and civil disobedience, like everything else, do not solve everything. There are social and political situations when they may not at all be applicable.

As said earlier, to be successful non-cooperation and civil disobedience seem to require a certain commonality of values between the opposed parties. Such parties must share, even if temporarily, certain common socio-political or religious values. This however does not seem to happen in all situations. The late eighteenth and nineteenth century India provides one such instance when the rulers and the ruled had little in common. Similar situations seem to have obtained when most of Europe faced Hitler’s power, or Northern India faced Timur centuries ago.

It was due to Mahatma Gandhi’s genius, indomitable courage and unmatched organisational capacity that he could visualise and make effective use of instrumentalities (originally fashioned for internal situations), to deal with an alien power. Circumstances (the British having become relatively mellowed by the early twentieth century being one such), and much more his personality, enabled him to make the British see at least at certain moments, the rightness and justice of the Indian stand."