Remembering
the Nonviolent
September 11
PressInfo #
226
September
10, 2005
By
Chaiwat
Satha-Anand,
TFF Associate
Faculty of
Political Science, Thammasat University, Bangkok
Vice-President, Strategic Nonviolene Committee, National
Security Council
Member, National Reconciliation Commission
On September 11, 2001, nineteen men
turned 4 commercial airplanes with passengers into
weapons of terror attacking cities in the US, killing
more than 3,000 people. "That crystal blue morning,"
Craig R. Whitney wrote in the introduction to The 9/11
Investigation (2004), "changed the world, shocking the
United States into realizing that it had been drawn into
a global war with brutal suddenness."
The US attacked Afghanistan to root
out "Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime", and then
went into Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein, claiming that
his regime possessed weapons of mass destruction, among
other things. The Taliban were ousted, Saddam Hussein
arrested, and no weapon of mass destruction were found in
Iraq, yet "the larger war and the terrorist threat to the
American homeland continued unabated." In a way, all this
is because at the time of the horrible attack, the US
was, and presently continues to be, "led by a president
persuaded that the US had no choice but to strike at the
terrorist evil before it struck again." (Whitney 2004:
ix)
There are many ways to remember the
deaths of the people killed on that fateful day &endash;
9/11. They could be remembered together with between
3,125 to 3,620 Afghan civilians killed in the first ten
months of the war in Afghanistan which began on October
7, 2001. Or they could be remembered with the 2,083
soldiers from different countries, 1,887 of them
Americans, who have sacrificed their lives in Iraq war
from March 2003 until January 31,2005. And they could
also be remembered together with 24,865 civilians who had
died since the Iraq war began. Among these, 37% or 9,200
were killed by American soldiers, while 9% or 2,237 were
killed by the insurgents, according to the UK-based Iraq
Body Count Group. (The Wall Street Journal, August 5,
2005)
The other way to meaningfully
remember the fates of those who have fallen victims to
violence, civilians and soldiers alike, would be to
refuse to be led by the desperate belief that the world
had no choice but to sink deeper into the violent inferno
in its attempt to put an end to violence.
To honor the memory of those who
were killed on 9/11, and because of 9/11, it is important
to free the world from a sense of manufactured despair by
remembering another 9/11 which took place 99 years ago
with an enormously powerful legacy that have changed the
world through nonviolence in the direction of furthering
freedom.
Nonviolent
9/11
On August 22, 1906, the Transvaal
government in South Africa under the British Empire gave
notice of a new legislation requiring all Indians, Arabs
and Turks to register with the government. Fingerprints
and identification marks on the person's body were to be
recorded in order to obtain a certificate of
registration. Those who failed to register could be
fined, sent to prison or deported. Even children had to
be brought to the Registrar from their fingerprint
impressions. At the time, there were less than 100,000
Indians in South Africa. But in Transvaal, there was an
Indian lawyer working with a Muslim company, and his name
was Mohandas K. Gandhi.
On September 11, 1906, Gandhi
called a mass meeting of some 3,000 Transvaal Indians to
find ways to resist the Registration Act. He felt the Act
was the embodiment of "hatred of Indians" which if
accepted would "spell absolute ruin for the Indians in
South Africa", and therefore resisting it is a "question
of life and death."
Among these 3,000 people attending
the meeting was one Sheth haji Habib, an old Muslim
resident of South Africa. Deeply moved after listening to
Gandhi's speech, Sheth Habib said to the congregation
that the Indians had to pass this resolution with God as
witness and could never yield a cowardly submission to
such a degrading legislation. Gandhi wrote in his
Satyagraha in Africa (1928), that " He then went on
solemnly to declare in the name of God that he would
never submit to that law and advised all present to do
likewise." Though Sheth Habib was known to be a man of
temper, his action on September 11 was significant
because of his decision to act in defiance of an unjust
law and willingness to suffer the consequences in a
spiritually-endowed fight for justice in the name of
God.
Gandhi was taken aback by the
Muslim's suggestion. He wrote, " I did not come to the
meeting with a view to getting the resolution passed in
that manner, which redounds to the credit of Sheth haji
Habib as well as it lays a burden of responsibility upon
him. I tender my congratulations to him. I deeply
appreciate his suggestion, but if you adopt it you too
will share his responsibility.
On that day, September 11, 1906, in
South Africa, the Indian nonviolent movement was born.
Gandhi later called his Indian movement: "Satyagraha" or
" the Force which is born of Truth and Love or
non-violence." This movement went on to free 300 million
people from the power of the British Empire and gave the
twentieth century a most remarkable demonstration of the
power of nonviolent struggle.
Remembering
the Nonviolent 9/11
But what does it mean 99 years
later to "remember September 11, 1906"?
I would say that it means
remembering that nonviolent alternative was born in a
people's fight against injustice. It means remembering
that for Gandhi, it is Truth Force that both binds people
together and energize them in their course of struggle
against the mighty empire. That is why invoking God as
witness in this case reflects the degree to which a
person is willing to sacrifice his/her all for "Truth" or
God. It also means remembering the Muslim role in
fostering such an alternative at the advent of Satyagraha
or Gandhi's nonviolence.
Most importantly, perhaps,
"remembering September 11, 1906" means that people could
choose to reconstitute themselves as members of a
community of memory where once ordinary people decided to
do something extraordinary by freeing themselves from
despair and change their world with nonviolence.
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