Why Civil Disobedience?

If our ultimate allegiance were only to the State and the ruling authorities and their laws, then there would never ever be the need for civil disobedience or rebellion of any kind.  

If on the other hand, a higher and nobler allegiance binds us, civil disobedience becomes essential whenever the State infringes upon and threatens that nobler and higher loyalty. 

The higher power and allegiance may derive from God Himself, or from the Bible, or Koran or the Bhagavad Gita or other holy scripture. Or  it may derive from an inherent sense of the exalted set of morals and values to which individuals and nations aspire - the voice of conscience.

As I wrote in my essay on freedom of conscience - since we are asked to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s,” it follows equally, that Caesar (the governing authorities) dare not take away or encroach upon the things that are God’s. 

When the conscience of a society is violated by its own Government or occupying power and the yoke of injustice and oppression lies heavy upon its neck, two divergent methods of resistance exist for the people.

Violent rebellion and uprisings against tyranny do produce results - and sometimes, as in the American Civil War or the Irish rebellion for self-rule, amidst stirring stories of sacrifice and courage, the tyranny is violently overthrown and the oppressed are able to be free again. This is not a common result. The disruptive, violent French Revolution replaced a monarchal tyranny with a republican one and historians now refer to the period immediately following the French Revolution as a “reign of terror.” Chairman Mao’s violent communist revolution was meant to address the generational oppression and sufferings of the Chinese peasantry, but resulted in the systematic murder of more than sixty million people.

Violent revolution most often produces a violent legacy, since the “city upon a hill” of high ideals must descend to the barbarian plains of violent conflict in order to fight this battle.  “Those who live by the sword,” as Jesus proclaimed, shall indeed, “die by the sword.”

The other and better way of resisting and overpowering tyranny is by the method of civil disobedience. It does not meet force with force, but authoritarian force instead is met with what Mahatma Gandhi called “soul force.” In its essence, it is completely peaceful, completely non-violent. But far from being “passive,” it is active and forceful, skillfully plunging its peaceful sword into the very heart of the tyranny, so that the “heart of stone” may be turned into the  “heart of flesh.” 

There are three different and essential conditions that must all be fulfilled in a successful civil disobedience movement.

First, it must be consistent and repeated with increasing masses of people across weeks, months and years. It is not enough for example, for a hundred thousand people to march once in a while across a central avenue in our cities asking for change - these are easily ignored by the authorities and by their arm of obedient media. 

Civil disobedience demands a persistent, tenacious and continuous struggle - marches and demonstrations every day or every week, with ever increasing numbers of people pressing upon the bulging sidewalks of our streets. As repression from the State increases, the masses of peaceful people do not back down, but keep coming back, stronger and more determined than ever to defeat the tyranny. 

As long as the conditions of tyranny exist, disobedience to the tyranny must continue. In civil disobedience, the actions of non-cooperation and non-compliance (“just say, ‘no’”) cannot be sporadic and merely address the situation at hand; instead, since they address the higher calling, the voice of conscience and the fundamental rights of mankind, they must continue until the tyranny itself is vanquished.

On an individual level, civil disobedience must be consistent, persistent, relentless. 

Second, the individual and collective actions of the civil disobedience must embarrass and inconvenience the governing tyranny. The occasional, even massive march of the people and their occasional gathering in prominent promenades with slogans and speeches do not accomplish this essential goal.

Gandhi’s “Satyagraha” civil disobedience movement on the other hand, repeatedly and spectacularly both inconvenienced and embarrassed the ruling British colonial government. The Dandi Salt March for example, which Gandhi organized as a protest to the British salt monopoly on Indian salt, lasted 24 days and his act of defiance was reported and carried across the world by the international press. The British empire was soon inundated by embarrassing international exposure and scrutiny.  

Gandhi’s call to boycott British textiles was born out of his experience with witnessing the brutal suppression and impoverishment of millions of traditional Indian textile manufacturers by British industry and the colonial British administration. Gandhi asked Indians to make bonfires of British textiles and to wear, traditional, “Khadi,” homespun clothes instead. The bonfires of British clothes were then seen around the world and the British textile manufacturers took notice when the boycott severely cut into their profits.

Earlier this year, the civil disobedience that constituted Canada’s peaceful Trucker’s Freedom Convoy unsettled, inconvenienced, embarrassed and disoriented the governing tyranny. Canada’s petty, tyrant prime minister responded by unleashing brutal police force against peaceful protesters and imprisoning the movement’s leaders. 

Provoking a response is a fundamental goal of any civil disobedience movement and must be built into its design. 

Finally and most importantly, any civil disobedience movement that hopes to succeed must be willing and ready for sacrifice.  Both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. spent long periods incarcerated in jail; both fell to the bullets of an assassin. Their followers willingly followed them to jail and were repeatedly beaten up and brutalized by the ruling authorities. Police dogs were deployed to attack peaceful civil rights protesters in America. And in Amritsar’s Jallianwala Bagh India, a British general in 1919 ordered his troops to open fire upon unarmed, peaceful protesters, resulting in the deaths of over 1,000 men, women and children. Following the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Gandhi intensified and expanded his civil disobedience movement and some British newspapers even turned for the first time, against the colonial British administration.

A few weeks ago, Tamara Lich, a prominent leader of Canada’s Truckers Freedom Convoy movement was jailed and denied bail, then pursued by a vindictive tyranny and jailed again. Every time she was jailed, the movement became stronger and the tyranny was diminished. In this modern day crucible of suffering, a Gandhian, but very Canadian movement of civil disobedience was born.

In its ability to use redemptive suffering to achieve its purposes, civil disobedience marries lofty means with its lofty goals in a powerful, lethal and productive union.

Civil disobedience also makes the basic assumption that the tyrant or those in his circle possess the ability to change course, even a very evil course - and embrace justice and freedom. Conscience is assumed to be still present in the opponent, although asleep, even comatose and moribund. The awakening of the conscience is thus a basic goal of civil disobedience - in individuals and in groups.

Another basic assumption in civil disobedience is that the conscience of an unjust and tyrannical regime may be awoken and recruited at various levels. If one level of tyranny responds to civil disobedience by a further and fearsome unleashing of State repression, the movement is able to nimbly and effectively shift its attention to other groups or individuals whose consciences may be in a different state of sleep - perhaps even on the threshold of awakening and joining the forces of peaceful protest and civil disobedience.  This progressive awakening of the conscience may then become unstoppable.

On Gandhi’s visit to England in 1931, he asked for a meeting with Winston Churchill, who as a rising Conservative politician had made his opposition to Gandhi and Indian independence a hallmark of his policy on colonialism and empire.  In 1930, Churchill had called Gandhi a “half naked fakir” and had said he found the “spectacle” of him meeting with the British Viceroy, “nauseating.” 

Churchill refused to meet with Gandhi - but Gandhi’s civil disobedience had already awoken the conscience of other parts of British society.  During this 1931 visit to England, British clergy, writers and intellectuals made a beeline to meet with Gandhi and he was openly cheered, loved and lionized by many of the ordinary British public. 

Later, when Churchill refused to send condolences to India upon Gandhi’s assassination in 1948, it did not matter. Mahatma Gandhi had already won independence for India - and he and his movement of civil disobedience belonged to the ages. 

There is also a tendency for successful civil disobedience movements to make friends out of former enemies - and in 2015, Mahatma Gandhi’s statue was erected very near Winston Churchill’s, opposite the British parliament!

Those who are understandably frustrated by the peaceful and non-violent methods of civil disobedience in the face of a fierce tyranny, should remember its glorious results.  Far from being a futile quest for freedom, it is a purposeful and magnificent project that makes a better world for us all. Those who bear the cross of civil disobedience may look upon the Cross of Jesus - and look forward in turn, to a victorious and triumphant Resurrection.