Role Of Obedience In Civil Disobedience

Tuan Nguyen
Professor Jill Moreno Ikari
ENG 101
11 October 2013
Obedience and Civil Disobedience
INTRODUCTION
20XX, the world has gone through dramatic changes. World War III largely devastated the whole world. The word “sovereign nation” doesn’t exist since most nations were merge into a large, totalitarian world government. It is one the darkest age since the dawn of human history. Technological capabilities has reached such an advanced state that human hardly need to serve themselves, everything is automated and instantly accomplished by machines. Let’s take a closer look at a normal citizen. Eric, a man living in that society, is on his way to workplace. There’re surveillance screens everywhere watching every steps, every moves of
“Civil” in Thoreau’s writing means associating with the state, hence the whole phrase means the resistance to the state. Thoreau simply wants to encourages his fellow men to stand up and resist the government that enacts unjust laws, by whatever method, this includes both non-violent and violent. On the other hand, Mahatma Gandhi, the person who led a series of non-violence movements in India through its eventual independence after World War II, interpreting the world “civil” differently. “Civil” in Gandhi’s sense means peaceful, non-violent resistance. Born in a deeply religious Hindu family in India, Gandhi was a highly educated man. Experience the atrocities and unfairness in British Raj (Colonial British India), he was passionate to hold the belief that one day India would gain independence. Gandhi coined the term Satyagraha. He explains: “Truth (satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force” (Chaudhary, Anju, and William 3). The term can be synonymously understood as “insistence on truth”, which indicates the spiritual resistance of the Indian people. Gandhi first came up with this principle while he was living in South Africa, at the same time, he successfully organized the first successful civil disobedience protests against the discrimination policy of the South African government
Its success depends on many factors. The first foremost reason is the number of willingly participants. He commit his act individually, not collective therefore it was in vain to change anything. On the contrary, Gandhi has a whole nation that is in favor of his philosophy. In addition, exclusive non-violent disobedience if turns out to be successful would cost so many lives and time as in the case of Gandhi’s struggle for India independence. In reality, it turns out the combination of both violent and non-violent form