The (Im)possible Embrace: A Search for Non-violent Possibilities in the Aftermath of Violent Uprootedness

Abstract

In spite of upholding it as an aspiration, a commitment to non-violence in motivation, thought and action is rare. Its realization is contingent on a confluence of complex politico-historical contingencies and psychic possibilities. The actualization of such a historical moment is also contingent on a collective awakening in the consciousness and conscience of a group to reclaim its losses through non-retributive measures. In this article, we will explore a few processes involved in the sustenance of non-violence. By exemplifying from literary excerpts, and also by dwelling on the ongoing Tibetan movement and that of the Zapatista in Mexico, our attempt is to finally reach a preliminary statement on the psychodynamics of non-violent action. In the last section of the article, we offer reflections on the inner world of the practitioner. This writing is at best to be viewed as a collage which brings together diverse impressions from short stories, analytical accounts and illustrative political movements. The reader is invited to journey through various ideas and images without trying to bring them together into a grand synthesis. The different sections of the writing retain a deliberate disjunctive quality as do the pages of a scrap book in which what precedes and what follows is associatively linked but not necessarily in the form of a flowing continuity.