passive resistance

passive resistance A tactic of non-violent resistance to authority pioneered by Mahatma Gandhi in his campaign against the British government in India in the 1930s and 1940s. Passive resistance has since become an accepted way for minorities to place moral pressure on majorities. It failed in Czechoslovakia in 1968, but had great success in the American Civil Rights Movement between 1955 and 1964, when many thousands of activists were arrested for violating racial segregation rules in the South, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The tactic has also been widely used by peace movements, anti-nuclear-power movements, and anti-abortion movements. In general, passive resistance involves groups of protesters occupying some public or forbidden space, and allowing themselves to be arrested or otherwise harassed by authorities, without offering any violence in return. The power of passive resistance is essentially moral. The images it creates can sway public opinion via the mass media, and may create guilt and uncertainty among politicians and power-holders. See also CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE.