Non violence practitioner Mohandas Gandhi born 152 years ago on October 2nd

"Civil disobedience is the assertion of a right which law should give but which it denies." - Mohandas Gandhi 

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi born on October 2, 1869

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi born on October 2, 1869 Mohandas Gandhi was born 152 years ago today and his legacy is still passionately debated in India.  The Economic Times, based in India, today published an editorial titled "Continuing relevance of Mohandas Gandhi" that highlights the challenges to Gandhian nonviolence today in his home country. 

“Gandhi is remembered for Ahimsa, non-violence. However, Gandhi’s Ahimsa was not passive acceptance of violence, but its active resistance by the force of moral purpose and mobilization of public opinion. Today, we have elected representatives who venerate Gandhi’s assassin, but few supporters who follow his example of opposing violence.”

This debate is not limited to India. The September 29, 2019 story in NPR "Gandhi Is 'An Object Of Intense Debate': A Biographer Reflects On The Indian Leader" contrasts the debate around Gandhi with how the Chinese don't debate Mao Zedong, or the Vietnamese don't debate Ho Chi Minh or the Pakistanis don't debate Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Perhaps part of the reason for the lack of debate is that China and Vietnam are totalitarian dictatorships where such debate is forbidden, and Pakistan has been divided between periods of democratic and military rule in questioning the founder could prove unhealthy. India on the other hand has been a democracy through out its period of independence.

Gandhi liberated an entire subcontinent from imperial rule without firing a shot. The United Nations has designated his birthday, October 2nd, as the International Day of Nonviolence. Nevertheless,  he did not win the Nobel Peace Prize and is recognized by the Nobel Committee as the "Missing Laureate."

In 2009 the United Nations has released a one-dollar postal stamp of Mohandas Gandhi to commemorate his 140th birth anniversary. The stamp was designed by Miami-based artist Ferdie Pacheco.

He wasn't a rich man. He never held formal political office. He wasn't a saint or divine figure. He was just a man. An attorney who had taken a vow of poverty and celibacy. His full name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.  

Gandhi was transformed into a principled strategic non-violent activist in South Africa at the end of the 19th century struggling against racist laws and policies of the colonial authorities. An important theoretical result of the South African campaign was the development of Satyagraha. Gandhi announced on September 11, 1906 in his newspaper Indian Opinion a contest to submit names to describe this movement. The final name was the fusion of two words as explained by Gandhi: “Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force…the Force which is born of Truth and love or nonviolence.”

He was the antithesis of Mao Zedong who took power and killed tens of millions to impose his political ideology on the Chinese. Marxist-Leninists view "truth" as something malleable and in the service of achieving power. 

Gandhi's explicit rejection of Marxist class struggle as hateful, his embrace of truth and love,
 and his critique that socialists and communists did nothing to solve problems are powerful:

The socialists and communists say, they can do nothing to bring about economic equality today. They will just carry on propaganda in its favor and to that end they believe in generating and accentuating hatred. They say, when they get control over the State, they will enforce equality. Under my plan the State will be there to carry out the will of the people, not to dictate to them or force them to do its will. I shall bring about economic equality through non-violence, by converting people to my point of view by harnessing the forces of love as against hatred. I will not wait till I have converted the whole society to my view but will straight away make a beginning with myself. It goes without saying that I cannot hope to bring about economic equality of my conception, if I am the owner of fifty motor-cars or even of ten bighas of land. For that I have to reduce myself to the level of the poorest of the poor.

Gandhi's description of the nature of a regime that sought to use violence to crush capitalism offers an excellent description of what has taken place in Marxist Leninist states that promised paradise but delivered the opposite:

It is my firm conviction that if the State suppressed capitalism by violence, it will be caught in the coils of violence itself, and will fail to develop non-violence at any time. The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence. [...] It can be easily demonstrated that destruction of the capitalist must mean destruction in the end of the worker and as no human being is so bad as to be beyond redemption, no human being is so perfect as to warrant his destroying him whom he wrongly considers to be wholly evil.

This explains in large part the hostility from communists to Mohandas Gandhi's social political agenda, and many on the Left who share the Marxist belief in class struggle. However the legacies between those who advocate class struggle and those who advocate nonviolent resistance could not be more stark.

The heirs of Mao Zedong, who were inspired by his violent revolutionary tradition generated great suffering: Ernesto "Che"Guevara in Cuba,  the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Black Panther Party in the United States and Shining Path guerillas in Peru are but just four of many bloody examples.

Contrast these with the heirs of Mohandas Gandhi, who were inspired by his non-violent resistance to injustice and the good they achieved:  Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States,  Steve Biko in South Africa, Abdul Ghaffar Khan in Pakistan, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas in Cuba, Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia, Lech Walesa in Poland, and Corazon Aquino in the Philippines are but just seven of many inspirational examples.

Mohandas Gandhi changed political protests and empowered millions with Satyagraha and the use of strategic nonviolence to battle powerful and violent regimes and great injustices in an effective manner that frustrates those who want to preserve or change the status quo using violence.

Today, October 2nd at 4:00pm the Gandhi Memorial Center, Washington, DC will hold an observance of the 152nd birth anniversary of Mohandas K. Gandhi with dance invocation, special remarks, and devotional music.

International Day of Non-Violence 2021: Raising awareness with Satyagraha

 We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it. - Mohandas Gandhi

Mohandas Gandhi

October 2nd has been recognized by the United Nations as the International Day of Non-Violence. This date was selected to reflect on this powerful idea, because on October 2, 1869 Mohandas Gandhi was born in India.  The United Nations describes Gandhi as the "leader of the Indian independence movement and pioneer of the philosophy and strategy of non-violence." 

On September 11, 1906 in South Africa, unhappy with the term passive resistance to describe nonviolence he convened a contest that led to a new word "Satyagraha" taken from Sanskrit words that Gandhi described as follows: "Truth (Satya) [that] implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force."

Saturday, October 2nd is the day to share the message of nonviolence through education and awareness. It is a powerful idea that recognizes the dignity and power inherent in each individual, while at the same time recognizing that harnessing force through disciplined, strategic and non-violent action magnifies the power of the individual and when working in concert with others can become an unstoppable force for positive change. The life and example of Congressman John Lewis, who passed away in 2020, is an example of this.

Critics often cite that both Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated, and that this demonstrates the failure of their nonviolent philosophy, but they fail to look at what they accomplished in the wider societies they inhabited, and their respective legacies decades later. Both changed their respective countries. Gandhi achieved Indian independence, and King ended official segregation, empowered African Americans with their full voting rights, and achieved much more.

Gene Sharp who also taught generations of activists that there was an alternative to bloody conflict and that it was non-violent armed conflict. He demonstrated, as both Gandhi and King understood and practiced, that there was nothing passive about nonviolent resistance and that it also required strategy to increase the odds of success in a struggle. In 1990 at the National Conference on Nonviolent Sanctions and Defense in Boston, Gene Sharp succinctly outlined his argument.

"I say nonviolent struggle is armed struggle. And we have to take back that term from those advocates of violence who seek to justify with pretty words that kind of combat. Only with this type of struggle one fights with psychological weapons, social weapons, economic weapons and political weapons. And that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence."

This idea has extended to many places, and cultures around the world, but it is co-existing in conflict with ideologies like Marxism-Leninism that are based in class struggle, revenge redefined as justice, and violence elevated as a superior tool of struggle. Both Gandhi and King understood this latter approach to be profoundly counterproductive. 

Michael Nagler, a long time peace scholar, presents this idea as follows: Nonviolence sometimes “works” and always works, while by contrast, Violence sometimes “works” and never works.  Nagler offers a more detailed explanation.

The exercise of violence always has a destructive effect on human relationships even when, as sometimes happens, it accomplishes some short-term goal. The exercise of nonviolence, or Satyagraha, always brings people closer. This explains why Gandhi, after fifty years of experimentation in every walk of life, could declare that he “knew of no single case in which it had failed.” Where it seemed to fail he concluded that he or the other satyagrahis had in some way failed to live up to its steep challenge.  Taking the long view, he was able to declare that “There is no such thing as defeat in non-violence. The end of violence is surest defeat.”

 Below are several videos that introduce nonviolence and how it works.

 

The secret to effective nonviolent resistance | Jamila Raqib

 

 

The 20th Annual Mahatma Gandhi Lecture on Nonviolence

 

Groundbreaking New Study: The Role of External Support in Nonviolent Campaigns (ICNC Webinar)

Castro regime president smacked down by Uruguayan president at international summit in Mexico

Bad day for the Castro regime

 

President Luis Lacalle Pou smacks down the Castro regime

 President Luis Lacalle Pou, the chief executive of Uruguay on September 18th at the VI Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) smacked down the Castro regime's Miguel Diaz-Canel. The Summit was held in Mexico and hosted by Mexico's president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and Castro ally. 

 

 

Furthermore, CELAC was created by Hugo Chavez to counter the Organization of American States. In this hostile environment President Lacalle Pou defended democracy, human rights, and called out the bad actors in the hemisphere:

“When one sees that in certain countries there is no full democracy, when the separation of powers is not respected, when the repressive apparatus is used to silence protests, when opponents are imprisoned, when human rights are not respected, we in a calm but firm voice must say with concern that we look seriously at what is happening in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.”

Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel, appointed by Raul Castro, responded to the critique citing Uruguayans gathering signatures against a law being proposed in Uruguay, and claimed that

“The courage of the Cuban people was demonstrated for six decades. Listen to your people who collected more than 700,000 signatures against the LUC (Law of Urgent Consideration). Monroism and the OAS is what you have just defended.”

Castro regime officials are not accustomed to critical voices being able to respond to their attacks.  President Lacalle Pou's response was devastating because it underscored the reality of the existing dictatorship in Cuba, contrasting it with Uruguay's democracy.

“If there is something that is true in my country, luckily, it is that the opposition can gather signatures, in my country, luckily, the opposition has democratic resources to lodge complaints, that is the great difference with the Cuban regime.” 

The Uruguayan president then crushed it by quoting the song Patria y Vida.

 “I just want to quote, and they are not my words, it is a very beautiful song and those who sing it feel oppressed by the Government: ’No longer shall flow the blood / Of those who dare to think differently / Who told you Cuba is yours? / Indeed, Cuba is for all my people’.”  

Below is the video of the response.

 14ymedio, September 18, 2021

Uruguay’s President Denounces the Imprisonment of Opponents in Cuba

Uruguay’s president Lacalle Pou speaking at the VI Summit of the  Celac. (@PPT_CELAC)

14ymedio/EFE, Havana, 18 September 2021 — The president of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, and the Cuban leader, Miguel Díaz-Canel, staged an exchange of accusations this Saturday at the VI Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), in Mexico. The discussion began when the Uruguayan showed his concern because on the island, and in Venezuela and Nicaragua “there is not a full democracy” and opponents are imprisoned.

Lacalle’s speech began by recognizing that two principles promoted by Celac are “self-determination and non-intervention” but he also described democracy as “the best system that individuals have to be free” and that, for that reason, “participating in this forum does not mean being complacent.”

After that introduction, his criticisms were even more direct: “When one sees that in certain countries there is no full democracy, when the separation of powers is not respected, when the repressive apparatus is used to silence protests, when opponents are imprisoned, when human rights are not respected, we in a calm but firm voice must say with concern that we look seriously at what is happening in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.”

Lacalle’s statements gave rise to a strong exchange of words between the two leaders, which was only partially broadcast on Cuban television, but which is already generating comments in support of the Uruguayan on social networks for his direct comments to the President and First Secretary of the Communist Party on the island.

Visibly annoyed, Díaz-Canel responded to Lacalle saying that with his words he was showing a lack of knowledge of the Cuban reality. “The courage of the Cuban people was demonstrated for six decades. Listen to your people who collected more than 700,000 signatures against the LUC (Law of Urgent Consideration). Monroism and the OAS is what you have just defended,” he said.

The Uruguayan asked for the floor again and addressed Díaz-Canel: “If there is something that is true in my country, luckily, it is that the opposition can gather signatures, in my country, luckily, the opposition has democratic resources to lodge complaints, that is the great difference with the Cuban regime,” he added.

Lacalle went further and added: “I just want to quote, and they are not my words, it is a very beautiful song and those who sing it feel oppressed by the Government: ’No longer shall flow the blood / Of those who dare to think differently / Who told you Cuba is yours? / Indeed, Cuba is for all my people’,” he added, quoting the song Patria y Vida.

Source: https://translatingcuba.com/uruguays-president-denounces-the-imprisonment-of-opponents-in-cuba/

Arbitrarily detained 68-year old Cuban dissident with Covid-19 on day 26 of hunger strike

We fear for his life, and demand his freedom.

Felix Navarro Rodriguez (age 68) jailed for inquiring about detainees has been on hunger strike 26 days

Dr. Omar Vento tonight demanded the release of Cuban dissident Félix Navarro who is unjustly imprisoned, tortured, ill, and has been on hunger strike for 26 days. In poor health, his life is in danger and Dr. Vento holds the Castro regime responsible for what may happen to him. 

68-year-old Felix Navarro Rodriguez was arrested and charged with public disorder while inquiring about detainees the day after the protests in the city of Matanzas, 55 miles east of Havana. 

Mr. Navarro Rodriguez is a Cuban human rights defender, and the Castro regime does not recognize that category as legal. Protesting his unjust imprisonment,  Felix initiated a hunger strike on August 23rd and has maintained it to the present day. On September 11th he was weighing in at 132 pounds. 

He is a husband and father.

Felix Navarro with his daughter Sayli

On September 17, 2021 the State Department spokesperson tweeted about his concern for Felix Navarro.

Felix Navarro is in critical condition and Cuban authorities continue to deny his family access to him. The United States asks #JailedForWhat and calls for his immediate release.

— Ned Price (@StateDeptSpox) September 17, 2021

Rolling Stone Magazine lists at #439 Celia Cruz, 'La Vida Es un Carnaval' among "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time "

Rolling Stone Magazine on September 15, 2021 placed Celia Cruz's, 'La Vida Es un Carnaval' as the 439th greatest song of all time.  Below is the image and text provided by the publication.

Celia Cruz, 'La Vida Es un Carnaval'

1998

Writer(s):Victor Daniel

 Celia Cruz had a voice that combined opulent, operatic tones with the Afro-Cuban call-and-response style of pregón — and her legendary roar was at its most august and powerful extolling the joy of being alive on 1998’s triumphant “La Vida Es un Carnaval.” The song was especially potent coming from Cruz, who came to New York and helped shape the salsa movement following a painful exile from Cuba in the Sixties. “La Vida Es un Carnaval” became a life-giving anthem for audiences and marked a stunning final act of her formidable career.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-songs-of-all-time-1224767/celia-cruz-la-vida-es-un-carnaval-1224898/

They mention "a painful exile from Cuba in the Sixties," but it is worth exploring this chapter of her life, and mean spiritedness of the Castro dictatorship following her death on July 16, 2003. She laid in state at the Freedom Tower in Miami where some 200,000 Cubans paid their respects.

The mourning for Celia was nearly universal, except in her homeland Cuba where the official media printed a small note on her passing recognizing Celia as an “important Cuban performer who popularized our country’s music in the United States,” it went on to say that “during the last four decades, she was systematically active in campaigns against the Cuban revolution generated in the United States.” 

It is necessary to revisit an early episode that illuminates the clash between Celia and Fidel in the early days of the Cuban Revolution, and the manipulative character of Castro, and the brilliance of the Cuban artist to recognize it when many others did not.

Fidel Castro had tried to create a situation that forced the salsa singer to pay him homage, but she refused. Salserísimo Perú, a Youtube site created in Peru by three journalists to share information on salsa and tropical music offers a history of Celia Cruz's first "encounter" with Fidel Castro.

"In the early months of 1959, Celia Cruz was hired to sing with a pianist at the house of the Cuban businessman Miguel Angel Quevedo.  Quevedo owned the magazine Bohemia, the most influential in Cuba and who had supported the revolution in the last few years.  The guerrilla movement with a certain Fidel Castro in front proclaimed in Santiago the beginning of the revolution. At that moment Celia enjoyed great popularity for "Yebero Moderno", "Tu voz" and "Burundanga" songs she had recorded with the Sonora Matancera. As a guest artist of Rogelio Martinez's group the Guarachera (Celia) was free to accept other contracts as a soloist. This allowed her to show her talent on different radio stations in Havana, and perform in Mexico, Venezuela, and Peru. Since the regime of Fidel took power, it had begun to systematically seize businesses, radio and television stations. [Fidel Castro speaking: 'The revolution was something like a hope and that joy, possibly, prevented us from thinking all that we still had to do.' For the Guarechera, Fidel was ending free expression and the arts in her country.  The night of the show in the home of Quevedo, Celia was singing standing next to the pianist,  when suddenly the guests started to run to the front door of the house. Fidel Castro had arrived.  Neither she nor the pianist moved and continued singing. Suddenly, Quevedo approached Celia and told her that Fidel wanted to meet her because in his guerrilla days, when he cleaned his rifle he was listening to Burundanga. Celia replied that she had been hired to sing next to the piano, and that was her place. If Fidel wanted to meet her, he would have to come to her.  But the commandant did not do that."

Since Celia Cruz refused to bow to the new dictator, and wanted to continue to live the life of a free artist, she had to leave Cuba. However, when her mom was ill she tried to return to see her in 1962, but was barred from entering the country by Fidel Castro. When her mother died Celia was again blocked by the dictatorship from attending her funeral. Because she was not an active supporter of the regime, her music was banned in Cuba.

The Cuban government and its agents of influence have attempted to pretend that things have changed with regards to artistic freedom in Cuba, but the reality of the blacklist continues.

On August 8, 2012 BBC News reported that Cuba's ban on anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted and on August 10 the BBC correspondent in Cuba, Sarah Rainsford, tweeted that she had been given names of forbidden artists by the central committee and the internet was a buzz that the ban on anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted. Others soon followed reporting on the news. The stories specifically mentioned Celia Cruz as one of the artists whose music would return to Cuban radio.

There was only one problem. It was not true. Diario de Cuba reported on August 21, 2012 that Tony Pinelli, a well known musician and radio producer, distributed an e-mail in which Rolando Álvarez, the national director of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión (ICRT) confirmed that the music of the late Celia Cruz would continue to be banned. The e-mail clearly stated: "All those who had allied with the enemy, who acted against our families, like Celia Cruz, who went to sing at the Guantanamo Base, the ICRT arrogated to itself the right, quite properly, not to disseminate them on Cuban radio."

Celia Cruz picks up Cuban soil to take back home to exile in 1990

Take that in for a moment. The dictatorship that would not let her return to her homeland for her mother's funeral in 1962 attacked her for returning to the only part of Cuba the dictatorship does not have control over, the U.S. Guantanamo Naval Base where she bent down and collected Cuban soil to take back into exile.

She remains on the Castro regime's blacklist 18 years after her death, but she is not alone.  

Celia  is in good company. Other major Cuban artists who have had their music banned by the Castro regime are Olga Guillot, Rolando Lecuona, Paquito D’Rivera, Arturo Sandoval,  Israel Cachao López, Ramón "Mongo" Santamaría, Mario Bauza, Arsenio Rodríguez, Willy Chirino, and Gloria Estefan.

According to the 2004 book, Shoot the singer!: music censorship today edited by Marie Korpe there is increasing concern that post-revolution generations in Cuba are growing up without knowing or hearing censored musicians such as Celia Cruz, Olga Guillot, and the long list above, and that this could lead to a loss of Cuban identity in future generations. This process has been described as a Cuban cultural genocide that is depriving generations of Cubans their heritage. 

Thankfully, the rest of the world celebrates the greatness of her music, and with the internet and software to evade regime censorship Cubans on the island are listening to her too. 

Cuban music icon Celia Cruz still banned in Cuba