Nonviolence in the context of "History of India"

A protest (also called a demonstration, remonstration, or remonstrance) is a public act of objection, disapproval or dissent against political advantage. Protests can be thought of as acts of cooperation in which numerous people cooperate by attending, and share the potential costs and risks of doing so. Protests can take many different forms, from individual statements to mass political demonstrations. Protesters may organize a protest as a way of publicly making their opinions heard in an attempt to influence public opinion or government policy, or they may undertake direct action in an attempt to enact desired changes themselves. When protests are part of a systematic and peaceful nonviolent campaign to achieve a particular objective, and involve the use of pressure as well as persuasion, they go beyond mere protest and may be better described as civil resistance or nonviolent resistance.

Various forms of self-expression and protest are sometimes restricted by governmental policy (such as the requirement of protest permits), economic circumstances, religious orthodoxy, social structures, or media monopoly. One state reaction to protests is the use of riot police. Observers have noted an increased militarization of protest policing in many countries, with police deploying armored vehicles and snipers against protesters. When such restrictions occur, protests may assume the form of open civil disobedience, more subtle forms of resistance against the restrictions, or may spill over into other areas such as culture and emigration.

Buddhist ethics are traditionally based on the enlightened perspective of the Buddha. In Buddhism, ethics or morality are understood by the term śīla (Sanskrit: शील) or sīla (Pāli). Śīla is one of three sections of the Noble Eightfold Path. It is a code of conduct that emulates a natural inborn nature that embraces a commitment to harmony, equanimity, and self-regulation, primarily motivated by nonviolence or freedom from causing harm. It has been variously described as virtue, moral discipline uprightness and precept, skillful conduct.

In contrast to the english word "morality" (i.e., obedience, a sense of obligation, and external constraint), Sīla is a resolve to connect with what is believed to be our innate ethical compass. It is an intentional ethical behaviour that is refined and clarified through walking the path toward liberation. Within some traditions, the true adversary is our ignorance, our clinging to beliefs, complexes and our misguided perceptions. As such, behavior is not viewed as good or evil but as skillful or unskillful.

Ahimsa (Sanskrit: अहिंसा, IAST: ahiṃsā; IPA: [ɐ́.ɦĩ.sɑː]; lit. 'nonviolence') is the ancient Indian principle of nonviolence which applies to actions towards all living beings. It is a key virtue in Indian religions like Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism.

Ahimsa (also spelled Ahinsa) is one of the cardinal virtues of Jainism, where it is the first of the Pancha Mahavrata. It is also one of the central precepts of Hinduism and is the first of the five precepts of Buddhism. Ahimsa is inspired by the premise that all living beings have the spark of the divine spiritual energy; therefore, to hurt another being is to hurt oneself. Ahimsa is also related to the notion that all acts of violence have karmic consequences. While ancient scholars of Brahmanism had already investigated and refined the principles of ahimsa, the concept reached an extraordinary development in the ethical philosophy of Jainism. Mahavira, the twenty-fourth and the last tirthankara of Jainism, further strengthened the idea in the 6th century BCE. About the 5th century CE, Valluvar emphasized ahimsa and moral vegetarianism as virtues for an individual, which formed the core of his teachings in the Kural. Perhaps the most popular advocate of the principle of ahimsa in modern times was Mohandas K. Gandhi.

In Jainism, ahiṃsā (Ahimsā, alternatively spelled 'ahinsā', Sanskrit: अहिंसा IAST: ahinsā, Pāli: avihinsā) is a fundamental principle forming the cornerstone of its ethics and doctrine. The term ahiṃsā means nonviolence, non-injury, and the absence of desire to harm any life forms. Veganism, vegetarianism and other nonviolent practices and rituals of Jains flow from the principle of ahimsa. There are five specific transgressions of Ahimsa principle in Jain scriptures – binding of animals, beating, mutilating limbs, overloading, and withholding food and drink. Any other interpretation is subject to individual choices and not authorized by scriptures.

The Jain concept of ahimsa is very different from the concept of nonviolence found in other philosophies. Violence is usually associated with causing harm to others. But according to the Jain philosophy, violence refers primarily to injuring one's own self – behaviour which inhibits the soul's own ability to attain moksha (liberation from the cycle of births and deaths). At the same time it also implies violence to others because it is this tendency to harm others that ultimately harms one's own soul. Furthermore, the Jains extend the concept of ahimsa not only to humans but to all animals, plants, micro-organisms and all beings having life or life potential. All life is sacred and everything has a right to live fearlessly to its maximum potential. Living beings need not fear those who have taken the vow of ahimsa. According to Jainism, protection of life, also known as abhayadānam, is the supreme charity that a person can make.

Civil rights movements are a worldwide series of political movements for equality before the law, that peaked in the 1960s. In many situations they have been characterized by nonviolent protests, or have taken the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change through nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations, they have been accompanied, or followed, by civil unrest and armed rebellion. The process has been long and tenuous in many countries, and many of these movements did not, or have yet to, fully achieve their goals, although the efforts of these movements have led to improvements in the legal rights of some previously oppressed groups of people, in some places.

The main aim of the successful civil rights movement and other social movements for civil rights included ensuring that the rights of all people were and are equally protected by the law. These include but are not limited to the rights of minorities, women's rights, disability rights and LGBT rights.

Nonviolent resistance, or nonviolent action, sometimes called civil resistance, is the practice of achieving goals such as social change through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, satyagraha, constructive program, or other methods, while refraining from violence and the threat of violence. This type of action highlights the desires of an individual or group that feels that something needs to change to improve the current condition of the resisting person or group.

Mahatma Gandhi is the most popular figure related to this type of protest; United Nations celebrates Gandhi's birthday, October 2, as the International Day of Non-Violence. Other prominent advocates include Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Henry David Thoreau, Etienne de la Boétie, Charles Stewart Parnell, Te Whiti o Rongomai, Tohu Kākahi, Leo Tolstoy, Alice Paul, Martin Luther King Jr., Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan, James Bevel, Václav Havel, Andrei Sakharov, Lech Wałęsa, Gene Sharp, Nelson Mandela, Jose Rizal, and many others. From 1966 to 1999, nonviolent civic resistance played a critical role in fifty of sixty-seven transitions from authoritarianism.

Civil disobedience is the active and professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders, or commands of a government (or any other authority). By some definitions, civil disobedience has to be nonviolent to be called "civil". Hence, civil disobedience is sometimes equated with peaceful protests or nonviolent resistance. Henry David Thoreau's essay Resistance to Civil Government, first published in 1849 and then published posthumously in 1866 as Civil Disobedience, popularized the term in the US, although the concept itself was practiced long before this work.

Various forms of civil disobedience have been used by prominent activists, such as American women's suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony in the late 19th century, Egyptian nationalist Saad Zaghloul during the 1910s, and Indian nationalist Mahatma Gandhi in 1920s British India as part of his leadership of the Indian independence movement. Martin Luther King Jr.'s and James Bevel's peaceful nonviolent protests during the civil rights movement in the 1960s United States sometimes contained important aspects of civil disobedience. Although civil disobedience is rarely justifiable in court, King regarded civil disobedience to be a display and practice of reverence for law: "Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law."

Green politics, or ecopolitics, is a political ideology that aims to foster an ecologically sustainable society often, but not always, rooted in environmentalism, nonviolence, social justice and grassroots democracy. It began taking shape in the Western world in the 1970s; since then, green parties have developed and established themselves in many countries around the globe and have achieved some electoral success.

The political term green was used initially in relation to die Grünen (German for "the Greens"), a green party formed in the late 1970s. The term political ecology is sometimes used in academic circles, but it has come to represent an interdisciplinary field of study as the academic discipline offers wide-ranging studies integrating ecological social sciences with political economy in topics such as degradation and marginalization, environmental conflict, conservation and control and environmental identities and social movements.