DBQ

Non-violence works by not attacking or retaliating against the person/group that is persecuting you. Non-violence is the best solution.

Non-violent methods work and is the best way to "fight" for your rights.

-From the movie, Gandhi and many of his supporters marched down to the ocean to collect their own salt (The Salt March). It was illegal for the people of Indian decent to collect their own salt. Salt had to be bought. In document D, it is stated that the Salt Tax Law made it illegal for Indians to collect their own salt and many historians consider the Salt March the turning point of the movement to free India from British control.

-In document F, it says that any method should be used as long as it works. It also says that "the state was far more powerful than we, and any attempts at violence by us would be devastatingly crushed. This made nonviolence a practical necessity rather than an option." The fact that any government has the power to crush any act of violence because the government needs to protect its country and people. If there were no violence against the state, the government could use violence to end the protest, but that would make them look bad and most likely be the "hot topic" of many other countries. In the movie, a foreign correspondent journalists took note of the protest against the British and how the British responded to the protest in front of the Dharasana Salt Works. According to document G, the Indian people were slowly walking towards the front entrance, and were beat down by the British police. The British attacked them with steel-shods and struck the advancing men at the head. "At times the spectacle of unresisting men being methodically bashed into a bloody pulp sickened me so much that I had to turn away." Also in Document M, Gandhi says "Without the newspapers a movement like Satyagraha wouldn't have been possible." The newspapers were how people around the country and the world were able to see what was going on and what kind of injustice the Indian people were enduring.

- In document H, it asks for people to join the non-violent "army." Martin Luther King also asked for people to give up any possible weapon and to use no weapons. "Hundreds of people responded." Also in document I, it states that all the volunteers to the Defiance of Unjust Laws campaign could not retaliate "otherwise they would undermine the value of the entire enterprise. They must respond to violence with nonviolence; discipline must be maintained at all costs." In both these documents, they are encouraging the people not to retaliate no matter what. Document H was at Birmingham, Alabama in April, 1963. Document I was at Johannesburg, South Africa in April, 1952. If non violence didn't work then how did two similar things occur in two different parts of the world and with a time frame of 11 years?

-In document B, a boycott method was used. The boycott was for the buses. This non-violent method works because many African Americans used the buses as their main mode of transportation and because many African Americans lived in America, it damaged the economy in Montgomery, Alabama. With the boycott, the government could not force the protesters to uses buses and could not do much about it. This was an affective way to get the governments attention.