Principled nonviolence is the nonviolence of those who feel that it is a calling, as opposed to strategic nonviolence. In this view nonviolence is not merely a strategy nor the recourse of the weak, it is a positive force that does not manifest its full potential until it is adopted on principle. Often such practitioners feel that it expresses something fundamental about human nature, about whom they wish to become as individuals or as a people.

To adopt principled nonviolence is not a quick and easy decision one can make through logic but a slow, perhaps lifetime endeavor. Nonetheless, we focus on that kind of nonviolence because we think it has the potential for creating permanent, long-term change, ultimately for rebuilding many of our institutions on a more humane and sustainable foundation. In the long run nonviolence is, as Gandhi said, an “experiment with truth.” We have all to try that experiment in the way that seems best to us, and in the end the world will need all our experiences to arrive at a new order that we all desire.

Probably the most important lesson we have learned since – and from – Gandhi is that nonviolence is a positive force. It is a way to alter violent situations and influence others by persuasion rather than coercion, a way to resolve differences so that all parties grow in the process as human beings – and become more open rather than more closed to each other

Almost everyone today is familiar with the principle that “the ends don’t justify the means.” It is this recognition that differentiates a principled nonviolence-based effort, which is a mutual learning process for change, from a power struggle. “Means are ends in the making,” Gandhi explained, meaning that the kind of means we use – violent or nonviolent, with secrecy or transparency, democratic or authoritarian, deceivable or truthful – are already building the foundations of the society we want to live in.  While some would say means are just means to an end, to the principled nonviolent actor they are, he said, “everything.” In the case of a revolutionary struggle, for example, he held that “violent revolution will bring violent swaraj [independence].” Nobel Prize-winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel was just as emphatic: “Nonviolent action implants, by anticipation within the very process of change itself, the values to which it will ultimately lead … it does not sow peace by means of war.”

See Also:
Strategic Nonviolence
Ahimsa
Nonviolence