India Satyagraha FDC

India FDC
Name: Centenary of Satyagraha
Issue date: 2007 October 2rd

Satyagraha is the philosophy of non-violent resistance most famously employed by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in forcing an end to to the British Raj in India, beginning with his struggle in South Africa. It was inSouth Africa in 1893 that Gandhiji conceived of Satyagraha, which he defined as the technique of mass force based on truth and moved by non-violence.

The technique was not born full-grown, it was developed and refined with each application, first in South Africa and later in India, as a moral response to violence, and which has subsequently spread around the world. A tactic that ultimately impelled the British to free India, this technique was first put to the test on 11 September, 1906, before a gathering of more than three thousand people "of the coloured race" who had gathered at the Empire Theatre in Johannesburg, South Africa to listen to a young Indian Lawyer Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi who had promised to show the path of redemption to the oppressed of the world. And the path was Satyagraha.

Satyagraha was an important constituent of Gandhi's programmes of national self-purification.When he started campaigning against the racially discriminatory measures in South Africa, Gandhi discovered that his countrymen there lacked personal and communal self-respect, courage and the willingness to organize themself. In a memorable phrase he urged them to 'rebel' against themselves. This call initiated the stirrings.

Mahatma Gandhi coined the term Satyagraha to describe his philosophy of non-violent resistance, and he described it, thus: "Truth(Satya) implies love, and firmness(agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I this began to call the Indian movement Satyagraha, that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or Non-Nonviolence."