Violence, Non-violence and Nonviolence: Hegelian thesis, antithesis and synthesis: and its relevance to Nepali peace process. by Pritush and Sagar (2011)

Peace as stated by peace scholar Johan Galtung can be categorized into Negative peace that is a mere absence of violence (the physical violence that is direct violence of murder, killings, intimidations or beating) where as Positive peace (absence of physical, cultural and structural violence). Positive peace that would not only be the situation where there is absence of physical violence, but also the absence of cultural and structural violence. The cultural violence can be better elaborated with the hatred, fear, mistrust, racism, sexism and intolerance. The source for this cultural violence is the attitude, feelings and values of the person. In Nepal’s context, these would be the gender based violence, caste based discrimination etc.  The structural violence roots to the context, systems and structures, and its types range from the discrimination in the regional imbalances in terms of education, health or services, and those who are politically weak in the context of Nepal. This can further be seen in the context of the world peace as the world leaders claim that the peace is achieved when they trade arms and ammunition to counter the violence. Merely, that could be termed as peace when the regional imbalances and world poverty is evident.

An epitome of civil rights movement, Martin Luther King is also credited for developing the philosophy of “Nonviolence” and practicing it in the movements which yielded fruits in the US in 1950s and 60s. The philosophy of Nonviolence (as opposed to non-violence which is mere absence of violence but injustices prevail), goes a step ahead in terms of understanding violence, nonviolence and peace. With his context of civil and political rights campaigns in USA, what he was claiming there was more to do with the civil and political discrimination against the blacks. Then, there too what he was asking as peace was not merely the absence of the violence that was inflicted by the whites against blacks but more to do with the cultural as well as structural which he demanded as rights for individuals regardless of them being blacks or whites. By then, the simple demands that were put forward range from “using the same buses and beaches”. It is significant how his understanding of addressing the cultural violence and structural to achieve positive peace, with the nonviolence. This nonviolence approach that he was following was from his deep understanding generated by his scholarly reading and experience within that context in America. Dr. King was Hegelian in approach, and he elaborated nonviolence that was the synthesis of what he saw Violence being thesis, and Non-violence as anti-thesis. The clear distinction here, of Non-violence (with Hyphen) being the anti-thesis of the violence and merely, where as Nonviolence (without Hyphen) that he generated with the synthesis of analyzing the Violence and Non-violence. He concluded that the Nonviolence is peace with Justice and not only mere absence of violence. This was internationalized with his statement “an injustice anywhere is threat to justice everywhere”.       

Maoist adopted the “violent approach” to uplift the social and economic status of the people ultimately failing in this approach. What they were successful was in empowering the underprivileged people by making their voice heard in the mainstream politics. Similarly, other political parties always favored the “Non-violence approach” to which Dr King denotes the state of absence of violence thereby with existence of social injustice. The Maoist approach of violence and then rulers focusing on the non-violence theory led to the issues permanently unsolved and unresolved. If the Dr King’s suggestion is to be considered in Nepali context the Hegelian theory to analyze the thesis of violence (Maoist approach of raising arms) and non-violence (undermining issues of social justice) results nonviolence (peaceful methods to address social justice). 

The relevance and need to nonviolence has grown more as Nepalese context had gone through the violent armed conflict and then after the peaceful one. This is a historical times as these parties to the conflict can now see their approaches in Hegelian way. This in not only seeing the weakest links and mistakes of others but also to analyze what exactly they missed. This can only bring about the synthesis of the weakest links and make it a strongest links for the better future of better relations. There is much to learn to apply from the nonviolence approaches Dr. King and Mahatma Gandhi used in the 20^th century.