David Cortright is the author, most recently, of Gandhi and Beyond: Nonviolence for an Age of Terrorism (Paradigm, 2006), and of the recently reissued Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War (Haymarket, 2005).
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My commitment to peace and Gandhian nonviolence began when I was drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War. As I learned about war and militarism firsthand, I experienced what theologian John Howard Yoder later told me was a crisis of conscience.
I came to see the war as unjust and immoral and began to speak out for peace as part of the GI movement, openly opposing the war while on active duty. I recognized after discussions with antiwar colleagues and reading more about US policy that the Vietnam War was part of a larger system of militarism and nuclear insanity that I also had to oppose.
Thus began a lifelong commitment to peace that has led most recently to my current position as professor of peace studies at the Kroc Institute at the University of Notre Dame.
My decision to write Gandhi and Beyond was a response to the persistent and often difficult questions of students. Nonviolence is nice in theory, but is it really practical? Are the beliefs and principles of Gandhi and King still relevant in a world gripped by the fear of terrorism? Will nonviolence work against adversaries who are seemingly without conscience and who ruthlessly attack civilians, as the Nazis did? As I grappled with these questions, I found a deeper meaning in nonviolence. I recognized that the Gandhian method at its core is a search for truth. Nonviolence is much more than a method of social action. It is a philosophy of life, a radically different way of being and doing. An inquiry into nonviolent social change became for me a quest for truth and the meaning of life.
I found it difficult to study Gandhi. My attempts to comprehend his message were impeded by the man himself. Every time I tried to approach Gandhi I found myself intimidated and overwhelmed not only by the scale of his accomplishments but also by his austerity and eccentricities. I was turned off by his extreme asceticism and his bizarre and offensive views toward women and sexuality. When I attempted to read his autobiography, My Experiments in Truth, I recoiled at his puritanical preachments and guilt-ridden battles against sexual “temptation.”
Gandhi practiced celibacy, I knew, but he seemed to want everyone else to do the same. The students in my class asked pointed and skeptical questions about Gandhi’s practice in his later years of sleeping naked next to young women in order to test his commitment to celibacy. All of these challenges forced me to address Gandhi’s limitations on gender issues. The chapter on these issues in the book, “Gender Matters,” attempts to incorporate the insights of pacifist feminists.
The most important insights I take from Gandhi are the commitment to action and the practicality of the method of nonviolent mass action. He developed core principles to guide this method: 1) a commitment to truth and the meticulous collection of facts, 2) persuasion and dialogue with the adversary, 3) a willingness to sacrifice and suffer, and 4) the use of direct action and mass non-cooperation. Dr. King developed a similar typology of the four steps in every nonviolent campaign in his incomparable Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
Through the creative application of these principles, Gandhi’s successors have achieved great advances for justice in numerous settings around the world. As I learned these core concepts, I realized that they apply to some of my own experiences in the GI movement, especially the willingness to sacrifice. When fellow soldiers and I made the decision to speak out against the war, we knew there would be a price to pay. We were willing to take that risk, however, because we were so outraged by the war and simply could not continue business as usual.
We were prepared to make sacrifices, but we were also committed to continuing the struggle and standing up for truth, regardless of the consequences. There is no better formula for achieving social justice and peace. It is the ideal to which I have tried to remain committed through the years, in my writing and activist commitments. I’m trying to follow in the footsteps of Gandhi, to take the long march with him to the sea.