Unravelling the Myth of Gandhian Non-violence: Why Did Gandhi Connect His Principle of Satyāgraha with the “Hindu” Notion of Ahiṃsā?

Abstract The purpose of this article is to unearth the genealogy of M. K. Gandhi's “non-violence,” the cardinal principle of satyāgraha. Previous works considered that Gandhi's concept of non-violence was essentially derived from the “ancient” Hindu–Jain precept of ahiṃsā (non-killing) common in the subcontinent. On the contrary, I will, by examining Gandhi's primary texts in Gujarati, Hindi, and English, demonstrate the following: (1) during Gandhi's sojourn in South Africa (1893–1914) where he led his first satyāgraha campaign, he never associated the term ahiṃsā with satyāgraha; (2) his satyāgraha campaign was initially explained with the trans-religious and cosmopolitan concepts of Tolstoy and the nirguṇ bhaktas; (3) Gandhi first began to use the term ahiṃsā as a nationalist slogan linked with satyāgraha immediately after his return to India in 1915; (4) the English translation of ahiṃsā as “non-violence” was eventually coined by Gandhi after 1919 during his all-India satyāgraha campaign.