For the most part, Gandhi's life before the Satyagraha movement in South Africa was ordinary. He was a barrister, married and enjoyed life's quotidian pleasures (Wolpert, 3). Yet, the life he led after this milestone was characterized by extraordinary insight, determination and courage. Gandhi's ideas about human relations, particularly conflict, are difficult to grasp because they ask the individual to subsume some of his/her most basic reactions to confrontation such as revenge, retaliation and punishment, which, arguably, are attempts to affirm the rightness of his/her position to a higher Truth, which is associated with Love. At the same time, Gandhi affirms the power of individual will, arguing that it is capable of withstanding and even challenging the strongest adversity. The key to satyagraha is the practice of non-violence. Gandhian non-violence is not passive or weak; rather, it is characterized by determination, courage and hardiness of will. The concept of non-violence is coupled with self-suffering, a concept that is probably alien to most of us. Self-suffering, based on choice, provides an alternative to violence and is ultimately an expression of the strength of one's will. In the salt satyagraha, multitudes of people practiced Gandhian non-violence in response to conflict. In this campaign, Gandhi and his fellow participants challenged the injustice of the government, a government that withheld a necessity of Indian life. Gandhi emphasized that it was not the end that was necessarily important but the means by which it was achieved. Certainly, this gives us hope that personal and social change is possible.
In 1906, Gandhi, after realizing the limits of the term, "passive resistance," coined, "Satyagraha," which means "the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence (Bondurant, 8). Satyagraha is characterized by "several stages of winning over an opponent" (Bondurant, 11). The stages move from "pers...