The 1789 Discourse: Fanon VS Gandhi On Violence In Decolonization
Outside of Europe, there are only five countries in the world that escaped European colonialism. Within Europe, countries such as Ireland and Finland were colonized by Britain and Russia respectively, but for the most part it was the peoples of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas who were subjugated by Europeans to a greater or lesser extent. The only five countries to escape this fate have been Japan, Thailand, North and South Korea, and the small West African nation of Liberia, founded by freed slaves from the United States.
Given the sheer scale of European colonialism across the globe, it stands to reason that the majority of national and ethnic groups in the world have experienced colonial rule. 178 countries across the world have an annual Independence Day celebration, marking the anniversaries of escaping the oppression of their colonizers. The ways in which that independence comes about, however, are not uniform.
Breaking the methods down into a simplistic dichotomy, nations decolonize themselves either through violent revolution or non-violent resistance. Both methods have their supporters, and political philosophers ready to extol the virtues of their chosen path to liberty. One of the most prominent supporters of violence was psychiatrist and revolutionary Frantz Fanon, while those in favour of non-violence often rally around the lessons of lawyer and pacifist Mahatma Gandhi.
The two men are not worlds apart from each other in their outlooks on life. Both grew up under the rule of a colonial power, Fanon in French-controlled Martinique and Gandhi in British-controlled India. Both men experienced discrimination throughout their lives due to the color of their skin, despite both being highly educated and in well-respected professions. Finally, both men recognized the need for colonized people to reject the culture of their colonial masters, and embrace their indigenous heritage.
Despite their similarities, Fanon and Gandhi arrived at very different conclusions when pondering the path to independence for the colonized peoples of the world. Their differences centered not just on the effectiveness of violence vs. non-violence in decolonization. Both methods have triumphed and failed over the decades. Fanon and Gandhi also asked themselves if the use of violence in the pursuit of independence was legitimate, could it be justified? As can be seen in their writings, the two men give very different answers when faced with this question.
In his most famous work, The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon states “decolonization is always a violent phenomenon”. It is the complete upending of the social order, and the total replacement of the colonial class with the natives to whom the land of the nation truly belongs. “Friendly understanding”, as Fanon puts it, cannot accomplish this goal, given the circumstances of colonialism in which the colonizer sees the colonized as subhuman, bordering on evil.
Within this framework, non-violence is merely a mechanism offered to the native by the colonialist bourgeoisie to water down their movement for independence. By accepting non-violent resistance as a solution, indigenous peoples prevent any real decolonization of their land in favour of shifting the balance of power from colonial masters to native bourgeoisie elites still working in the interests of the colonial power.
The violent removal of the colonial system is also, according to Fanon, necessary for the mental health and wellbeing of the native. He states “When the native is confronted with the colonial order of things, he finds he is in a state of permanent tension”. The subhuman characterization of the native by the colonial power is damaging to the mental health of indigenous peoples. For Fanon, overthrowing the colonial order through violence asserts the humanity of the native, and solidifies their confidence in that humanity. Therefore, he argues that the use of violence in decolonization is not just inevitable but it is fully justified.
For Gandhi, it was not violence that signified the virtue of the native but suffering. Willingness to suffer for cause, to accept physical and mental harm in the face of the oppressor without resorting to the same tactics, was the best course to show the world that indigenous peoples are not subhuman, and are both capable and deserving of Swaraj, or self-rule. As Gandhi states in Hind Swaraj, or Indian Home Rule, “the force of love and pity is infinitely greater than the force of arms. There is harm in the exercise of brute force, never in that of pity”.
To this end, Gandhi’s preferred path to independence lay in non-violent resistance and non-compliance with the colonial government. By refusing to pay extortionate taxes and engaging in large-scale protest marches, he believed that the colonized could make a statement to the effect of “You can govern us only so long as we remain the governed”. For evidence of the success of his method of ‘soul-force’ or ‘truth-force’, he points to the fact that human beings have not wiped themselves out through violence, and therefore non-violence must be capable of solving disputes.
Gandhi argued that it was not colonialism itself that stripped indigenous peoples of their humanity, but the oppressive laws passed by their colonizer. He states “It is contrary to our manhood if we obey laws repugnant to our conscience. Such teaching is opposed to religion and means slavery”. Passive resistance to these laws was the best way to assert the humanity of the native, educate the masses in the pursuit of independence, and bring the colonizer to the negotiating table. Therefore, violence in the pursuit of these goals cannot be justified.
The successes of Fanon and Gandhi’s ideologies in relation to decolonization is up for debate. The Algerian War of Independence, in which Fanon fought and developed many of the ideas laid out in The Wretched of the Earth, lasted over seven years and, with a body count of 1.5 million, is widely considered to be one of the bloodiest struggles for independence in history. Although the Front de Libération Nationale succeeded in securing Algeria’s independence from France, the country later slid into a one-party state before a bloody civil war broke out in the 1990s. The use of violence did not, as Fanon predicted, heal the colonized people of Algeria.
India did not emerge from decolonization unscathed either. Gandhi’s practice of ‘soul-force’ did not prevent the rise of a Muslim nationalist movement and the subsequent partition of the Indian subcontinent into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. Nor did it stop the large-scale ethnic violence along the borders of the two new countries as Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs attempted en masse to cross into the ‘right’ nation. Gandhi’s history of non-violent resistance may be a great source of pride for many Indians today, but it has not stopped the rise of ethno-nationalist strains in the country's politics or cooled the ongoing tensions with Pakistan.
Based solely on the goal of winning independence from a colonial power, both violent revolution and non-violent resistance are legitimate and successful tactics depending on the circumstances. However, if the goal is to create an independent and prosperous nation then both methods have been shown to have their shortcomings in the pursuit of that ideal.