Professor of Philosophy at the University of Stockholm, Pontara is one of the greatest students of Gandhi. He has edited one of the widest and complete anthologies on Gandhi for Einaudi.

Mahatma Gandhi, who not only used fasting as a method of politicial struggle and non-violence (satyagraha) on several occasions, but was also an authoritative theoretician, wrote the following lines: "The majority of fasts are not absolutely reconducive to the ambit of satyagraha but are, as they are generally called, hunger strikes undertaken without any preparation and consciousness." He added that "if these are repeated too often, they can also lead to loss of dignity and the efficacy that they could possess, and fall into ridicule." (M.K. Gandhi, Theory and Practice of Non-Violence, Einaudi, 1973 and subsequent editions, p. 189). Fasting, like strikes, boycotts, and many other methods of struggle, can be taken on by anyone, for any purpose, to attain any end. As a method of struggle, fasting per se is a non-military method: it is neither a violent nor a non-violent one, but could become one or the other depending on how it is used.

In speaking about fasting as a method of political struggle, it is important to differentiate a hunger protest from that, what we for brevity call political fasting. A hunger protest is that undertaken to call the attention of determinate people or more generally of public opinion, in a dramatic way, upon determinate circumstances or determinate facts that are viewed as intolerable. They seek to exercise a certain moral pressure, to awaken consciences, or to make known certain facts or situations that they wish to denounce through the suffering that a faster or fasters voluntarily and publicly submit themselves to. Since no conditions are made that the others should accept in order to break the fast, the hunger protest does not as a norm imply constrictions.

Political fasting is fasting undertaken with the aim of carrying out determinate and precise objectives whose implementation depends upon those against whom the fast is directed upon. They can easily perceive the situation created by the faster or fasters as a coercive one, as a situation where they are faced with a choice from alternatives that have a negative value: accede to the conditions laid down by the faster or fasters, or else assume the responsibility of their suffering or even their deaths with all the consequences that this would entail. Undoubtedly, despite the intentions of Gandhi, some of the fasts undertaken by him were perceived by those it was aimed at as coercive acts against them; and it is also true that in certain situations those against whom Gandhi fasted ceded to the conditions laid down by him not because they were convinced of its justice, but because they were afraid of the consequences of a prolongation of the fast by the Mahatma. A second characteristic that differentiates th

e political fast from that of protest, is that what we may call irreversibility: to be effective to the maximum, the political fast must be a fast unto death in the sense that no temporary terms are previously given for its cessation, which depends exclusively upon the acceptation, on the part of the adversary against whom the fast is undertaken, of the conditions laid down by the faster or fasters (some of the Gandhian fasts were of this nature). This characteristic in turn tends to be a coercive one.

Based on how much and in what measure these two characteristics of coercion and irreversibility are present in political fasting, this method presents itself as one of struggle that, atleast in the ambit of a self-styled non-violent movement, must be prepared with much attention, taking care that this includes all those requesites that are considered essential for any non-violent action. This is to be ensured on the basis of a very clear formulation of the non-violent conception of which it is a supporter. Particular clarification must be made if non-violence simply means any method of struggle that is not military, or abstaining only from physical violence, or if it means something more. We need to also clarify if they are forms of constraints compatible with the non-violent concept that it supports, or rather non-violent forms of constrictions, and in case the answer is affirmative establish the conditions that a political fast must satisfy to result in the absence of violence constrictions. Lastly,

I would like to underline that, in my opinion, political fasting, as opposed to hunger protests, should be used only as a last resort (as was always used by Gandhi).

Because it embodies the characteristic of irreversibility, as outlined above, this is a very serious matter because it can take away the lives of those who fast and place those against whom the fast is directed under great responsibility. Or it may not have the quality of irreversibility and in this case, becomes used too often. It would then lose its efficacy and end in ridicule, as Gandhi warned.