The Impact of Gandhi on the U.S. Peace Movement

By Charles C. Walker

Gandhi’s influence on the peace movement in the United States was felt as early as the 1920s. An early and effective exponent of Gandhi’s ideas here was John Haynes Holmes, a prominent Unitarian minister and reformer, and an outspoken pacifist in World War I. He first set forth his discovery of Gandhi in a sermon titled “The Christ of Today” which was widely circulated. In another sermon in 1922 called “Who is the Greatest Man in the World Today?” his designation of Gandhi amazed many listeners, most of whom had never heard the name before. Gandhi’s autobiography was first published in America in the magazine Unity of which Holmes was the editor.

There were landmark books: by Romain Rolland in 1924, and three by C.F. Andrews published here in 1930 and 1931. The Power of Non-violence by Richard B. Gregg first appeared in 1934 (two revised editions have subsequently been published). Probably no other book on non-violence has been so widely read by U.S. pacifists, or used as a basis of a study program.

Krishnalal Shridharani’s War without Violence was a valuable exposition of the methods of non-violent direct action. He was sharply critical of Western bourgeois pacifism, and emphasized that satyagraha was as much a method of struggle as of persuasion.

A popular lecturer in America was Muriel Lester, an English friend of Gandhi with whom he stayed at Kingsley Hall when he attended the Round Table Conference in London. In the early 1930s, she began a series of lecture tours in the U.S., speaking widely to groups outside the traditional peace ranks, and gave, vivid accounts of Gandhi’s non-violent undertakings. C.F. Andrews also came on a nation-wide lecture tour.

The movement for Indian independence found many sympathisers and supporters, outside as well as inside the peace movement. Accounts of non-violent resistance in the 1930-33 all-India campaign were reported in the U.S. newspapers by such journalists as Negley Farson and Webb Miller. Liberals and progressives of various kinds were heartened by successful struggles against colonialism and imperialism. The Salt March was for many young idealists an inspirational example of principled action. John Gunther’s Inside Asia, widely read in America, gave sympathetic portraits of Gandhi and Nehru, and heightened interest in the Indian independence movement.

Between world wars, liberal religion with a strong social action emphasis became a significant force in American life. Pacific methods were regarded as ethically more appropriate instruments than violence for the attainment of social and political objectives. Gandhian non-violence was congenial to such a mood of thought and action - or at least thought to be. Religious leaders who were also social idealists were attracted by Gandhi’s efforts to apply religious insights to social and political problems. They were impressed by his battle against caste and untouchability. While John Haynes Holmes remained the leading popularizer of Gandhi’s ideas here, there were also E. Stanley Jones, a Methodist missionary deeply influenced by his experience in India; and Kirby Page, a key figure in the peace movement for many years.

Gandhi' Influence on Quakers

Quakers (members of the society of friends who advocate peace) were drawn to Gandhi because of their mutual interest in the practical effect of religious experience, as well as principled rejection of violence. Rufus Jones, noted philosopher and leader in Quaker affairs, was deeply impressed by the spiritual force of Gandhi’s personality (in an interview in 1926), and in later years referred to him as “the greatest person now living on our planet”. This was in spite of differences with Gandhi over interpretation and expression of the mystical element in religion. Prominent Negro ministers who were also involved in the peace movement, such as Benjamin Mays and Howard Thurman, had interviews with Gandhi and it was to the latter that Gandhi commented, “It may be through the Negroes that the unadulterated message of non-violence will be delivered to the world”. A highly influential sector of the peace movement in the 1930s had a generally socialist orientation. The country was passing through the serious crisis of the Depression, and the menacing figure of Hitler loomed on the horizon. This leadership element was impressed by the anti-imperialist and anti-colonial aspect of the Indian independence movement and, it must be said, there were those who were always pleased to see the Indians (or anyone) twisting the British lion’s tail. On the other hand, they were either baffled by or critical of Gandhi’s economic views, as they understood them, and there were Marxist elements, both Socialist and Communist, who were hostile to Gandhi’s influence.

Reinhold Niebuhr, an influential figure in religious circles and in movements for social justice, argued that Gandhi’s satyagraha was a form of social and political coercion, and not the lure example of social idealism to the extent believed either by Gandhi himself or by his American exponents. Niebuhr was a formidable critic of religious liberalism. While he believed that there is a religious sanction for coercive methods in the political and economic world, he held that a principled non-violent actionist could be a witness to a more excellent way as a special religious vocation, so long as non-violence was not advanced as a political strategy required by the ethic of Christian love.

Nevertheless, as far back as 1932 Niebuhr urged American Negroes to adopt satyagraha in the struggle for racial justice. In the magazine The World Tomorrow (1934) Cranston Clayton argued that Gandhian methods were especially appropriate to the American scene and were necessary as a stage beyond the traditional methods of persuasion and education. It was not until two decades later that this idea began to flower in the civil rights movement.

In the field of labour, there were those such as A. J. Muste and others who evolved methods of non-violent action although their inspiration came more from European radicals than from Gandhi. Some labour historians assert that violence has been a prominent feature in the history of the U.S. labour movement. However the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1919, a landmark in U.S. labour history, was won primarily because of the determination of the workers to remain non-violent in face of severe provocation and violence by factory owners and police.

There were middle-class elements in the peace movement who were highly critical of strikes and overt economic struggle, believing them to be “unreconciling” or even inconsistent with religious ethics. Similar arguments were carried on here as Gandhi faced opposition in his efforts to end domestic injustices in India.

While Gandhi had little noticeable impact on the development of the labour movement in America some of the experiences in it were to prove significant as background for the later emergence of non-violent direct action as a method of social change.

Challenges to the U.S. Peace Movement

The seminal stage for the emergence of the “radical caucus” in the peace movement was the decade of the 1940s, during and after World War II. This group was increasingly preoccupied with Gandhian ideas in action, with the conscious application of satyagraha as an organizational mode of action on the American scene.

The Second World War was a severe challenge to the U.S. peace movement. While its major task during that period was survival, it also directed attention to proposals regarding post-war settlements and the conditions of peace. In this connection, there were debates about the kind of movement that could be relevant and effective in the turbulent post-war period.

One wing of the movement was radical in orientation and ethos. It represented a curious amalgam of traditions including revolutionary Marxism, anarchism, Protestant activism, Quakerism, American pragmatism - and Gandhian non-violence.

One might arbitrarily set as a symbol of the new period the publication in 1940 of A. J. Muste’s book Non-violence in an Aggressive World. Muste directed his argument to three major groups: those in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, those in movements for basic social justice, and advocates of democracy. He insisted that non-violence was an essential ingredient of all three, and that to depart from a non-violent base was to introduce a deeply disorienting and corrupting factor. Two chapters on “Pacifism as Revolutionary Strategy” foreshadowed much that was to appear later as significant ideological tendencies in the movement.

Jay Holmes Smith and Ralph Templin, two missionaries in India who were expelled for their sympathies with the Gandhian movement, formed an ad hoc committee on non-violent direct action, centred in New York City. The actions and teachings of this group directly influenced A. Philip Randolph, a Negro labour leader, and some of the founders of the Congress of Racial Equality. It was Randolph who threatened a large scale march of Negroes on Washington, in 1941, in protest against discriminatory racial practices in industry. To forestall this march, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order establishing a Fair Employment Practices Commission.

However, it was in the staff of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a religious pacifist group under the leadership of Muste who became executive secretary in 1940, that decisions were made which set the future course of non-violent action in the United States. There it was decided to apply the strategy and tactics of non-violent direct action to the field of racial justice. This decision was based on two major considerations: the growing moral consensus on racial justice, and a steadily increasing number of laws against the practice of racial discrimination.

It soon became clear that the FOR could not carry on this task alone. There were few Negroes who would take such a radical position, and some of them had little interest in a religious organisation. Furthermore, there was a very small minority of religious pacifists who were constrained to involve themselves in this kind of activity. A new organization was formed in 1942 called the Committee of Racial Equality (Committee was later changed to Congress) with a strategic commitment to non-violent methods and discipline. In the combined work of CORE and the FOR, figures emerged such as Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, and George Houser. Action projects and workshops were devised not only to secure change in the field of race relations but, equally important, to educate for the broader application of non-violence. It was in this undertaking that much was learned about fundamental strategic and tactical considerations, as well as the corporate discipline, appropriate to the American scene. These factors were later to become important as background resources for the emerging civil rights movement in the middle 1950s.

Writers on Gandhi

Speakers and writers were also preparing the soil. Pacifist groups, in particular the American Friends Service Committee, scheduled Indian speakers who recounted Gandhian campaigns and described the Gandhian approach: Amiya Chakravarty, Eddy Asirvatham, Haridas Muzumdar, J. B. Kripalani, Nirmal Kumar Bose, Bharatan Kumarappa, K.K. Chandy, Richard Keithahn, and Sushila Nayyar. (More recently there were A. K. Mitra, Gurdial Mallik and, most recently, Marjorie Sykes)

Significant writers bad been deeply influenced by Gandhi, and their writings had an impact far beyond the peace movement. There were Louis Fischer, Vincent Sheean, Pearl Buck, Aldous Huxley, Herrymon Maurer, John and Frances Gunther, Edmond Taylor, Chester Bowles.

Peacetime Conscription

The advent of peacetime conscription in 1948 was another important event for the American peace movement. There was no organization able to spearhead civil disobedience against conscription. A new group was formed called Peacemakers. While draft resistance was the immediate catalyst, the founders of Peacemakers hoped to inaugurate a new phase of disciplined and revolutionary activity in the peace movement. There were also those interested in pressing the method of tax refusal. While Peacemakers had some influence, and it became a focus for Gandhian ideology for a time, it never became a large organization and finally fragmented into several interest groups.

Another effect of the beginning of peacetime conscription was to raise, for the first time publicly, the possibility of Negroes engaging in civil disobedience to the draft. A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and others formed the “Committee Against Jim Crow In The Armed Forces”, urging Negroes to refuse to be drafted into segregated military units. While few Negroes responded to this appeal, the undertaking encouraged the idea of non-violent action in the field of racial justice.

In 1949, the World Pacifist Conference was held in India. This occasion gave impetus to systematic thinking about the ideology, strategy, and future direction of a movement incorporating fundamental Gandhian ideas. It was recommended that satyagraha units be established in different countries. Key leaders developed personal relationships there which stood them in good stead as the movement has become more “internationalized”.

The Korean War of 1950-53 had a far-reaching impact on the peace movement. Nationalism and chauvinism grew apace, McCarthyism emerged and a climate was produced where most of the non-pacifist periphery of the movement melted away. Furthermore, those peace organizations whose stock-in-trade were proposals for negotiation found it difficult to relate their strategies to political realities. Neither the government nor the public was much interested in negotiation, especially after the protracted efforts to end the Korean War.

For a while the arguments within the movement were centered on the issue of negotiated versus unilateral disarmament. This modulated into a full-scale debate over the basic orientation of the pacifist sector of the peace movement. It culminated in the publication in 1955 of a pamphlet by the American Friends Service Committee titled Speak Truth to Power, in which a reasoned case was set forth for the application of non-violence to the politics of peace. What gradually took shape was the ascendancy of the “radical caucus” in the peace movement, in the sense that the politics of this group either prevailed in some organizations or in others gained substantially in influence. While some of the moderate groups were less than enthusiastic about direct action, there was a heartening degree of coordination, consultation and joint action by leaders and groups.

The next chapter had to do with direct action for peace and against military preparations or actions. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there had been direct action projects and demonstrations in Washington, New York, Philadelphia and other cities. Frequently they were sponsored by an ad hoc committee of Peacemakers, Catholic Workers, Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the War Resisters’ League.

Direct action for peace became a burgeoning effort starting in 1957. At the insistent urging of Lawrence Scott (himself deeply influenced by Gandhi) the peace organizations mobilized themselves for action against the threat of continued nuclear testing. At a meeting in Philadelphia, the groundwork was laid for the formation of two organizations, which later became the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) to work with liberals and moderates, and Non-violent Action against Nuclear Weapons (NVA) to serve as a vehicle for radicals. It was agreed that more effective action would result if there were two organizations working in coordinate fashion rather than one organization in which a great deal of time and energy would be spent in resolving basic policy differences.

NVA first conducted “Nevada Action”, an effort to protest the exploding of a test atom bomb in the Nevada desert. The second project was much more ambitious: the sailing into the Pacific test zone of a small 30-foot ketch, the Golden Rule, captained by former Naval officer Albert Bigelow. There followed Omaha Action, against the building of a missile base in Nebraska; and, most dramatically, the March from San Francisco to Moscow. In 1959, A J. Muste, Bayard Rustin and Bill Sutherland helped coordinate the Sahara Protest Team, an international group which demonstrated against French nuclear testing on the African continent. Following that came Polaris Action, organized as a long-term project in New London, Connecticut, the centre for building Polaris submarines capable of launching an atomic attack.

In the student field, the Student Peace Union was the group most friendly to Gandhian ideas. In the nation’s Capital it mounted a large-scale demonstration of college and high school students committed to non-violent discipline, which received widespread favourable comment.

The civil rights revolution of the past decade, beginning with the Supreme Court decision on school desegregation, was another major challenge to the peace forces. It was the latter who had pioneered in Gandhian methods, concentrating in the racial field, but relating this experience to other fields such as anti-colonialism in Africa. Nevertheless, their following in the South was very small, and few Negroes had recruited into the movement.

The name of Gandhi was often associated with the Montgomery Bus Protest  and  with Martin Luther King, Jr. However the impact of Gandhian ideas was indirect rather than direct. To most Negroes, Gandhi was only a name or a cartoonist’s caricature.

Two meetings are recalled by King as notable in big spiritual pilgrimage to non-violence. When he was a student at Crozer Seminary, he attended a lecture by A. J. Muste (which the author arranged) on the implications of non-violence for the Christian church. While at the same Seminary he attended a monthly interracial and inter-religious meeting in Philadelphia where Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University, gave a passionate and powerful address on the significance of Gandhi, having just returned from the World Pacifist Conference in India. Writes King, “His message was so profound and electrifying that I left the meeting and bought half a dozen books on Gandhi’s life and works”. As he delved into these books he concluded: “Love for Gandhi was a potent instrument for social and collective transformation. It was in this Gandhian emphasis on love and non-violence that I discovered the method for social reform that I had been seeking for so many months... I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.” At first he regarded it primarily as a valuable and potent instrument of struggle, but later he embraced non-violence more completely and joined the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Chester Bowles wrote a featured article in the mass circulation magazine Saturday Evening Post (March 1, 1958) on “What Negroes Can Learn From Gandhi”. Two of the Negro college students who initiated the sit-in movement (Greensboro, North Carolina, 1960) told the author that one of the influences that impelled them to action was a television program on Gandhi. They saw jail going for a worthy cause in an entirely new light. Out of the sit-in movement grew the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee which incorporated non-violence as a strategic commitment into their operational methods. A leading adult movement in the South is the Southern Christian Leadership Council, also committed to non-violence.

Most of the civil rights leaders, both youth and adult, articulate their views not Specifically in Gandhian terms but either in religious language (mostly Christian), as is more characteristic of the South, or in humanistic and pragmatic terms, as is more characteristic of the North. There are some who extend their non-violence beyond the cause of racial justice and question other aspects of national life inimical to human welfare, especially some aspects of U.S. foreign policy. As one young leader said: “We have to hope for more than dying in an integrated bomb shelter”.

There is some carry-over from the civil rights movement to an interest in peace. Among top civil rights leadership can be found a number who are interested in disarmament and oppose the military emphasis that characterizes U.S. foreign policy. Among them can be numbered Martin Luther King, A. Philip Randolph, Ralph Abernathy, John Lewis, and James Baldwin. James Farmer and Bayard Rustin have had a long-standing involvement in the peace movement. There are other younger leaders, along with rank-and-file youth, who are not aiming primarily at “a share of the American pie” but recognize that far reaching transformations are required in American life and society if genuine democracy is to be realized, and if the United States is to be a worthy member of the community of nations.

The peace movement, it may be said, made two major contributions to the civil rights revolution in its first decade. One was through the organizational expertise of a few skilled and knowledgeable individuals such as Bayard Rustin, Glenn Smiley, James Lawson, and later James Farmer (with A. J. Muste’s influence effectively in the background). Another important, if unheralded, contribution was that of interpretation of unfolding events in the civil rights struggle, by many people throughout the nation who understood the basic elements of the non-violent approach, through their exposure to Gandhian ideas over the years and their allegiance to the religious pacifist position. This was true especially in the late 1950s.

In the colleges and universities there has been a continuing interest in Gandhi on the part of those interested in peace and social justice. He commands interest not only as an historical figure but also as one who has challenged many traditional American ideas. William Stuart Nelson, Vice-President of Howard University who has visited India three times, teaches a course at Howard on “The Philosophy and Methods of Non-violence”. He has received numerous inquiries from other universities and has frequently lectured on Gandhi. A Gandhi :Memorial Lecture is given annually at Howard. In connection with the 1963 lecture there was a large and impressive intercollegiate conference on “Youth, Non-violence and Social Change”.

At Haverford College there was in 1963 a research seminar on methods of non-violent action. At Spelman College, Professor Staughton Lynd has taught a course on “History of Non-violence in America”. A number of courses in the general field of analysis of conflict deal with Gandhi, and one frequently reads and hears of graduate studies on Gandhi. The technical journal of Conflict Resolution published at University of Michigan periodically carries articles on Gandhian ideas or motifs. A recent survey revealed a surprising amount of such explorations, and young people drawn to the peace movement get valuable background information and analysis through this medium.

Few Americans have attempted a systematic analysis of Gandhi’s political or organizational ideas. In addition to Gregg mentioned earlier, there have been Joan Bondurant’s Conquest of Violence subtitled “The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict”; sections of Edmond Taylor’s Richer by Asia; Vincent Sheean’s Lead Kindly Light; Paul Power’s Gandhi on World Affairs; and Louis Fischer’s Gandhi and Stalin. It is highly likely there will be many more soon; they could help develop further the idea of revolutionary non-violence expressed in the American idiom.

At the founding conference of the World Peace Brigade, held in Lebanon, and in its subsequent actions such as the Delhi to Peking Friendship March, there has been a valuable and fruitful interchange between leaders of Gandhian thought and action in India and in the West. Here an important beginning has been made in overcoming what appears to be a dichotomy: the emphasis in Western peace movements on war resistance and in India on the constructive program. The dichotomy is transcended in the idea of “nonviolent revolution” (or “revolutionary non-violence”) as the Statement of Principles and Aims of the World Peace Brigade indicates.

Gandhi’s impact has always been most evident in the pacifist sector of the U.S. peace movement. Prior to World War II his appeal was in the world of ideas. He was a symbol of dedicated action, of a possible alternative to violent means of political and social change. It was not until after 1940 that groups began to adopt satyagraha as a mode of organizational operation. His impact may be summarized in a five-fold fashion:

1. 1. Methodology. The method of Satyagraha has already helped to change aspects of American life. It is likely that more experiments will emerge in the next couple of decades. They may result from a combination of organizational efforts of groups committed to Gandhian principles, and efforts by thinkers and scholars to correlate Gandhian ideas and experience with developments and ideas in the behavioural sciences.

2. Principle Action. The peace movement has been bombarded with charges of utopianism and perfectionism, and has sometimes been caught in an unconscious reaction: making too many concessions to what passes for political realism. Gandhi has been a relentless reminder of the importance of “right action” in politics.

3. Leadership. Gandhi’s style of leadership was direct, person to person, unaffected. One deeply impressed by the life of Gandhi could hardly aspire to be a Big Shot of the American variety. Simplicity and directness are generally regarded as cardinal virtues in American peace leadership. It would seem that Gandhi’s influence is one factor. As Dwight Macdonald put it, commenting on his ready availability to all: “He practised tolerance and love to such an extent that he seemed to have regarded the capitalist as well as the garbage man as his social equal!”

4. Discipline. Americans have usually been repelled by the idea of discipline. They have associated it with Puritan asceticism or Prussian militarism. There has also been negative experience in radical circles with manipulative discipline in some Marxist movements. Gandhi showed the creative uses of discipline in a way that has deeply impressed American exponents of non-violence who reject authoritarianism but realize the weakness of undisciplined individualism.

5. Constructive Program. Resistance to an unjust social order is unintelligible or even nihilistic unless it is linked to an interaction process leading to a new social order. U.S. Gandhians admit that the many constructive activities in which non-violent actionists are involved are not sufficiently coordinated or integrated with a non-violent revolutionary program. Gandhi’s stress on the complementary nature of non-violent resistance and a constructive program is an insistent guide-line in that regard.

6. Gandhi’s impact will continue to be felt, probably in ways we cannot foresee. He drew upon the traditions and ideas deep within the soil and soul of India, integrating them into an unforgettable life. Likewise, each time non-violence finds expression it draws upon the traditions, experience and patterns of thought of the culture in which it is working. So it will be in America, for the enduring legacy of Gandhi belongs not only to India but to the whole world and to all time.

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