Understanding the Significance of Satyagraha in Post-Independence India: Reflections on the Role of Gandhian Social Movements

Abstract

Satyagraha opens up the avenues for reflection, for innovation, and for envisioning a more humane and meaningful future. Thus, it goes beyond the limits of resistance and winning over the opponent. It places a whole new space for deliberating and acting towards creating a just world and this is where its creativity lies. The present capitalist structure has frozen our minds due to which reliance over violence (the paraphernalia for the execution of which are ample) has been made easier. But, Satyagraha, demands finding the resources for the struggle from within, from the nature, due to which, in any context, it is possible, provided that one pushes the self to have a substantive relationship with the internal as well as the external