Seventy-five years after being assassinated, Mohandas Gandhi survives in nonviolent resistance movements, which defend social justice and challenge power, both in democracies and dictatorships.
Iranian women who remove their headscarves and environmental activists who soil Van Gogh's masterpieces with food are heirs to the movement Gandhi started in the 1930s against British rule of India.
The big difference between one and the other is the environment in which they present their complaints. Hundreds of Iranian women and men have been killed and thousands have been detained since the start of the protests in September. At least two have been hanged.
Environmentalists calling for climate justice face lawsuits that will result in a fine. The treatment that a society gives to citizens who 'disobey' determines its maturity, as explained by the American political scientist Gene Sharp.
Nonviolence is the basic technique of civil disobedience, the last-resort protest that citizens launch before the deaf ears of power. It is a form of justified democratic opposition to obtain political and social changes.
The philosopher Jürgen Habermas argued that nonviolence is "a crucial element in any mature democracy" and Gene Sharp defined it as "the practice that people use to reject passivity and submission to power."
The first ideologue of nonviolence was David Thoureau in 1849 and he linked it to civil disobedience. The British suffragettes, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, turned to her in 1903 to demand electoral equality. They were the first to use a strategy that the political scientist John Rawls defined in 1971 as a non-violent and public political act by which social norms are temporarily suspended.
In 1930, Gandhi walked from his spiritual retreat in Ahmedabad (Gujerat) to Dandi, on the coast of the Arabian Sea, a journey of almost 400 kilometers to challenge British power that restricted the production and sale of salt. The viceroy ended up giving in and recognizing the Indians' right to collect their own salt. That march opened the way to the independence of India.
His example has traveled the world ever since.
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a black activist, refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and thus began the fight for civil rights led by Martin Luther King and which continues today. , transformed, in movements like Black Lives Matters, against police violence.
Mohandas Gandhi connects with Martin Luther King, who, in turn, connects with Nelson Madela, leader of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and the chain has continued to add links.
American boxing champion Mohamed Ali was stripped of his titles and sentenced to five years in prison for refusing to fight in Vietnam. He said that this war was against his ethical and religious principles.
The supremacy of the Russian Orthodox Church led the punk and feminist group Pussy Riot to occupy the Church of Christ the Savior in Moscow in 2012, where they exhibited their rejection of Patriarch Cyril and President Putin. In 2018 they occupied several soccer fields during the World Cup in Russia, but since then the repression has been against all of them.
The risk of exercising civil disobedience in a dictatorship means running a serious risk. Dissidents are imprisoned, tortured and, in several countries, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, also executed. Last year, there were at least 147 executions, the vast majority by opponents, according to the organization Reprieve.
Protest, in many of these countries, can be reduced to the minimalist act of holding up a blank sheet of paper. It has happened in Russia against the war in Ukraine and also in China, where thousands and thousands of citizens took to the streets at the end of last year to demand an end to the zero covid policy that had caused so much social and economic havoc.
Examples of civil disobedience and non-violence include illegal demonstrations, the occupation of public buildings, the blocking of roads and railways, the occupation of airports and the leaking of sensitive documents.
Wikileaks would be an example of this way of doing politics and the technological consultant Edward Snowden, another.
Snowden was working for the US National Security Agency when in 2013 he leaked to the international press documents proving a secret global spy program that included several allied leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Snowden, persecuted by American justice, had to go into exile in Russia. President Putin granted him Russian citizenship last September.
Gandhi was on the streets of Khartoum in 2019 inspiring the thousands of people who risked their lives - and many lost it - to overthrow the dictator Omar al Bashir. It was a peaceful revolt, organized as a result of a massacre of dissidents, which was successful but not continued. The music and the songs finished off the satrap, but they did not prevent a military coup two years later.
Civil disobedience fails as much or more than it succeeds. The Pussy Riots know this very well. The more than 147 Saudis executed last year, too.
Even the feminist group Femen, which uses the female torso as a canvas for slogans against patriarchy and oligarchic corruption, knows that the effect of actions causes a great initial impact, but fades over time. Action requires consistency.
Femen was born in Ukraine in 2008. It was founded by the economist Anna Hutsol in a bar in Kyiv. She wanted her country to be a prominent place for any woman. The movement spread across Europe and found societies eager to put an end to patriarchy and violence against women, as demonstrated by the latest action against femicides, held last week in Madrid.
The public good before one's own good defines civil disobedience and nonviolence. This is how Gandhi won and this is how Iranian women and all the people who make themselves heard against the established power intend to win, even if it is at the cost of their lives.
