Suggested Reading Sequence and Assignments for Chapter 5—“Nonviolence: A
Weapon of Peace?”
Week 1:
Mahatma Gandhi, “The Theory and Practice of Passive Resistance” 445-47
“Meaning of Satyagraha” 447-49
“Religion of Nonviolence” 449-51
“The Law of Suffering” 451-53
“The Doctrine of the Sword I” 453-56
“The Doctrine of the Sword II” 456-59
Week 2:
Leo Tolstoy, “Letter to Gandhi” 464-66
Rabindranath Tagore, “Letter to Gandhi and Accompanying Poems” 466-67
Jawaharlal Nehru, “All-India Radio Speech following the Assassination of Gandhi” 46769
(Note: In addition, students should be encouraged to read, view, and think about all items
in the Context section).
Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail” 472-86
(It is suggested that the teacher and students begin discussing this text towards the end of
Week 2 and continue into Week 3).
Week 3:
Continue with and complete King; visual materials on King
Petra Kelly, “Nonviolent Social Defense” 497-504
Week 4:
Susanne Kappeler, “Resistance and the Will to Resistance” 505-10
(The sub-committee recommends a broad discussion of Kappeler and a more detailed
discussion of Nagler in Week 4).
Michael Nagler, “Nonviolence and Peacemaking Today” 512-23
Assignment 1: Evaluation (4-6 pages)
Mahatma Gandhi foregrounds the need for “suffering,” in the context of India’s
freedom struggle, in several pieces in our text. In “The Doctrine of the Sword I,” for
instance, he says, “Nonviolence in its dynamic condition means conscious suffering. It
does not mean meek submission to the will of the evil doer, but it means the pitting of
one’s whole soul against the will of the tyrant” (455). Other pieces in the “Context”
section of this chapter address the validity of suffering and “failure.” In “Letter to Gandhi
and Accompanying Poems,” Rabindranath Tagore notes, for instance, “We must know
that moral conquest does not insist on success, that failure does not deprive it of its own
dignity and worth” (466).
Evaluate carefully Gandhi’s thoughts on violence, brute force, conquest,
resistance, and suffering in his various pieces included in this chapter. Weigh them
against similar concepts in other selections such as “The Sermon on the Mount, 5.38-39,”
Leo Tolstoy’s letter, or Tagore’s letter and poems. You may also draw on ideas from later
essays in this chapter as appropriate to your discussion. How effective do you think such
beliefs, on suffering and nonviolence, would be if put into practice in a contemporary
world in which violence and war often seem to be the order of the day? In other words, is
passive resistance a feasible option?
Research and address two instances in which native peoples were subjected to
violence, massacre, and brutalization by a force that was materially more “empowered.”
You could use print or web sources as long as you document these carefully. Some
possibilities for research would be the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre (1919), the Tiananmen
Square Massacre (1989), the Bosnia Genocide (1992-95), or the Rwandan Genocide
(1994). You can choose to research any political incident(s) that would be suitable for
your discussion.
What are your views on “suffering” and “failure” in the wake of such research?
Consider the enormity of the costs, the price paid. Gandhi says, “he is the true warrior
who does not die killing but who has mastered the mantra of living by dying” (458). Do
nonviolent passive resistance and “the supremacy of soul-force” (Gandhi 459) seem to be
worthwhile tools to use in political contexts such as the ones you have researched?
Assignment 2: Argument (4-6 pages)
In his discussion of just and unjust laws in “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin
Luther King Jr. says, “To use the words of Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher,
segregation substitutes an ‘I-it’ relationship for the ‘I-thou’ relationship, and ends up
relegating persons to the status of things . . . . Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation.
Isn’t segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, an expression of his
awful estrangement . . . ?” (477)
Other essays in this chapter address horrific historical events which have resulted
because of issues related to some form of separation: the separation of “matter from
energy” such as in the splitting of the atom; the separation and repression of a part of the
self that is projected on to another, as Susan Griffin argues was the case with Adolf Hitler
(see Griffin’s “Ideologies of Madness,” especially pages 489-92, although we have not
discussed this piece in class).
Do you think that the separation of self from an other has been the major reason
for periods of calamity or historical oppression? Write an essay arguing for or against the
fact that this kind of “separation” or “estrangement” (King 477), between individuals (or
such a mentality of separation in place in a society or culture), in and of itself is enough
to cause suffering for large numbers of people. Do other forces need to be at work:
governments, legal systems, educational systems, propaganda?
A total of four sources are required for this paper. You will need to use King’s
“Letter from Birmingham Jail” as one of your textual sources. Use any one other essay
from this chapter to argue your points. You can either write entirely about the African
American struggle for civil rights in the period King addresses (mid-nineteen fifties to
early sixties) or use that as a base for your argument and discuss one other historical
period or incident in which people were subjected to suffering and death (for example,
Hitler’s Third Reich; September 11th, 2001 in the United States). Find and use two
additional sources, such as newspaper or magazine articles (print or online), to develop
your argument.
You will need to have at least one paragraph in which you present the opposing
point of view. You may use one or two of your sources to address this point of view. Of
course, overall and eventually, you should show how your argument has more validity.
Assignment 3: Synthesis (6-8 pages)
A number of essays in the “Contemporary Conversation” section of this chapter
seem to call for a perspective that focuses on peace, preserving life, and world-wide
humanitarian efforts rather than military armament, war, and destruction. In “Nonviolent
Social Defense,” Petra Kelly notes, “For the cost of just one jet fighter, 3 million children
could be inoculated against major childhood diseases. The cost of one nuclear weapons
test could provide enough money to give 80,000 Third World villages access to safe
water through the installation of hand pumps” (502). And in “Nonviolence and
Peacemaking Today,” Michael Nagler, making a slightly different point, says of Gandhi’s
volunteers in 1913, “Each Satyagrahi was a ‘soldier’ of peace . . . . It was just a metaphor,
of course, but from this metaphor grew, decades after Gandhi’s assassination, the
worldwide movement of unarmed volunteers that has today become a silent presence in
Central Amereica, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, the Caucasus, Bosnia, and elsewhere”
(518). Further on in his essay, Nagler speaks of the success of these groups in preserving
life and providing much-needed community service in “regimes otherwise paralyzed by
oppressive terror” (520).
Write an essay taking a position for or against this shift in perspective that authors
such as Kelly and Nagler seem to recommend. Is it realistic to think that, even over time,
nations of the world can re-direct diplomatic policy about war, war effort and armament,
expenditure related to war into peace efforts and activities and expenditure aimed at
helping the inhabitants of countries less economically privileged? How prudent do you
think such re-channeling might be in light of the intensification of terrorist activity say in
the last ten years? Might such shifts in vision jeopardize national defense?
Use at least three essays from this chapter (such as by Gandhi, King, Griffin,
Kelly, Kappeler, or Nagler) whether they go with or contradict your argumentative
position. In either case, since this is your synthesis paper, show clearly how and why the
pieces support or go against your position. Additionally, find and use two scholarly
sources that relate to points you are developing. Ideally, at least one of these sources (if
not both) should help substantiate your position. You will need to address (and refute),
even if briefly, the opposing point of view, so one of the scholarly sources can be used to
show the validity of that position.
Some areas you could focus on as you research sources: the role of international
nongovernmental organizations in peacekeeping efforts; work done globally by
individuals or groups interested in humanitarian issues such as medical aid and education;
costs of armament and war; effectiveness of recent wars as regards national defense or
international security.