Unravelling the myth of Gandhian non-violence: Why did Gandhi connect his 
principle of satyāgraha with the “Hindu” notion of ahiṃsā?

Hazama, Eijiro

doi:10.1017/S1479244322000014

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Unravelling the myth of Gandhian non-violence: Why did Gandhi connect his principle of satyāgraha with the “Hindu” notion of ahiṃsā?

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Hazama, Eijiro
Religious Diversity, MPI for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Max Planck Society;

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https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-intellectual-history/article/unravelling-the-myth-of-gandhian-nonviolence-why-did-gandhi-connect-his-principle-of-satyagraha-with-the-hindu-notion-of-ahimsa/AE0B11F66A8048CD92587964BA110C53
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Citation

Hazama, E. (2022). Unravelling the myth of Gandhian non-violence: Why did Gandhi connect his principle of satyāgraha with the “Hindu” notion of ahiṃsā? Modern Intellectual History, First View. doi:10.1017/S1479244322000014.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000A-B21C-E

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to unearth the genealogy of M. K. Gandhi's “non-violence,” the cardinal principle of satyāgraha. Previous works considered that Gandhi's concept of non-violence was essentially derived from the “ancient” Hindu–Jain precept of ahiṃsā (non-killing) common in the subcontinent. On the contrary, I will, by examining Gandhi's primary texts in Gujarati, Hindi, and English, demonstrate the following: (1) during Gandhi's sojourn in South Africa (1893–1914) where he led his first satyāgraha campaign, he never associated the term ahiṃsā with satyāgraha; (2) his satyāgraha campaign was initially explained with the trans-religious and cosmopolitan concepts of Tolstoy and the nirguṇ bhaktas; (3) Gandhi first began to use the term ahiṃsā as a nationalist slogan linked with satyāgraha immediately after his return to India in 1915; (4) the English translation of ahiṃsā as “non-violence” was eventually coined by Gandhi after 1919 during his all-India satyāgraha campaign.