The idea that one should not answer harm with harm is ancient, and it appears independently in many traditions. Modern nonviolent movements drew directly on these sources.

Ahimsa

In the religions that arose in ancient India, the key idea is ahimsa, a Sanskrit word usually translated “non-harming” or “non-injury”. It means avoiding harm to living beings in action, speech and thought.

• Jainism makes ahimsa its central principle and practices it most strictly. Jain monks and nuns may sweep the path before them to avoid stepping on insects, and Jains are traditionally vegetarian.
• Hinduism counts ahimsa among the core virtues in many texts, though it also includes traditions that accept righteous war, such as the warrior's duty discussed in the Bhagavad Gita.
• Buddhism makes refraining from killing the first of the basic precepts for lay followers and stresses compassion for all beings.

Gandhi grew up in Gujarat, a region where Jain influence was strong, and he made ahimsa a foundation of his politics.

Jesus' teaching

In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5), Jesus tells his followers not to meet evil with evil: “whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also,” and “Love your enemies.” For roughly the first three centuries, many Christian writers opposed Christians serving as soldiers, though practice varied. After the Roman Empire embraced Christianity in the fourth century, most churches came to accept war under strict conditions, an approach that became just war theory (Level 7).

The peace churches

Some Christian groups kept the refusal of violence at the center of their faith. These historic peace churches include the Mennonites and other Anabaptists, the Church of the Brethren, and the Religious Society of Friends, known as Quakers. The Quaker movement began in England in the 1650s under George Fox. In 1660 Quakers declared to King Charles II that they rejected “all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatsoever.” This became known as the Quaker Peace Testimony. Quakers went on to play leading roles in the campaign to abolish slavery and in later peace work.

Thoreau and civil disobedience

In 1846 the American writer Henry David Thoreau spent a night in jail in Concord, Massachusetts, for refusing to pay a poll tax. He would not support a government that upheld slavery and was waging the Mexican-American War. His essay “Resistance to Civil Government” (1849), later known as “Civil Disobedience”, argued that individuals must not lend their support to injustice, even when the law demands it. He wrote, “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” Thoreau's idea that conscience outranks law, and that one should accept the penalty openly, influenced Tolstoy, Gandhi and King.

Tolstoy

The Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace, went through a religious crisis and came to read Jesus' teaching on non-resistance literally. In The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), he argued that true Christianity forbids all violence, including the violence of states, armies and courts. In 1908 he wrote a “Letter to a Hindu” arguing that Indians could free themselves by refusing to cooperate with British rule. A young lawyer in South Africa named Gandhi read it, wrote to Tolstoy and had the letter published. The two corresponded until Tolstoy's death in 1910.

Different roots, shared themes

These traditions differ in much, but they share a few themes: the dignity of the opponent, the link between means and ends, and the conviction that refusing to cooperate with wrong is itself a powerful act.

Worked example: four answers to a war tax

Imagine a nineteenth-century town where the government introduces a special tax to pay for a war that many residents believe is unjust. How might people from the traditions in this level respond?

• A Jain or Buddhist would begin within: refuse to wish harm on anyone, including the officials collecting the tax, and avoid any livelihood that involves killing. Ahimsa covers thought and speech as well as action.
• A Quaker would refuse to take part in the war personally, perhaps refuse the tax, and state the reasons openly and calmly. Quakers often accepted fines or the seizure of goods rather than pretend to agree, and many offered service to the sick or the poor instead.
• Thoreau would refuse to pay, accept jail, and write about why, so that the refusal becomes a public argument. His focus is the individual conscience: a person must at least not lend a hand to the wrong.
• Tolstoy would go furthest, arguing that the whole machinery of the state (the tax, the army and the courts that punish refusers) rests on violence, and that a true Christian should cooperate with none of it.

Two differences stand out. First, some responses aim mainly at keeping oneself free of wrongdoing, while others aim at changing the policy. Second, all of them involve an individual choice, but none yet involves organizing thousands of people together. The step from personal refusal to mass, organized noncooperation is exactly what Gandhi added, as the next level shows.