This essay examines two influential twentieth-century leaders and their fundamentally different philosophies on achieving social and political change. While Mao Tse-tung wielded systematic violence to consolidate communist power in China, Mahatma Gandhi employed mass nonviolent resistance to liberate India from British colonial rule. Despite their opposing methods, both leaders strategically weaponized their chosen approach—violence or nonviolence—to accomplish their objectives. The paper argues that although Mao achieved rapid economic modernization through coercive means, Gandhi's nonviolent movement ultimately proved more effective at transforming individual consciousness and inspiring lasting social movements worldwide, as demonstrated by its influence on figures like Martin Luther King Jr.
The appropriateness and effectiveness of violence as a means for effecting social change and bringing out needed reforms has been debated since the dawn of civilization. We see it even today in the crisis in Israel and the West Bank. Days and sometimes weeks pass when it seems that nonviolence and diplomacy are winning—the suicide bombings and the Israeli tank retaliations seem to stop. But then suddenly the stopgap opens entirely, and seemingly without warning, the bombings and military retaliations ensue almost without respite.
Two leaders who dealt extensively in their lifetimes with the struggle between violence and nonviolence are Mao Tse-tung and Mohandas K. Gandhi. On the surface, Chairman Mao espoused violence and used it as a tool to defeat an army of 4 million, gain power over a country with a trillion-dollar economy, and hold power for 25 years. Gandhi rose to "power," although he would deny that word choice, while leading a peaceful revolution among 600 million Indian citizens—Hindus and Muslims alike—that resulted in tens of thousands of Indian deaths, very few British deaths, but eventually in Indian independence and the creation of the largest democracy in the world.
But although Mao used violence to achieve his ends and Gandhi used nonviolence, they both wielded the concept of violence—whether violence or nonviolence—as a powerful and successful weapon. In the sense that weapons are violent inherently, this paper will argue that both Mao and Gandhi used violence to come to power. But beyond this twist, Gandhi proved that nonviolence is a stronger force for change of individual consciousness than violence.
Mao was once quoted as saying, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." And later in his career: "Whoever has an army has power, and war decides everything." Indeed, Mao followed his own maxims in rising to power. Chiang Kai-shek could not overcome the communists. The Red Army of 10,000, assembled over just three years, and the high rate of expansion of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) territory forced Chiang to begin an "Encirclement Campaign" in December 1930. The eager Red guerrillas destroyed the KMT troops with ease. At the same time, the CCP leadership, pleased with Mao's progress, ordered him to attack the nearby cities of Changsha and Nanchang. Both attacks were disastrous, and Mao was soon powerful enough to defy such orders from the CCP leadership.
It is obvious that Mao rose through the ranks of the Communist Party quickly and stubbornly. He did not acquiesce to commands with which he did not agree, but waited until he had the power and rank to refuse such orders. He gained his power and rank through the effective use of violence in combating Chiang's forces and improving the CCP's positions.
Mao followed through on his promises of violence and soon ran the Communist regime in China after defeating Chiang Kai-shek. The costs of violence under his leadership were high. In the first years of the Communist regime, conservative estimates of the number killed for voicing their opinions of the Communist Party stand at around 3 million; hostile estimates are much higher. Dissenters were taken prisoner, executed, or told, "You are sick, comrade," and subjected to formidable brainwashing procedures.
But the violence worked. Agrarian reform progressed, and economic emphasis was placed on manufacturing, mining, transportation, and communications. Education and health care were expanded. Indeed, the first Five-Year Plan was launched in 1953, and foreign visitors were pleasantly shocked at the rate by which the country had transformed.
Although China has had struggles coping as a communist nation in a world of free-market economies, the fact remains that Mao gained power and maintained power through systematic violence.
Gandhi, on the other hand, was entirely the opposite. "Humankind has to get out of violence only through nonviolence. Hatred can be overcome only by love. Counter-hatred only increases the surface as well as the depth of hatred." Gandhi was a young attorney in South Africa when he first experienced the horror of racism. He saw how Black men and white men were not allowed to walk the streets hand in hand, and this inspired him to return to India and fight against the injustices imposed upon Indian people by the British Empire. In South Africa, the Indians were not welcomed by the white settlers. One day, Gandhi was pushed out of a train when he refused to leave his seat for a white person. It was then that he decided never to be pushed down again and to fight for the rights of minorities. He started to lead the Indian workers in South Africa and fought for their rights, even when others would use violence against them, yet he never used violence.
Upon his return to India, Gandhi did not go Mao's route of violence. He asked his Indian people to stand up en masse against the British in peaceful protest. The British simply did not know how to respond. In their uncivilized view of protest and righteousness, the British did not comprehend how a full country of people could be led by "this half-naked man," as Winston Churchill famously called Gandhi, peacefully against the mighty British Empire.
And that was Gandhi's strategy. He urged Indians to use homespun wools and other domestic products and to refuse to purchase British goods. He asked Indians to do everything in their power that was nonviolent to force the British to leave the subcontinent.
But indeed, Gandhi knew there was a place for violence as well. In a much-forgotten move, Gandhi essentially postponed India's peaceful revolution at the onset of World War II. He recognized Nazi Germany as a much more malevolent force than the British Empire, in all their imperial misery, could ever be. As a result, he led the movement for Indians not only to stop resisting the British during World War II but to actually comply with their orders. In fact, India entered the war itself and was particularly helpful to Britain in the North African campaigns.
And when the war ended, Gandhi's nonviolence was wielded by India as a weapon. Suddenly, Britain found itself on the world's stage, and news was spreading quickly of the massacres they were inflicting upon the Indian people. The Indian people refused to resist, and the British were exposed as the violence-mongers that they were in India. Tens of thousands of Indians died, but in the end, the British people were forced to leave. They learned quickly that you cannot fight a war if no one fights you back. Gandhi led his country to independence with as few deaths as possible, and surely many fewer deaths than Mao engendered in China.
Both leaders used violence as a weapon, then: Mao used the threat of death, and Gandhi used the threat of self-sacrifice. But posterity treats Gandhi as a veritable god among men, and Mao as a scourge among society who killed millions of his own people to achieve his success. Gandhi inspired Martin Luther King Jr. to lead a similar movement in America, and Mao has inspired decades of human rights violations and poverty in China.
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