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A Question for the Day
Paul Marks argues that what’s needed in Burma (Myanmar) is some good-old fashioned armed revolt. Andrew Sullivan excerpts the money quote. As someone who has studied (with awe and respect) America’s birthing revolution, I’m hard-pressed to disagree with Marks, though his argument makes me wonder, more than ever, exactly what it was that made Gandhi’s unarmed resistance so remarkably powerful and effective. Why is it so difficult to replicate Gandhi’s example elsewhere?
Cross-posted at Central Sanity.
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5 Responses to “A Question for the Day”
Well to be fair to Gandhi, his vision was more about peace for mankind and didn’t guarantee that it would work to save any particular individual, group or country.
Also in practice it was about nearly continuous unarmed resistance for decades eventually involving hundreds of thousands of people.
It also didn’t hurt that Britain wanted good production out of India and their primary concern was getting them to work. If they were just interested in domination and slaughtered everyone who knows what would have happened.
Pete, Gandhi’s success was just as much a function of the British being British and the historical time frame in which he found himself. This is not to minimize his non-violent accomplishments, but I fear there will be no such luck with the Myanmar junta.
Despite being imperialists, the British were empiricists, not just ideologists.
Gandhi was, over a long period of time, able to show them where they did not live up to their own ideals.
“I’m hard-pressed to disagree with Marks, though his argument makes me wonder, more than ever, exactly what it was that made Gandhi’s unarmed resistance so remarkably powerful and effective.”
Whats been said above is true, but keep in mind that the Indians outnumbered the british 3000 to 1. Gandhi’s real acheivement was not in “Freeing” the Indians, but in preventing the mass slaughter of the 100,000 or so British that were there. This same situation doesn’t exist in Burma.
A closer parallel would be the velvet revolution or orange one in Eastern Europe. Native dictatorial regimes being brought down by a mass refusal to participate any longer. I agree with an earlier post by Clarissa that one key to a real change is to give faces to the everyday soldiers who carry out the beatings and murder of monks. When they are too ashamed to visit their family because everyone knows them as killers of holy men, perhaps the junta’s power will weaken.