Voluntary Suffering for the sake of Love

55. In the application of Satyagraha, I discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of Truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one’s opponent but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For What appears to be Truth to the one may appears to be error to another. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication off Truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on one’s self. –YI, Nov.Tagore,6.

56. The Satyagrahi seeks to convert his opponent by sheer force of character and suffering. The purer he is and the more he suffers the quicker the progress. –YI, I8-9-24, 306.

57. The religion of ahimsa consists in allowing others the maximum of convenience at the maximum of inconvenience to us, even at the risk of life. –YI, 2-12-26, 422

58. It is no nonviolence if we merely love those that love us. It is nonviolence only when we love those that hate us. I know how difficult it is to follow this grand law of love. But are not all-great and good things difficult to do? Love of the hater is the most difficult of all. But by the grace of God even this most difficult thing becomes easy to accomplish if we want to do it. –(From a private letter, dated 31-12-34.)

59. I saw that nations like individuals could only be made through the agony of the Cross and in no other way. Joy comes not out of infliction of pain on others but out of pain voluntarily borne by oneself.—YI,31-12-31, 418.

60. Suffering, cheerfully endured, ceases to be suffering and is transmuted into an ineffable joy. –YI, 13-10-21. 327.

The Meaning of Non-resistance

133. Hitherto the word ‘revolution’ has been connected with violence and has as such been condemned by established authority. But the movement of Non-co-operation, if it may be considered a revolution, is not an armed revolt; it is an evolutionary revolution, it is a bloodless revolution. The movement is a revolution of thought, of spirit. Non-co-operation is a process of purification, and, as such it constitutes a revolution in one’s ideas. Its suppression, therefore, would amount to co-operation by coercion. Orders to kill the movement will be orders to destroy, or interfere with, the introduction of the spinning wheel, to prohibit the campaign of temperance, and an incitement, therefore, to violence. For any attempt to compel people by indirect methods to war foreign clothes, to patronize drink-shops would certainly exasperate them. But our success will be assured when we stand even this exasperation and incitement. We must not retort. Inaction on our part will kill Government madness. For violence flourishes on response, either by submission to the will of the violator, or by counter violence. My strong advice to every worker is to segregate this evil Government by strict non-co-operation, not even to talk or speak about it, but having recognized the evil, to cease to pay homage to it by co-operation.-YI, 30-3-21, 97.

134. Passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms. When I refuse to do a thing that is repugnant to my conscience, I use soul-force. For instance, the Government of the day has passed a law, which is applicable to me. I do not like it. If by using violence I force the Government to repeal the law, I am employing what may be termed body-force. If I do not obey the law and accept the penalty for is breach, I use soul-force. It involves sacrifice of self.

Everybody admits that sacrifice self is infinitely superior to sacrifice of other. Moreover, if this kind of force is used in a cause that is just, only the person using it suffers. He does not make others suffers for his mistakes. Men have before now done many things which were subsequently found to have been wrong. No man can claim that he is absolutely in the right or that a particular thing is wrong because h thinks so, but it is wrong for him so long as that is his deliberate judgment. It is therefore meet that he should not do that which he knows to be wrong, and suffer the consequence whatever it may be. This is the key to the use of soul-force. –IHR, 45.

135. The method of passive resistance adopted to combat the clearest and safest, because, if the cause is not true, it is the resisters, and they alone, who suffer. –Nat, 305.

136. That is the way of Satyagraha or the way of non-resistance top evil. It is the aseptic method in which the physician allows the poison to work itself out by setting in motion all the natural forces and letting them have full play. * -H, 9-7-38, I73.