By Prof. Susirith Mendis

(First part of this article appeared in The Island Midweek Review of 05 June 2023)

Is civil disobedience violence or a prelude to violence?

Civil disobedience, by generally accepted definition, entails a deliberate breach of law (usually unjust), that is committed with the intention of communicating to a broad audience, including state authorities and the general public, the need for some legal or political change.

Mohandas Ramchand Gandhi internationalised the concept of non-violent struggle through non-violent civil disobedience (Sathyagraha and Sathyakriya) as an effective mode of modern political protests against the colonial rule of British in India. Gandhi’s Salt March was an act of civil disobedience – the principled refusal to comply with a law, at the risk of imprisonment or other punishment, in order to force a concession. Did the ‘aragalites’ envisage arrest and imprisonment at any time during their protests? Or were they of the firm belief that they are not breaking any law and therefore cannot and will not be arrested? Did they walk a thin red line or did they not?

Civil disobedience is a form of political protest. Martin Luther King exercised it in all his political actions by taking to the streets. But it is often emphasised that there are good pragmatic reasons for civil disobedience campaigns to adhere to non-violence.

It is useful for us to look at a recent example from France. Andreas Marcou describes this in his article titled “Violence, communication, and civil disobedience” in ‘Jurisprudence’ – an International Journal of Legal and Political Thought. He describes the events that took place in November 2018, when hundreds of thousands of French people took to the streets to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s planned tax hike for diesel and gas (déjà vu?). What began as a protest for fuel tax finally spiralled into multiple episodes of spasmodic violence. What commenced as non-violent protest within weeks of the initial protest, news outlets were brimming with pictures of burning cars, police in anti-riot gear clashing with protesters throwing projectiles, the Arc de Triomphe vandalised, and high street shops ransacked. With thousands of protesters and police officers injured, thousands were arrested and convicted, and several dead because of the protests. The current violence in Paris following the killing of a 17-year-old boy by the police is another example of the generally politically volatile French public.

Furthermore, Marcou goes on to describe how the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement that began largely as non-violent, there have been instances of clashes with police and counter-protesters, as well as looting and other damage to property. He says that the French protest and the resurgent Black Lives Matter movement “have once again brought forward debates about violence and disobedience”. Therefore, it is apparent that non-violent protest can qualify as civil disobedience. Some experts argue that some violent protests could be classified as civil disobedience. But we still need to find the ‘thin red line’ that demarcates civil disobedience from violent protests.

It is often debated that “violent civil disobedience” – though it sounds like an oxymoron – is justified in situations where “fundamentally illegitimate regimes” are violating human rights of citizens. For instance, even the killing of a genocidal dictator (such as Hitler or Pol Pot) when thousands of innocent lives are at stake, is arguably morally defensible. However, in the context of protests against a democratically elected legitimate regime, the use of violence is hardly justifiable. I would argue on the aforesaid basis, that the ‘GotaGoHome’ protests have justification only if they remained non-violent.

Justifiable violence

In self-defence

This is the most controversial and debatable aspect of violence. Often, we find that the perpetrators of violence use ‘justifiable violence’ as the excuse for their actions.

Andrea Borghini in an article in February 2019 titled “Can Violence be Just?” commences thus: “In some, probably most, circumstances it is evident that violence is unjust; but some cases appear more debatable to someone’s eyes: can violence ever be justified?

In its most basic form, violence is justified when it is personal counter-violence. If a person punches you in the face, it may seem justified to try and respond to that with counter physical violence – i.e., a form of self-defence. Borghini further argues that “In a more audacious version of the justification of violence in the name of self-defense, violence of any kind may be justified in reply to the violence of any other kind, provided there is a somewhat fair use of the violence exercised in self-defense.”

Political violence

Usually, political violence is a means to an end where the ‘end justifies the means’. Political violence by definition is said to be considered not as an end in itself. The concept of consequentialism would justify violence if the consequences were sufficiently ‘good’ to justify the harm of violence. Utilitarianism, on the other hand, would allow for the use of violence where utility or usefulness of violence is of benefit to society.

This may be countered by the argument that anarchic violence, though political, is often chaotic and directionless and the outcome or end is unclear.

Argument for the moral grounds of political violence have been enunciated by many philosophers. Political violence is justified in the situation in which the violence is employed as a necessary means to an end, in which all other ‘means’ have been exhausted and where the violence is for the restoration of democracy from authoritarianism or fascism.

Where in the spectrum of justifiable political violence does the ‘aragalaya’ fall into? Or is it justifiable in the context of an economic crisis precipitated by a multiplicity of factors – both external and internal – in a democratic sociopolitical milieu that was not authoritarian nor fascistic? Perhaps answers to these questions may lie in one’s political perspectives.

Revolutionary violence

Where in the spectrum of political violence can we put violence that has occurred during revolutions?

The major successful revolutions have been the Russian, Chinese and Cuban in our modern history. Then we have had the Iranian and Philippine revolutions; the revolutions in Nicaragua and some Latin American countries; and the ‘colour’ revolutions in the former Soviet-East European states. The latter have been qualitatively different from the former where street demonstrations have led to violence and regime change. Where do we put what happened in Iraq, Syria and Libya? In that sense, the ‘aragalaya’ has been the most non-violent with little or no state violence unleashed to save the ruling regime.

I remember reading somewhere, about Dr. Dayan Jayatilleke’s book and its theorisation of Fidel’s ethics of violence where he writes about three key elements – which are the avoidance of (i) targeting non-combatants, (ii) physical torture, and (iii) the execution of captives. This has not been true of all revolutions. The most notable being the execution of Czar Alexander and his family.

Morality and Ethics of violence

This brings us to another concept – the morality and ethics of violence. Since this article is getting longer than I first intended, I shall try to be as brief as possible. David Rapoport states that there are three prominent views on the morality of violence. They are: (1) the pacifist position, which states that violence is always immoral, and should never be used; (2) the utilitarian position – that violence can be used if it achieves a greater “good” for society; (3) a hybrid of these two views which both looks at what good comes from the use of violence, while also examining the types of violence used.

In a provocative thesis – ‘Virtuous Violence’ by Alan Page Fiske, an anthropologist at UCLA, and Tage Rai, a psychologist and post-doctoral scholar at Northwestern University, they conclude that “across cultures and history, there is generally one motive for hurting or killing: people are violent because it feels like the right thing to do. They feel morally obliged to do it.”

Can the perpetrators who attacked and killed 12 people in the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris on January 7th, 2015, justify themselves on the basis of the above argument? The two brothers who were responsible for the attack and killings later said that they “were defending Prophet Mohommed”.

Can the bombing of Afghanistan by the US Air Force with support from Britain, France, Australia, Canada and Germany, soon after the 9-11 bombing of the twin towers in New York be justified on the same basis?

Can the Russian invasion of Ukraine be justified on the basis of an existential threat to its territory and nationhood from the attempted expansion of NATO?

Can the attack on ‘aragalites’ in front of ‘Temple Trees’ justify the burning and looting of 70-odd houses all over Sri Lanka?

It can be all too easy to brand violence as evil, but increasingly, research is revealing this approach is being too simplistic and offers no effective means of reducing violence. A similar insight is drawn by the Harvard psychologist, Steven Pinker who argues that most perpetrators of violence throughout history are not pathological but motivated to act within their own moral framework.

Now the obvious question comes up. What is this ‘moral framework’? It obviously differs from culture to culture and societal norms of different communities. Is violence justified when defending the unarmed and unempowered? The issue of morality and ethics of violence is not as straightforward as we might wish to think. Each specific situation demands analysis of the morality of violence. We are left with an unanswered moral dilemma. “Is violence always wrong?”

Just War theory

The just war theory (JWT) is a doctrine of military ethics that aims to ensure that a war is morally justifiable through a series of criteria, all of which must be met for a war to be considered just.

It is said that JWT can be traced as far back as to Ancient Egypt. The Chinese justified war only as a last resort and only if declared by the rightful sovereign. But they added the fallacious argument that the success of a military campaign was sufficient proof that the war had been righteous. This is not surprising as we find that this argument seems to be in play in modern times as well. The outcome of World Wars I and II and the Treaty of Versailles and the Nuremburg Trials are classic examples of the persistence of the Chinese argument for a righteous war.

The Mahabharata offers the first written discussions of a “just war” (dharma-yuddha or “righteous war”). In it, one of five ruling brothers (Pandavas) asks if the suffering caused by war can ever be justified. A long discussion then ensues between the siblings, establishing criteria like proportionality (chariots cannot attack cavalry, only other chariots; no attacking people in distress), just means (no poisoned or barbed arrows), just cause (no attacking out of rage), and fair treatment of captives and the wounded.

From the Islamic concept of jihad (Arabic: “striving”), or holy war, comes the concept of Muslim legal theory which is the only type of just war in their ‘rule book’.

Most wars are justified on one or another rationale. Those who go to war always have a justification. The US involvement in the Vietnam war and the current war between Russia and the Ukraine are contrasting cases from the ends of the political spectrum.

In conclusion

I have tried in this short essay to discuss violence as an anthropological entity with a spectrum of opinions and justifications. The debate/discussion will last as long as civilisation lasts. As long as we as humans will have our primaeval, atavistic ‘tribal’ propensities. As long as we are divided by class, caste, religion, race and nationhood.

The ‘aragalaya’ must necessarily fall into some slot in these myriad human propensities for violence and non-violence. As I said at the outset, there are a few unique features in what happened from April to July 2022. It began with a non-violent peaceful right to protest. The candle-lit vigils – mostly of the middle and upper-middle class – that almost immediately changed into a spasm of violence in Mirihana when a bus was torched. In the minds of some of them, their intentions were violent right from the beginning. But for others, it was justified, non-violent protests against a regime that had deteriorated fast into economic chaos leading to civil unrest.

So, to which slot exactly, can we put the ‘aragalaya’ in this ‘epidemiology of violence’? How spontaneous was it? Were there other players in the shadows who played ‘puppets on strings’? Were there external sources who funded the ‘aragalaya’? If so, what were their motivations? Was ‘regime change’ on their agenda? Did the circumstances of those heady events demand a regime change?

Did our predominant culture, the Buddhist ethos prevent serious violence on the part of the ‘aragalites’, and more pertinently on the part of the regime? Why was not a single shot fired into the air, and failing which into the crowd, when the Presidential Residence gates were breached? Why did the President slink away quietly by the back door into political oblivion? Do the current attempts at supressing dissent ‘by legal means’ portend of more violence to come?

We shall have to await a detailed and deep analysis of what happened in those critical months in 2022 in Sri Lanka to make better sense of what really happened a year ago.