Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition, with Some Early Nineteenth Century Documents c4.2

c4.2

For me this information was wholly unexpected. It not only led to much questioning, but also persuaded me to re-read some of the writings of Mahatma Gandhi on the subject. Up to this time, like those I knew, I had taken it for granted that non-cooperation and civil disobedience were of very recent origin in India and owed their practice here to Gandhiji. Again, like many others I had also assumed that while Gandhiji had made them more perfect and effective he himself had initially derived them from Thoreau, Tolstoy, Ruskin and other Europeans. But re-reading *Hind Swaraj*, I found Gandhiji observing: ‘In India the nation at large has generally used passive resistance in all departments of life. We cease to cooperate with our rulers when they displease us.’