Abstract
‘
Satyāgraha
’ explains how, for Gandhi,
satyāgraha
, meaning civil insistence on or tenacity in the pursuit of truth, aimed to penetrate the barriers of prejudice, ill-will, dogmatism, self-righteousness, and selfishness, and to reach out to and activate the soul of the opponent. Even a Hitler or Mussolini was not beyond redemption. Their problem was not that they lacked that capacity but rather that it is limited to a few, and our task is to find ways of expanding it.
Satyāgraha
is a ‘surgery of the soul’, a way of activating ‘soul-force’. For Gandhi, ‘suffering love’ was the best way to do this, and formed the inspiring principle of his new method.