Gandhi's tactic of non-violence is often foolishly credited with the peaceful liberation of India. This claim would be more impressive if the British Empire hadn't expired but was still around with a large retinue of colonies, instead of having disposed of its colonies, many around the same time as India. And considering the bloodshed of Partition, despite Gandhi's best attempts at appeasing Muslims it was hardly peaceful. Yet despite the hypocrisies that have dotted Gandhi's life, his ideas continue to have a powerful hold on the Western imagination.

By Samantha on 2022 04 25

Actually Gandhi's ideas did work against the British, both in Africa and India.

But there are two problems: First, they are misunderstood, and second, they cannot be applied to all people.

Let's talk about the first. This is not to be confused with the "peaceful protesting" that the left loves to claim. Rather this is a determined sort of nonviolence. The equivalent would be if someone knocks you down with a blunt weapon, and you keep getting up over and over again. This is neither soft, nor is it anything like the fake peace of liberals. A person applying it must know that what they do is right rather than trying to impose their will on others. If there is any element of violence, they will fail.

Second, this cannot be applied to all people. I was watching One Piece this week, and there are a group of principled samurais fighting very unscrupulous people. They are willing to be boiled in oil, but their opponents are not willing to keep even the most basic promises. You see, the British were decent people. They had deluded themselves into believing India was theirs and that it couldn't be ruled by the natives. But they were not thugs or villains. So seeing someone resist without the use of any force was enough to unsettle them and make them lose their nerve. On the other hand, Muslims believe that people who don't fight back are fools and weak, and such tactics simply embolden them toward more aggression.

Gandhi wasn't a bad person, and he wasn't wrong to use this approach against the British. The British would rationalize violence as proof that India wasn't able to self-govern. His mistake was thinking that Muslims were equally civilized.

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