Future Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Healing Power of Nonviolence

One of the many ways that nonviolence works on a deep level is to heal the relationship between oppressor and oppressed. In the Richard Attenborough film, Mahatma Gandhi famously remarked that he did not just want the British to leave, he wanted them to leave “as friends.” Which is precisely what happened, and the friendship lasts today.

A demonstration of this continued respect from Gandhi’s former adversarial regime came last week when the self-proclaimed future prime minister of the U.K. Gordon Brown visited India, laid a wreath at a Gandhi memorial in Delhi, and praised Gandhi as an inspiring “hero.”


Those who still argue for the efficacy of violence in overthrowing an occupying regime often do not take into consideration how the means of revolution will affect the future of their people. Take for instance Algeria, usually held up as a model by advocates of violent resistance. Some 50 years after a million-casualty insurgency and a civil war, Algeria still has awful relations with the French. As Gandhi remarked, “violent revolution brings violent swaraj (regime, or self-rule).” Gandhi believed that the ends are contained in the means.

On a related note, Freedom House recently conducted a survey of 67 countries where dictators have fallen since 1972, and found that nonviolent uprisings led to higher levels of democracy and freedom.

Further reading:

• “How Freedom is Won: From Civic Struggle to Durable Democracy”