The media’s emphasis on the five year anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon blatantly reveals our cultural penchant for the short-term. I am not speaking of the grief of those who lost family members because that pain is of a different order than the rest of us who look on and talk about the event as if it is the lynchpin upon which the living of this day turns.
What if, instead of spending the day in various ceremonies of remembrance and mourning, we honored and celebrated the beginning of one of the most successful, powerful, and inspirational peace movements of all time? Today, September 11, 2006, is the 100th anniversary of satyagraha: the pursuit of truth initiated by Mahatma Gandhi in Johannesburg, South Africa, thereby launching the first modern movement of nonviolent resistance. An interview with Gandhi’s grandson was broadcast on Democracy Now on September 8th (the highlighted text above takes you to written transcript and links to audio).
Puru asks, “are we anywhere close to the truth?” A trailer produced by Arun Gandhi about his grandfather’s work introduces some of the resources available from the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence. This cartoon depicts “the elephant” of Gandhi’s Passive Resistance Movement as a barrier in the path of the British which they could not move. Arun Gandhi argues that satyagraha is hardly “passive”.
I agree.
It takes tremendous effort to turn away from habitual resistances, the mirroring of other/opposing habitual resistances. Gandhi found another way. We must do the same.