Civil Disobedience

One governmental principle that developed in the United States is civil disobedience. Henry David Thoreau protested a tax by not paying it with full knowledge that he would be sent to jail. The next day he gave a speech and coined the phrase, "Civil Disobedience". He later wrote a book on the subject, read by Mahatma (Sanskrit, "great-souled") Gandhi. Martin Luther King was influence by a 1959 visit to India and the successes of what Gandhi called "passive resistance" and the circle went full round. Gandhi also practiced law in South Africa and influenced a young lawyer named Nelson Mandela who developed a form of civil disobedience unique to South Africa. Civil disobedience is a symbolic, but nevertheless real, violation of what is considered an unjust law rather than the rejection of a whole system of laws and government. Proponents of such resistance assert that legitimate avenues of change are blocked, and they see themselves as obligated by higher principles or ideals to break a specific law. It is because civil disobedience is an acknowledged crime that it can serve as a protest. By submitting to punishment, the lawbreaker hopes to set a moral example that will provoke the majority or the government to effect a meaningful change through change in law and public policy. The major qualification is that the disobedience be nonviolent. The levels of civil disobedience created and adapted by Gandhi, King and Mandela have increasing levels of violence.

Gandhi's is the least violent. Gandhi considered the term civil disobedience inadequate for his purposes, and coined another term, Satyagraha (Sanskrit, "truth and firmness"). Gandhi's advocacy of nonviolence, known as ahimsa (Sanskrit, "noninjury"), was the expression of a way of life implicit in the Hindu religion. This method employed use of blockades and non action such as hunger strikes rather than marches although marches were sometimes used. By the Indian practice of nonviolence, Gandhi held, Great Britain too would eventually consider violence useless and would leave India.

Martin Luther King used non-violent resistance to enact change in civil liberties in the United States in the 1960's. Best exemplified by Rosa Parks riding other than at the back of the bus reserved for "coloreds" and initiated city wide protests that caused a shortage of workers throughout Birmingham, Alabama. Actively disobeying the law in order to provoke action was the method used.

Mandela also provoked action. Nelson Mandela headed the until his imprisonment in. He actually mixed some violence in his protests by determining that the protesters must protect themselves and in order to do so must arm themselves. The most notable incident was

Gandhi, King and Mandela worked in an governmental system which allowed some freedom of speech and publication or they would not have been able to organize their movements. Each faced years of protest and hardship apparently knowingly; both King and Gandhi were assassinated as a result of the reaction to the effectiveness of their protests, Mandela was jailed and only recently released. Each of these men use the basic idea of civil disobedience and adapted it to fit the needs of either the system under which they protested or the rigidity of the laws which they sought to change.