ADVERTISEMENTS:
The Gandhian Political Technologies or GPTs are organisational and institutional devices to gather and organise masses to fight non-violently for realising higher values of life. As such, they cannot be used by anyone for any purpose. Therefore, it is necessary to spell out essential conditions and constraints for using them.
Some of them are mentioned below:
(a) The leader must represent and reflect his closer connection with God, Truth, Brahma or the Almighty, and operationalise that connection in form of non-violence. Practice of non-violence displays apparent power of the Almighty in favour of the satyagrahi leader.”
(b) They can be used only for higher values and goals of life, such as, independence, justice, equality etc. Their goals and objectives are limited.
(c) Both the satyagrahis and their adversaries must cherish some common values. GPTs may not be used if the adversary totally rejects human values, basic tenets of democracy, and respect for human life. The government must be democratic, operating on rule of law and grant some fundamental rights to its people.
(d) There must be some Gandhi-like leader. It is not necessary that he practices only non-violence of the brave or pure non-violence. It is enough that he has faith in superiority of non-violence and is committed to observe non-violent means only. This would provide him the good ground of having good intentions only. In that case, no authority of the government would be able to implicate him or his followers in some criminal offence. For people, his image or impression that he is a man of non-violence is enough.
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(e) He lives like a saint or simple man. He must be aware of and be deft in using the media.” He must have arrangement of teaching the principles of satyagraha or his mission to his followers in some ashram like institution.’
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(f) The leader and his close followers must be ready to undergo all types of sufferings, from loss of property to sacrifice of life. Sufferings generate sympathy in masses. The more he suffers the more popular he is. Witnessing sufferings, millions of people are likely to come forward to make sacrifice for him, including participation in the movement.
(g) The leader must have masses with him. The number of his followers must always be many times larger than the number of persons with the adversary; otherwise non-cooperation or civil disobedience would have no effect and lose all meaning. Only the large number would prove that his movement is capable of invoking the probable potential power of the masses.
The number of his followers shows that he has the capacity to deprive the adversary of revenue, legitimacy and obedience. If their demands are not met, there can be, in case of imprisonment or exile of the leader, law and order problem, breakdown of administration, and even chaos and anarchy. The state must be made to feel that it can neglect probable potential power of the people only at its own peril. The adversary could be compelled to realise that his survival depends upon cooperation of the people at large.
(h) GPTs would prove effective and successful only when they are used in favourable and demanding environment. They should be resorted to when all other individual, legal, political and administrative avenues are exhausted. There must be a large number of people willing to act upon the directives of a Gandhi-like leader.