Talk:Satyagraha

Comment
Entry should also mention Martin Luther King and learning of Satyagraha from Gandhians in the 1950s, using it as an extention of Jesus' 'love in action' put into a new concept. Also might refer to new excellent work from Center for Nonviolence education, written by Michael N. Nagler.

Idea of Stayagraha is 'truth force' which King used in context of Jesus' lessons. (See both Stride Toward Freedom by King, and Hope or Terror on METTA website)

Noma119

Bouncing from pacifist,to pacifism, to Gandhi where I clipped up this:

Gandhi's principle of satyagraha (Sanskrit: truth + grasping firmly or holding onto it), often roughly translated as "passive resistance"...

Very roughly.How on Earth does truth become passive and grasping firmly become resistance?

---I want to reinforce this last comment. In one of his essays (can't recall which right now) Gandhi *specifically* repudiates the idea that satyagraha is passive resistance. the point of satyagraha (which is far more profitably translated as 'soul force') is that it is *not* passive. it is nonviolent force designed to generate a specific outcome, and the reason Gandhi advocates it is not only because it is nonviolent but because he believed it to be almost universally effective. he did *not* believe the same thing of passive resistance--in fact, he quite vigorously disliked passive resistance.

The translation stopped me dead in my tracks. Satyagraha is possibly a neologism of Gandhi's. I think truth+force is the way it gets translated. People writing the several articles have not got a good handle on Gandhi.

Yes there are too many quotes. But I like'm, but, they got to be pruned, stabalized, and then pruned again. They should go at the end of the article.Letters with Tolsoy are in the public domain possibly. It might be a large article, if we look at this as a serious philosophy, which created the world's largest democracy, and showed the meaning of will to the British Empire. There is a lack of subtlety, in the way the wikipedia talk pages handle Gandhi. Based on how cruical he is to entries in biographies, philosophy, history, we can free up some wikipedians for brilliant prose if we provide an authoritative shorter entry.

Two16Two16

IMHO, somebody should put the bibliographic reference of these texts from Gandhi. From where they were taken from? This is important, for reference and information (e.g, I am interested in reading more about it, it would be nice to start looking for this books). 161.148.79.107

The copyright of all writings of Mahatma Gandhi vests with M/s Navajivan Trust, P.O. Navajivan, Ahmedabad-380014.

Section on "Economic Satyagraha" seems like a promotional link.
The section on "Economic Satyagraha" doesn't seem encyclopedic in the least. I checked the literature linked by this section, and the connection to Gandhian satyagraha is spurious. I propose cleanup or deletion.

68.57.139.189 (talk) 21:45, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Why is using satyagraha as one of the foundations for the development of an ideology a fake? I propose getting your fact straight before casting assertions! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.243.35.225 (talk) 08:11, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Origins of Satyagraha
replaced "earlier" with "various" since Jesus and everything else listed came AFTER the Upanishads, Jainism, etc, not before. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.160.221.55 (talk) 06:58, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

important question: Gandhis relation to Jesus
Did Gandhi explicitly relate to Jesus, especially his law "love your enemies" anywhere in his writings or outline of Satyagraha? Just started studying, so excuse me if the question is dumb.

--Jesusfreund 20:06, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

---

I read the same thing about Muhammed's influence on him:

"I become more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet, the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers and his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle."

http://playandlearn.org/ramadhan/YouMustKnowThisMan.htm

Yes, Gandhi often said that Jesus was an influence on him. He was particularly devoted to the Sermon of the Mount, which he read frequently, and often quoted the phrases "Love your enomies" and "retaliate not against evil." (His favorite Christian hymns were Lead, Kindly Light and Abide With Me. Tom129.93.17.139 19:16, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

---

Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You seems to have been a major influence. The book is largely focused on the message of the Sermon on the Mount. JSteinbeck2 (talk) 14:46, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

---

Just to add: When Gandhi died, among his very few personal possessions were only three books: the Bhagavad Gita, the Koran, and the Bible.JSteinbeck2 (talk) 09:52, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Messy?
I think this article needs a clean-up tag. Doesn't look encyclopedic at all. Discuss? User:Borisblue


 * Agreed. It's basically just a few long Gandhi quotes. Cleanup... Jebba 00:58, 25 July 2005 (UTC)


 * also, and more importantly i think, the quotes in the 'civil disobedience' and 'fasting' sections are never actually identified AS quotes. if you just skip down to one of those sections (which i did when first coming to this article) it sounds like an incredibly POV writer, not like a quote. (oops, that was me --dan 15:09, 4 July 2006 (UTC))

Not "messy", just incomplete!
We're not told in this article what Satyagraha is. Nor are we treated to a history of the concept and its uses by Gandhi and others.

And to we have a system of diacritics on Wikipedia, so we can distinguish between long and short vowels? Tom —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.93.17.139 (talk) 19:20, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Non-possession
Could someone familiar with this topic do some work on the above article? I recreated it after it was speedy deleted, but I am unfamiliar with this area and only modified what the original author had written. Thanks! KnightLago (talk) 05:24, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Non-possession is not the same as neither poverty nor posperity. I realized that an entry needed to be written to clarify the topic upon encountering the text. --Ellesmelle (talk) 01:44, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Ghandi's actual practice?
The article should talk about the movement that Ghandi led in India, and its effects, victories and failures. -Pgan002 (talk) 05:59, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Not a portmanteau
Just pointing out that "satyagraha" is not a portmanteau, it's a regular compound word. In accordance with Sanskrit sandhi, the short a at the end of satya and the initial a in agraha result in a long ā. --93.105.206.29 (talk) 13:24, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Pronunciation
Shouldn't the pronunciation be /sʌ'tja:grʌhʌ/, then? Hieronymus Illinensis (talk) 06:52, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

The opera
Philip Glass composed an opera called Satyagraha, loosely based on life of Ghandi. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.2.132.119 (talk) 19:58, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Generalize the header about genocide-related views
Under the header "Satyagraha and the Jewish Holocaust" the text also contains views about possible attack on India by Japan. Not only about Jews and Germany.

Since most Indians were not Jews at the time, and the citations are still arguably somehow interconnected, it would seem more fitting to rename the header to a more general header that could incorporate both the Jewish Holocaust and the views about the possible Japan attack on India. Maybe it could be called "Satyagraha in relation to genocide" or something like that. Comments are welcome. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Naxa (talk • contribs) 10:36, 7 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Good point. I renamed the section according to Naxa's suggestion since nobody had a better idea so far. &mdash; Sebastian 15:12, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Distinction from civil resistance
Currently, the article begins "Satyagrah [...] is a particular form of nonviolent resistance or civil resistance." But how is it particular? What distinguishes it from civil resistance? As far as I know, Gandhi himself used the two terms synonymously; preferring S. because it is positive, as opposed to a "non"-word. The gist of the article seems to be that S. is "civil resistance like what they did in India". If that is so, maybe we should treat this article as if its title were "History of civil resistance in India", and merge the rest into civil resistance? &mdash; Sebastian 15:12, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Of course, the distinction we can make is that Satyagrah comes with a distinct set of rules for practitioners. I was in a bit in a hurry right now and didn't think this through; please bear with me for now; I'll get back to it soon. &mdash; Sebastian 15:23, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

"Nonviolent resistance" in the definition
In addition to the lack of a distinctive definition mentioned above, there is another question I have about the lead: the addition of "nonviolent resistance" in the lead sentence seems superfluous to me, given that civil resistance itself is currently defined by means of nonviolent resistance, so that it would be impossible to have the former without the latter. Can I just remove this? &mdash; Sebastian 15:12, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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Jainism-related image spamming
I've not quite figured out what's been going on with the Jainism-related image spamming and edit-warring (and the larger Jainism-related content). It all seems to be part of Sockpuppet investigations/JBM1971, but maybe someone will offer another perspective at some point. --Ronz (talk) 04:30, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

To help with the cleanup, there are two images and a few articles involved. Starting a list: --Ronz (talk) 15:31, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The SPI was moved to Sockpuppet investigations/Atmnn
 * Images:    --Ronz (talk) 17:56, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * The SPI was moved to Sockpuppet investigations/Atmnn
 * Images:    --Ronz (talk) 17:56, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * The SPI was moved to Sockpuppet investigations/Atmnn
 * Images:    --Ronz (talk) 17:56, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * The SPI was moved to Sockpuppet investigations/Atmnn
 * Images:    --Ronz (talk) 17:56, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * The SPI was moved to Sockpuppet investigations/Atmnn
 * Images:    --Ronz (talk) 17:56, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Images:    --Ronz (talk) 17:56, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Picture on Satyagraha
Hello!

I drew a picture on Satyagraha. It is already used in the german article (Satyagraha). This is the English version of it.

It is a possible interpretation of the Satyagraha doctrine directly derived from the texts of Gandhi. There also exists a photography of a "graphic training aid" from Sabarmati Ashram (see File:Mg-satyagraha.jpg) - but there can be problems with freedom of panorama and so on. So this SVG graphic can be an alternative! :-)

Is it good enough for the english article?

Friendly greetings, Quark48 (talk) 20:45, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't keep up on image-policy, but my understanding is that an image like that is usually rejected on content policy (WP:OR and WP:POV especially) and accessibility issues. --Ronz (talk) 01:37, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

Okay, thank you! So I understood, that a picture like this has to come from an "official" source. Quark48 (talk) 15:36, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I said nothing about it being from an "official" source. I suggest you seek help with editors that specialize in image-policy. --Ronz (talk) 15:52, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

Did you mean Image use policy? Or where can I ask specialists? It would be great if you could help me here! I am new to the english Wikipedia. :-) Quark48 (talk) 18:49, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't know where to find help on such issues, but Wikipedia talk:Image use policy certainly looks like a good place to try next. --Ronz (talk) 19:14, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

Okay, I'll try Teahouse! :-) Quark48 (talk) 20:48, 22 February 2019 (UTC)