How much violence is justified in a revolution

What will follow certain destruction is the equally certain birth of a new society tilted towards those who are poor and exploited and far removed from exploiters and potential exploiters. We can easily buy into the teleology of revolutionary guerrillas and support long-term interests against immediate costs such as harm.

The problem is that we just do not know. We have no way of knowing whether route V violence will lead to a preferred goal U Utopia. Political predictions are hazardous at the best of time, and history teaches us that too many factors will, undoubtedly, intervene 98 between the outbreak of political violence and the realization of the objectives of this form of violence. History after all brims over with best laid plans wrecked by contingency.

Fortune, wrote Machiavalli, is the arbiter of one half of our actions. We can take precautions to protect ourselves against misfortune. To justify violence in terms of its consequences might pave the way to political hell at worst and political imprudence at best. So, we will have to look elsewhere and appeal to other sorts of arguments to see whether they provide better sorts of justification of revolutionary violence.

Can theories of political obligation and civil disobedience help us to justify revolutionary violence? In BC, an Athenian jury found Socrates guilty of impiety and of corrupting the morals of the youth and ruled that he should be put to death by drinking hemlock. Thus was the death of a man widely regarded as the veritable fountainhead of philosophical reflection and wisdom scripted. On the eve of the execution, Crito and other friends visited Socrates and urged him to escape and take refuge somewhere else in order to avoid execution.

What should I say, demands Socrates, if the community of the city-state of Athens comes before me and asks in some perplexity why I propose to run away on the eve of my execution? They have the right to ask this question, suggested the philosopher. For after all my stay in the city-state was proof enough that I was satisfied with 99 my surroundings.

They will remind me, Socrates tells Crito, that more than any other Athenian I stayed at home and hardly ventured out, apart from the one time I went to the Isthmus, to see the sights, or when I served in the army. They will hark back, he said, to the days when I showed absolutely no interest in knowing another city or other laws.

Above all, they will tell me, Socrates admonishes his friend, that at the trial I could have chosen exile but I chose death. A complex argument on why we obey the laws of the state is embedded in the heart of the Socratic response. Continued residence in a country and obedience to laws indicates that we tacitly accept the state as legitimate and as worthy of being obeyed. If we are unhappy, we can always opt for another country, another society and another set of laws.

In the subsequent part of the response, Socrates noted that the state had begotten, nurtured and educated him just like a parent. For this, its citizens owed it gratitude and fidelity in the same way as one owes fidelity to parents. The Socratic notion of political obligation anticipated contemporary explanations of why we obey the state by several centuries.

Political theorists tell us that we are bound to obey the laws of the state simply because we accept benefits offered by the institution.

We participate in a number of transactions within the framework set by the state. It is true that for the most part we obey the laws of the state we are born into, or the state we choose to live in, without greatly thinking or agonizing about it.

But, there comes a time when many of us wonder why we should obey the laws of a state that has been found wanting. Why should we pay taxes when we know that massive thefts of public money line, nay pad the pockets of the representatives we elected to stand-in for us, and our interests, in legislative assemblies? Why should we obey laws of a government that watches in silence while thousands of its citizens are massacred and rendered homeless in communal and caste riots? Why should we obey a state that subjects its own citizens to triple disadvantage?

And, why should we obey a state that enacts laws not worthy of being obeyed? The dilemma to obey or not to obey a palpably immoral and unjust law was powerfully posed by Sophocles — BC in his formidable play Antigone.

This act of disobedience has a history, as most acts of disobedience do. After the death of Oedipus, his two sons Eteocles and Polynieces battled for the throne, and both died during the course of the war. Their uncle Creon, brother of their mother Jocasta, ascended the throne of Thebes. He ordered that the defender of the city state, Eteocles, should be buried with honour.

But no funeral rites should be performed for the aggressor Polynieces. For their life is not of to-day or yesterday, but from all time, and no man knows when they were first put forth.

Morality and the laws of God override man-made laws in every instance. If laws violate the precept of natural justice, and if our conscience tells us that they are amoral or immoral, we have the natural right to follow the dictates of morality and disobey these laws.

Interestingly, civil disobedience does not imply that citizens should renege on political obligation or refuse to obey the state. On the contrary, for Gandhi, we must respect the legal system in the country. Nevertheless, we have the right to protest against a specific law that we are convinced is unjust in some way, or because it violates our considered moral convictions.

What we do not do is to challenge the system of law. Therefore, we must readily accept punishment with good grace. For Gandhi, moral judgement is infinitely higher than any law made by human beings. So we are perfectly right in disobeying a law that contravenes natural justice. The philosophy of satyagraha in Gandhian thought provides the foundation for civil disobedience against specific laws enacted by the state and against undesirable practices within the community.

They have to prepare themselves for the task with dedication and humility. More significantly, the aim of satyagraha is not to humiliate or defeat the opponent but to convert him or her. Can civil disobedience help us justify revolutionary violence? Perhaps not, because the theory presumes that the state is legitimate. We will have to turn to other quarters to understand the political significance of rejecting the state.

Most political theorists concur that the only time violence can be justified is in cases of self-defence or defence of others. We possess the fundamental and inalienable right not to be harmed, injured or killed. The corresponding proposition is as follows: if we injure or kill the person who intends to do us harm, we cannot be held culpable.

Our right to life is of such overwhelming significance that it overrides the right to life of those who threaten us. Their right to life and to bodily integrity has simply lapsed. But while defending ourselves, we should take care that we do not use violence in excess of the violence used against us. Just that much, no more, measure for measure, not a penny less, nor a penny more.

These arguments, which come mainly from the literature on just war, focus on the proportionality of violence used in primarily self-defence. The right to defend oneself against attack has been reiterated by the Indian Supreme Court. The right of private defence, ruled the court, is designed to serve a social purpose and deserves to be fostered within prescribed limits. The court went further than upholding the right to self-defence.

This duty, the court stated, is owed by man to society of which he is a member, and the preservation of which is both his interest and his duty. The basic presumption of the ruling is that individuals can use violence to defend themselves and others against murderous attacks, only and only if no functionary of the state is around to protect them at that point of time and space.

The right to self-defence is an individual right that can be used only in limited circumstances. It follows that individual right to self-defence can be extended to a collective right of self-defence in, for example, cases of ethnic cleansing only and only if state structures have collapsed.

Whether self-defence is a collective right in cases of genocide or ethnic cleansing, when the state has not collapsed but is merely inactive, is debatable.

Whether this right can be used to register protest or in pursuance of a project to transform the state is even more debatable. The right to self-defence is not a right that a collective, an ethnic group or a revolutionary party can exercise against a state.

Arguably, revolutionary violence can be justified only and only if the state, which shapes the political context in which we live and work, has betrayed its mandate or violated the principles that grant it legitimacy in the first place. States are authorized to rule for specific purposes, notably the well-being of the people and protection of their interests. When states fail to discharge the mandate that has given them authority, arguably people have reason to revolt against the state.

This reasoning goes back to antiquity. In Santi parva , the twelfth episode of the epic Mahabharata , after the Great War the patriarch Bhishma tutors the new monarch of Hastinapur, Yudhishtar, on the responsibilities of the ruler.

Yudhishtar, convulsed with grief at the massive loss of lives, including that of his brother Karna, his sons and his nephews during the war, agonizes whether it is worthwhile to take up the reins of kingship. What he wonders is the point of power, if the path to this goal is drenched with the blood of his own people? He is advised to seek the advice of the patriarch Bhishma, master of the art of kingship who since the Great War has lain on a bed of vertically planted arrows, waiting for an appropriate time to order his own death.

Bhishma wends a leisurely way through advice on statecraft, and knowledge of geography, metaphysics, the cosmos, mythology, genealogy, history and Sankya and Yoga philosophy, to finally arrive at the question of what the ruler owes his people. In section LIX of the Santi Parva , Yudhishtar asks Bhishma about the origins of kingship and of the symbol of power the danda or the sceptre.

The reply to this question is familiar to all students of political theory, the deterioration of the original habitat of human beings that is the state of nature, and the social contract that rescues them from an increasingly insecure state, though the terminology is different.

The commencement of sovereignty, according to Bhishma, begins with the degeneration of human beings, and their inability and their unwillingness to abide by the laws of dharma. All men used to protect each other righteously. Virtue began to decline. When they became subject to lust, another passion, named anger, soon soiled them.

Once subject to wrath, they lost all consideration of what should be done and what should not. The pre-political state of nature was not asocial, what it lacked was a ruler who could mediate and rule in conflict situations according to righteous laws.

In another space, and at a time much later in history, John Locke was to similarly speak of the need for a state that could interpret and implement the law of nature. Beset by greed, men in the pre-political state began to devour each other, a classic case of the big fish devouring small fishes — matsyanyaya.

Overcome by fear, and wracked by uncertainty, a few inhabitants of the state of nature assembled and via divine intervention made certain compacts to regulate relationships with each other. Very soon, they realized that without a king who wielded the symbol of sovereignty and chastisement, the sceptre, they would be destroyed. Covenants without swords, as Hobbes was to write later, are mere words.

The Gods, says Bhishma to Yudhishtar, then created the institution of kingship for one main objective, the protection of the people. At first glance, the concept of dharma is not very helpful, since dharma — understood basically as righteous conduct — applies as much to the individual as it does to society, and as much to inter-social relations as to the foundations of law and governance. In the Mahabharata , suggests philosopher Chaturvedi Badrinath, who has translated and interpreted the epic, concepts are not defined, because definitions are by their nature arbitrary.

A concept is elaborated, understood and manifested in terms of its attributes or Lakshanas. The first property of Raj-dharma, prabhavaya , is that of nurturing, cherishing, providing more amply, endowing more richly, prospering, increasing and enhancing, in short providing for well-being and flourishing of the subjects. The second property of Raj-dharma is dharna , or holding-together, supporting, sustaining and bringing together all human beings. This particular aspect of Raj-dharma emanates from the philosophy of non-dualism or Advaita.

According to this branch of Indian philosophy, human beings are neither separate from the divine, nor from each other. The other is a part of me as much as I am a part of her. It follows that if I hurt someone, I hurt myself; I violate my own integrity.

In contrast to individualism, the Indian political philosophy tradition endorses a social and relational concept of the self.

In order to complete ourselves as human beings, we have to recognize our connectedness with each other. This Raj-dharma must ensure. In political terms, the concept of dharana implies that a righteous king cannot sunder non-dualism by making artificial divisions between those who belong and those who do not.

The third property of Raj-dharma is that of non-violence or ahimsa. In Indian philosophy, the notion of violence is closely connected to ignorance about our own nature and of our relationship to others and to the world.

Enlightenment dissipates violence and enables us to choose between our propensity to violence and non-violence. Non-violence, therefore, cannot be seen as cowardice.

Human beings make ethical choices when they chose non-violence over violence. In the aftermath of the Great War that caused suffering on an unprecedented scale, the Santi Parva places great importance on non-violence as the highest dharma and as the highest truth. These three injunctions of Raj-dharma are part of a larger mission of the ruler. The king has to protect all creatures, even if he finds them odious. That is his rule has to be impartial. He is not expected to make any distinction whatsoever between his subjects.

He protects them from external impediments such as threats of violence, but he also provides the preconditions of material flourishing. More significantly, if the purpose of the state is to protect the small fish from the big fish, the ruler must certainly not turn into the big fish himself. On the contrary, power is meant to protect the weak. The king who follows the path of dharma is the creator; the king who is sinful is the destroyer.

The ruler should beware of exploiting the weak, for their eyes can scorch the earth. Such eyes burn the race to its very roots … Weakness is more powerful than even the greatest Power, for that Power which is scorched by Weakness becomes totally exterminated. In injustice, a great destruction comes upon the king. The chief concern of dharmic political thought is the source of power, the objective for which power is exercised and the limits to power.

It follows that if these limits are breached, revolt is justified. When dharma becomes adharma or that which is not dharma, or when oppression and violence follow abuse of power, then people who have entered into a contract with the ruler via divine intervention have the right to emancipate themselves from a rule that has not lived up to its own mandate.

The rules of dharma are also rules on the limits of power. The rules of dharma are also the rights of the ruled to expect that the state will protect them without fear or favour.

The notion of protection in return for obedience looms large in theories of the social contract authored in seventeenth century England as well. Thomas Hobbes — and John Locke — argued that free men establish the state for certain purposes and objectives. Aristotle had told us that the state is the natural habitat of man. The social contract theorists performed a spectacular U-turn in political theory and suggested that the natural habitat of man is the state of nature.

The state is an artificial creation, established to perform certain duties. Conversely, men are obliged to obey the state up to the point it abides by its mandate. Once the state lapses on its responsibilities, political obligation dissolves.

Locke grants to full members of the political community the power to remove the government if it does not abide by the terms of the original contract. Governments are dissolved when the legislature, or the prince, act contrary to the trust that the people have vested in them. Revolutions do not happen because of little mismanagement in public affairs. What people will not tolerate is abuse of power. Great Mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient Laws and all the slips of human frailty will be born by the People , without mutiny or murmur.

Thomas Hobbes is considered to be a theorist of the absolutist state rather than a theorist of democracy. And yet even he grants to his individual the right to disobey the state if it violates its mandate. According to Hobbes, self-preservation, the basic instinct of human beings, is the chief reason for the establishment of the state in the first place. Accordingly, men retain the right to resist certain acts that will indisputably harm them.

If the sovereign commands a man to kill, wound or maim himself, resist assaults or refrain from the use of food, air, medicine or any other item without which he cannot live, he has the liberty to disobey these commands. A subject has also the right not to go to war even if the sovereign commands him to do so, provided he can send someone else in his place, and provided the commonwealth is not under grave threat.

We see that there is more to self-preservation in the Hobbesian vision than the negative right not to be harmed. The sovereign cannot withhold any good that might harm the individual. The two sets of obligations, which serve to limit the power of the Hobbesian sovereign, correspond to what later came to called negative and positive obligations of the state.

There are certain things a sovereign must not do to his subjects, for example torture or imprison them. And there are certain things that he must do for them: ensure that they do not die of thirst or malnutrition, lack of fresh air or uncured disease. Both these obligations are built into the contract that sets up the institution of sovereignty and endows it with legitimacy, and the ability to command obedience.

Hobbes goes further than this and writes the end of sovereign power is the safety of the people. That is the sovereign is obliged to protect the gains that men obtain through their own industry, on condition that that these gains have been acquired lawfully, and as long as economic activity does not harm the commonwealth. The Leviathan, in other words, must respect the property of his subjects. You can be arrested, imprisoned, or killed for engaging in acts of resistance — especially violent resistance.

It is not a trivial choice to challenge an oppressive state. Denying the right to resistance poses a far greater threat to a decent society than embracing it. It would mean that people would be expected to passively endure the most extreme injustice. Slavery, genocide, apartheid — all of these would have to be tolerated by bystanders and endured by victims. To deny the right to resistance collapses the very notion that we have rights at all, because they would ultimately rest on the discretion of those with power.

But political violence is the sort of thing that democracy is supposed to prevent. Some have argued that democracy transforms, as if by alchemy , the irreconcilable antagonism between enemies into the civilised disagreement of rivals. We cannot be naive about democracy. The idea that political violence has no place in democratic politics relies on the assumption that democratic states are incapable of severe injustice.

This is accompanied by a dogmatic belief that severe injustices — if they do occur — will be remedied by the exercise of voting, the protection of individual rights by the court, or, at the extreme, civil disobedience. This faith is misplaced and obviously so. Just look at racism in the US — it persists despite emancipation, despite the civil rights movement, and despite the election of Barack Obama.

The protests in have been about the structural injustice that black Americans face on a daily basis. Racism is a persistent and severe injustice that has yet to be resolved by democratic processes. The veneration of non-violence does not engage with the deeply entwined relationship between peaceful resistance and armed struggle especially among black people in the Americas.

It excludes the contribution made by people from Toussaint Louverture, the leader of the Haitian Revolution in 18th century, to the Black Panthers movement in the s, and you cannot tell the real story of emancipation with them. This is not a call to romanticise political violence. Far from it. Violence is the last resort of desperate people and it is often less effective than non-violent alternatives. But it cannot be dismissed out of hand or erased from history because it makes us uncomfortable.

To those who argue that this reasoning also justifies violence from the police and paramilitaries, that position does not stand up to scrutiny. In the first place, it pretends that violence has not been unleashed already.