ABSTRACT: In an epoch in which intolerance and racism reappear, in which it is urgent to assert the need to contrast violence in any case, to have or not to have Gandhi as the symbol of the radical party has a great meaning. Believing that it was a great defeat not to adopt it as the symbol of the transnational party, the author analyses the different reasons for this refusal, which hides a latent refusal of political non-violence.

(Papers of the convention "Radicals and non-violence: a method, a hope", Rome 29-30 April 1988)

I too - while thanking you for this Convention, which I consider most important - must apologize, because I have come to this meeting without a written speech, and therefore without an in-depth meditation. Unfortunately it belongs to one of our curses, that we have to acquire the spaces and the occasions for reflection, subtracting them to the constant urgency of "action": and we often have the sensation (and it is not simply a sensation) that "action" is...also doing a series of small things that all together may have a meaning, but each of which is at times intolerably trivial, tiresome and stupid. I apologize for this outburst of mine, but when I am submerged with hundreds of telephone calls, hundreds of entreaties, I have the feeling that I am some sort of bottle-neck, where everything flows in and stops there, obstructing it...and the feeling of impotence which one gets is really strong. Frankly it is truly difficult to get rid of this condition, to overcome it, it would be necessary to break this bottl

e-neck...I personally cannot manage to do so these days, and I experience this frustration very strongly.

This Convention is very important. From the notes I read - I was unable to come yesterday - I saw that Giovanni Negri said that a sort of ghetto is weighing on this convention, in which there is already an atmosphere of minority, and the danger of a defeat of the non-violents. I think this is true, is correct. And, in order for this Convention to acquire a meaning and a correct dimension, I believe we must refer to the surging violence and intolerance. We should therefore be careful, with this habit of ours of reading words again and saying that the non-violent individual must be intolerant...because when we are between ourselves, we all understand, but we must absolutely avoid ambiguities, in an epoch in which intolerance is returning, and we feel it and can see it grow; the violence of Iran and Iraq, under the form of a war, which we can dismiss only (as Marek Halter said yesterday in an excellent interview) with the excuse that it is a war among "Arabs", among "different"; or the one closer to us, in the

Middle East, in the occupied territories, of Israel and the PLO. Or else, the one which we dismiss from our conscience because it is closer to us, because it belongs more directly to our history, but equally aberrant, equally distressing, equally alarming, because it tells us that in fact we have not at all rid ourselves - we belonging to the Judaic-Christian culture, we of the democratic Europe of the French Revolution and of the Reformation - from this violence: the war in Ireland. And we must still look out, for this surging European racism, on which Marek Halter - who as a Jewish intellectual obviously perceives it more intensely on his own skin - has been drawing our attention to for years, with S.O.S. racisme...a racism which is returning. And it is not only the racism of Le Pen, who receives such a vast consent in France; and it is not the immediately announced racism of the newly elected Secretary of the Italian Social Movement, Fini, in the opportunist wake of the achievements of Le Pen (what an ugl

y renewal, the one of the MSI, if it is with these words that it announces itself), but the deep, latent racism which is here in Europe. Let us not forget that we have a law, a clause that safeguards us from the Convention on political refugees, with which Italy rids itself of the possibility, the right and the duty, of offering hospitality to those who ask for political asylum from countries of the Third World, because it has reserved itself the right to grant political asylum only to the whites of Eastern Europe. This is the country of which any politician, man of culture, priest, scholar or intellectual you meet, will tell that you it has "freed itself from the vice of racism"...and on the contrary we have racism in our laws, and in the practises of our government.

We should, therefore, also be careful when posing ourselves always problems of absolute coherence...you see, I mistrust those who always need to impose themselves a system of coherences: fortunately, we are full of contradictions; life itself is a contradiction. The claim...of not overcoming, but of cutting off contradictions, is death, it is not life: hence the quest for this system of coherences, of finding "justifications" to violence...you know how great the justification of the violent person is, who "opposes the violence of power", you know what need there is to do so...there is everything that justifies it.

My problem is that of saying that that violence is unjustified: and it is not justified, no matter how just it may appear, because it justifies and legitimates the violence of power. The strength of our Premise is precisely this, Bruno: that we have asserted, in an almost provocative manner, this need to contrast violence in any form; and to oppose this violence it is first of all necessary to destroy one's own violence, to deny one's own violence: this is the element of power of non-violence, of the only non-violence that I am interested in, political non-violence. There are, of course, also the non-violences - extremely noble, of a moral or religious nature, individual or collective - of vegetarians, or non-violent persons who believe it is possible to be non-violent only if one is careful, when walking, not to kill ants...; these are things for which I have a great respect: but it is possible to be careful not to "step on" ants, and - while concentrated on respecting ants - give up understanding how it

is possible to disarm the violence that grows around us, and that could destroy mankind and the world in which we live.

I must tell you quite frankly that I consider the fact of not having succeeded in having Gandhi's symbol, in the occasion of the re-foundation of the transnational party, as a major defeat, ours and of the radical party. I do not know if this is due only to a moment of confusion, of identity crisis, in the occasion of the re-foundation, at a moment in which the bonds that tie us to this "national territory" were being undone; at that moment we were taking a road with no return, it was a difficult transition toward the "unknown", which is always alarming...and instead we insisted on the old symbol, a symbol which we had to give up (because at a European level it was a symbol that referred only to the socialists, who already had it, it was a socialist symbol...) and we said no to Gandhi because we held on to our lost identity. If this is the case, then it not so serious, we are still in time to make up for this terrible mistake we made: a mistake which is already costing us a lot in terms of delay, because for

a party such as ours, to be identifiable is an essential condition, and equally fundamental is the communication of our ideas, of our values, of our policy.

I fear, instead, that a sort of latent refusal of political violence was in act, a refusal of this component of our radical history of the last twenty five years. Because, of course, among the objections raised against the symbol of Gandhi, some belong to the tradition of integralist violence, whether they come from non-violents or anti-Gandhians; respect for Gandhi, because Gandhi was non-violence, but Gandhi was also other things, he was chastity, was the Vedas and not the Christian message, he was his historical, political milieu, etc...But this reasoning does not take into account the fact that people's lives are made of different moments, I myself have changed opinion so many times! Today's Gandhi would doubtless be different. The Gandhi who would need to deal with the history of post-colonial Asia, would be a different Gandhi from the one who was the interlocutor of the British Empire and of those Muslims and Hindus whom he hoped to unite in the new India. They are the friends of Bhagwan, who say that

Gandhi was authoritarian and chaste (but this was a free choice...), or they are the non-violents, who say that out of respect for Gandhi it is not possible to assume his symbol only for political non-violence, but that it is necessary to assume him as a symbol for all, from vegetarianism to the cloth he weaved, and therefore to the neo-pauperism, which also suggested a reactionary-revolutionary vision...in the sense that there was a Hindu fundamentalism and traditionalism which he claimed to re-experience, in the wake - it must be said - of so many revolutionaries who searched for agricultural communes still in the first years of the twentieth century, not only in Russia but also in Europe; well, I am not concerned about these objections, they are ideological objections, and for this reason extremely fragile. I am more concerned about these other objections on the image of Gandhi: "we must refuse the human image, whatever it may be",, as if the figure, the image of a human figure, were not also a datum that

makes an idea identifiable, when this identification between figure and idea is justified from a historical point of view, and therefore it were not morally acceptable to use it and exploit it. Not to have done so, in a situation in which cheap Gandhism may reappear, as well as anti-Gandhian interpretations of Gandhi, as such means having given our opponents - those who will then degrade him, use him for their purposes to soften his revolutionary and innovative character - the weapon of the image of Gandhi...and this precisely to our possible opponents, but also to opponents of the true revolutionary non-violence: to those who use Ernesto Rossi (1) against the radicals, as they use Salvemini (2) against Rossi, with a game that we know too well, and to which we have lent ourselves. Since I am not a paternalist - I like Bruno very much and he likes me - I am saying that Bruno had his share of responsibility in all this, in preparing this weapon which we could have had from the figure, the image, the history o

f Gandhi, for our opponents and Gandhi's opponents. What I find even more serious is the question of the image as a "possible idolatry"...If you tell me that you don't want Gandhi because Gandhi is theoretically unacceptable, because you don't accept non-violence, or because you fear that the non-violent choice of the radical party could damage, in certain moments, certain occasions of violent resistance, such as for example the Israeli state is forced to use today, then we will conduct the debate on this: but without ambiguities.

There is no doubt about it: the times are difficult, the situations are those that I described, and to have this symbol or not to have it... makes the difference. At a moment in which Le Pen is successful, and we see terrible things happening in Ireland, on one side and on the other: because for the first time Great Britain was guilty of crimes comparable to those committed by its opponents, whereas to this day - in spite of the moral deafness as regards fasts - it had, more or less, maintained an element of political superiority. I would like to draw your attention on a very important fact: when, for the first time, two policemen were killed during an anti-nuclear demonstration, a debate was opened in the Green movement, for the first time non-violence was discussed, and the majority of Greens did not accept the non-violent choice as an ideal choice, a choice of principle, as well as a tactical choice. Because, of course, everybody is good at conducting a non-violent demonstration today, with the mental re

servation of using bombs or picking up a rifle or a gun tomorrow. Here and now, I am not going back to the past, I am not looking at our history, I have no time for this: but I want to say that among the many important things of our non-violent choice, that helped us understand, to be revolutionary in our manner and to make culture and produce reforms and conquer new spaces for rights and new liberties, there is this non-violent choice, which gave us a fundamental instrument for dialogue.

Can you imagine what we would have been able to say to the tens and tens of thousands of people, of youths, of kids, who, after '68 - induced by the culture of this left-wing and right-wing regime - adopted the choice and the myths of revolutionary violence, of armed violence, and also of the sacrifice of violence, because they took up weapons to kill, but the knew, at the same time, that they too could have been killed, thus providing new heroes for the opponents and new martyrs on whom to found the revolution; can you think of what we could have said to the companions of the Red Brigades...the power of our dialogue was precisely in the theoretical and practical clarity of the non-violent choice; and therefore also, it is true, of the capacity of living democracy, not with parliamentary idiocy or with "democratism", not with the realism of accepting facts and the unjust law - and this makes the difference - , but with the added value of the non-violent individual in living, activating, promoting, creating,

using (each time we used it they said that were "abusing" of it) democracy.

At the time, we could have talked (because we had the revolutionary legitimacy) to the companions assassins of the Red Brigades...and could have been accepted, at the moment, in the circumstance, by the press, who used all this to tell us that we were "contiguous" to the Red Brigades, or accomplices of the Red Brigades...In reality, it was a moment of political battle, of political clash, which has had - of course! - some contiguities in which we committed mistakes, in which we had companions who risked experiencing that "contiguity" as a complicity or leniency...also within the party; but in fact what emerged is a dialogue which I consider fruitful, if so many companions who come from that experience have entered (I hope not tactically, not opportunistically, not momentarily) the Radical Party of non-violence...if the different components who have once believed in violence can find a legitimation - from Franceschini to Bignami to Vesce. And, therefore, in this feature of non-violence, as the central element

of a dialectic, which on the one side has the challenge of the unjust law, or even of the unjust order, on the other hand the premise of the preparation, the foundation of a new order, of the law, the founding moment, the hope of the foundation of a new legality: Pasolini (3) had understood this when, speaking to the objectors, he said that disobedience is in fact the premise for a new obedience; one obeys or objects in the name of one's conscience to the unjust law, that violates the conscience itself, and the premises are created for the new one...and this is already the obedience to the new law, which is felt as imperative in one's conscience.

Religiosity is also often mentioned, and we are often attacked - we non-violents - accused of having religious components, of expressing forms of cheap mysticism, of unconfessed ascesis. I do not refuse all this; because, of course, there is an element of religious conviction, and I don't have to look too far for this religiosity, which is also a lay religiosity: all I need to do is to recall Benedetto Croce (4). It may be judged in different manners, but this assertion of the "religion of freedom" has been a deep intuition. And as for Gandhi - because there is a personal, not private, and therefore political aspect of one's choices, and it is not possible to be a revolutionary without having deep convictions - Gandhi in his personal, not private pages, in which he talks about the relations with Christianity, in South Africa but especially in England, of his friendship with Christians, of the Gospel, and the re-discovery of the Veda, which he had read as a boy, and the justification that he had not felt the

need to convert to Christianity because in the Veda he had found the essential part of Jesus' teaching...I believe that these are very important things: these are personal, and not "private" things, because I certainly do not refuse this religious aspect, even in the lay sense of the word, of the non-violent choice. Because the non-violent choice in any case implies a historical and lay retrieval of the natural law which for years has been opposed to the positive law by Catholic jurists, be they reactionary or not: the ius naturalis, the Catholic jusnaturalism, which was opposed - in the name of the values of the tradition - to positive law. And here too I believe that in theoretical terms we are the only party that has understood it, and - in the premise - has had the courage of declaring it, when it wrote: the Law is law of the "Radical Party"; which law? The one of human rights, the fundamental norms of the Constitution, which have therefore become founding, positive laws, at least in terms of assertion

of a principle, but are the law of a new humanity, everywhere violated; this is the fact that I believed necessary to underline, because it seems to me very important. Non-violence and Law, non-violence and information, and the problem if non-violence is possible where there is a dictatorial regime...It has been said that Gandhi has been capable of being non-violent in South Africa (in the period of the British domination, not of the Afrikaner reaction) and then in the India of the British Empire, because after all the British Empire - which acknowledged halved political rights to the Indian-born subjects of the Queen - acknowledged them also the civil right to the fair trial which the British trial was: and therefore this subject could activate the English trial law, and when he succeeded in having a fair trial - having violated un unfair law - he activated the contradictions between fair trail and judge and unfair law; and the contradictions could activate information in India, but was mainly the informati

on in the United Kingdom and in the moral, political and religious contradictions of the English ruling class. All this of course if true: and however we must have the rigour of not looking for spaces, which we do not have, for distinctions; no matter how much it can find a justification, non-violence justifies itself as such, and the fact remains - no matter how justified in facts it can be - that it theoretically legitimates the violence of the opponents. This is precisely the reason for which it must be refused.

The world, today, is a world of global communication, in which the problems of Chile reflect themselves in the rest of the world and bounce back to Chile...the problems of any state can bounce on other states and return to that state in terms of a strengthening of that situation. I do not, of course, ignore - Pannella recalled it - the fact that these things must be considered from a relativist point of view, and therefore historically: Gandhi won in the fact that he successfully conducted a non-violent revolution for India against the British empire, and lost when he attempted to prevent the religious conflicts between Hindus and Muslims, who had chosen him, when he chose both, or when he chose prevalently the weapon of non-violence...even if there had been violent components in the Indian revolution. And here I must say: let us be careful, with this uncritical exhumation which is often done: let us be careful with simplifications of this Eastern culture, according to which all that comes form the Eastern c

ulture is good. Those millions of deaths...; of course we have a mistaken vision of Buddhism, of Hinduism, as if they were absolutely tolerant religions, and we also have a simplified and mistaken vision of Gandhi; it is true that Gandhi acquired the main part of his non-violence with the relation with the Western culture, and that in Gandhi there are active components (because the non-violent individual is active, not passive: the non-violent individual does not passively suffer the law, but violates the law, and once he has violated it he does not hide, but asks that the law punish him for having violated it, in order for this to become collective heritage of knowledge and of revolt against the law) and I think that this has nothing to do with the passivity of the Eastern culture. These things must be said. The same way, to believe that the Eastern culture contains more elements of tolerance: the Hindus have been, in the battle against the Muslims, more fierce than the Muslims. We do not have the tradition

of the "fierce Turks"; and Marek Halter is right when he said yesterday: "just as the Jew is the moneylender for us, the Arab if always the Moor or the Jago...when he is not violent and blood-thirsty, he is the treacherous swindler".

I read Baghwan, this "Bible of Baghwan", God save us from it! I am a Voltairean, I want to stress the fact that I am fighting for Baghwan to come to Italy, and I find myself in this strange situation, in which if I question an idea of Baghwan it's as if I were helping those who confine him...however one thing I cannot accept: he accused Gandhi of being a masochist. Of course, there are always individual psychological components, but the problem is what type of expression we give these components: it may even be that Gandhi was a masochist, even if I don't believe he had this specific vocation, and in any case we have to see how we express these components in a positive manner, nor a negative one. In this dismissal of fasting and of Gandhi, I found something that makes me consider the fact that in these last days our companion Majid - which we knew under the name of Andrea Valcarenghi - has adopted this battle instrument for Baghwan, who is also a Refuznik, if he is confined for his ideas and not because he c

ommitted offences, very important.

I will now conclude, as I think I have said most of the things I wanted to.

It is doubtless that we are in a difficult moment, a very difficult one: because it is difficult to construct the transnational party.

And I would like to say that the transnational party must be something more than a generic moral need: if we decide to make the transnational party, it is because we feel the need to prefigure states, laws that are no longer national, but transnational, in other words, something that - in the respect of national democracies - is already the questioning of their insufficiency, the acknowledgement of their condemnation, if they do not succeed in overcoming themselves, their defeat as democracies. This is therefore the need: if we are not transnational, if we are not at the same time non-violents, if, at a moment in which we perceive the inadequacy of national democracies to control the problems of our time, we do not prefigure - and therefore assert - the new legality, both "supranational" (that of the United States of Europe) and "transnational": that is, the instruments that can curb the violence of the individuals, which is the sign of a growth of incivility instead of civility. The other day I was thinking

, always with the attempt not to demonize that which awaits us - that if we think about the "Roundheads" or to some preacher of religious wars, if we think also of verbal, theoretical, religious battles, between Luther and Erasmus and between Luther and the counter-reform theologians of the Church of Rome, or to some Cardinal of the Inquisition...then perhaps Khomeini appears less terrible, as do the Islamic fundamentalists. A century after Cromwell (who claimed to solve problems with violence and dictatorship) there is a revival, on the level of the praxis of British experimentalism, of the principle that it is not necessary to kill one another between Whigs and Tories: but when one of the two assumes the power, the others conduct an opposition and await the moment to seize power, without exterminating one another each time, and democracy arises from this small, peaceful agreement. A century before the French revolution, the English ruling class, born from the conflict between Presbyterians, religious minor

ities and the Anglican Church, reached this practical compromise. And who can say that something democratic will not occur between the neo-Sunnites and the neo-Scythes, in a century or two? In the meantime, there is a small detail: that, compared to then, it might take centuries and not generations. We live in a world in which balances must be recovered, a system of civility must be established, asserting non-violence for today. The tragical conscience of our time is this, that time is short, and cannot rely on the long time of history; and I think that this is the element of strong difference, that the apocalypse represents itself in historical terms of possibility, and not or terror of darkness or terror of the unknown.

Translator's notes

(1) Ernesto Rossi (1897-1967): Italian journalist and politician. Antifascist, founder, together with Altiero Spinelli, of the European federalist movement.

(2) Gaetano Salvemini (1873-1957): Italian historian and politician. Antifascist.

(3) Pierpaolo Pasolini (1922-1975): Italian writer and movie director.

(4) Benedetto Croce (1866-1952): Italian philosopher, historian and critic.