Satyagrah A New Phrase For The Spiritual Approach On The...

Amidst the ongoing campaigns to challenge British encroachments on the rights of Indians in early 20th century South Africa, Mohandas Karamachand Gandhi coined a new phrase for the spiritual approach he took to his political work: satyagraha. Gene Sharp has written perhaps the most concise explanation of Satyagraha. â€Å"Satyagraha,† he writes, â€Å"is best translated as the firmness which comes from reliance on truth, and truth here has connotations of essence of being.† Sharp’s description of satyagraha as constituting, on a basic level, notions of â€Å"truth† and â€Å"essence of being† requires that we treat satyagraha as site of inquiry rather than as an explanation. Firstly, we should interrogate Gandhian ideas about truth and being and, secondly, we should examine how these ways of knowing and ways of being were reinterpreted for the black freedom struggle in the United States. In this way, it’s possible to break the concept of sat yagraha into its constituent parts: what does â€Å"firm being† mean for Gandhi? What about truth? And how do these religious ways of knowing square with Gandhi’s politics? Such questions gain clarification by examining the deep influence of Jain ideas on the Hindu Gandhi. Growing up in the city of Rajkot in the Gujarat region of Western India, Gandhi was surrounded by Jains and Jain ideas, but a wealthy Jain jeweler named Raychand inspired Gandhi to refract fundamental religious questions about being and truth through the prism of Jain principles. â€Å"What is