In 1906, while working as a lawyer in South Africa, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi began to employ his principles of Satyagraha or “insistence on truth”.  Satyagraha was Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violent resistance to civil government and as part of Satyagraha he set forth several rules for non-violent civil resistance.  These rules included prohibitions on the harboring of anger, on retaliation, on insulting your enemies, and he even instructs people to defend their enemies from the violent attacks of anyone.  Gandhi continued to employ his philosophy of non-violence throughout the rest of his life and through its use successfully resisted British rule in India until 1947[1], when India and Pakistan gained independence from the British Empire. 

            We can look at the Mahatma Gandhi’s rules for non violent civil resistance as a sort of blue print for widespread, substantial change.  Through the use of tax resistance, voting to abstain and the newer ‘Gandhigiri’ protests, while following Gandhi’s rules, I believe that real change is possible and maybe even likely. 

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[1] The British ruled India, also known as British Raj, for 110 years from 1857 until 1947