Defiance and Liberation - The People’s Power and the People’s Rights - Remarks by Jack DuVall - The Fourth Annual Peace and Justice Lecture

Aug 23, 2026

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A lecture examines how defiance of unjust authority becomes a powerful civic force, tracing a century-spanning thread from Gandhi’s Johannesburg resistance to global civil disobedience movements. It recounts non-cooperation, illegal marches, and refusing degrading ordinances, then contrasts nonviolent political collapse of obedience with revolts that turn violent. The discussion highlights how consent-based, people-led action can sustain democracy, while delegating change to armed violence risks recrimination, strife, and dictatorship.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryReligion & Spirituality

FormatPDF

Pages8

Reading Time20 min

AccessFree to download

Defiance and Liberation - The People’s Power and the People’s Rights

Johannesburg and the refusal to submit

Thoreau, Lincoln, and the wider uprisings

Consent or violence

Nonviolent resistance and lasting democracy

Defiance and Liberation The People’s Power and the People’s Rights Remarks by Jack DuVall The Fourth Annual Peace and Justice Lecture Michigan State University – March 15, 2006 1906 One hundred years ago, a mass meeting was convened in Johannesburg, South Africa by Mohandas Gandhi, an Indian lawyer outraged by the government’s proposal that Indians carry registration cards. “The Old Empire Theatre was packed from floor to ceiling,” Gandhi wrote. Their most important action was to pass a resolution saying they“solemnly determined not to submit to the Ordinance.” One speaker said that they “must never yield a cowardly submission to such degrading legislation.” They never did, during a long campaign that Gandhi led, of non-cooperation and civil disobedience. Defying the state, Indians burned their registration cards, marched illegally across borders, and thousands went to jail, Gandhi himself three times. They disrupted the government’s racial laws and drove up the cost of enforcement. In the eighth year of civic resistance, the government withdrew the laws they had opposed. One piece of one empire of contempt for people’s rights was pulverized, starting that night at the Empire Theatre. The date was September 11. Gandhi said that one of those who influenced his thinking about defying injustice was the American writer Henry David Thoreau, whose essay,“On Civil Disobedience”had been published in 1849. Thoreau had said, “All men recognize the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.” Just one year before that, Congressman Abraham Lincoln, speaking in the House of Representatives, had said: Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. On the same day Lincoln spoke those words, Sicilians were protesting in the streets of Palermo against a repressive king, and while Thoreau wrote, Czechs, Germans, Austrians, the French and other Europeans were rising up to demand political rights. But their revolts turned violent, helping regimes to crack down, and old systems were restored. Defiant spirits in Europe waited till the next century to reach successfully for liberation. Consent or Violence The man whose story and example quickened their eventual achievement was Gandhi. The year that Europe started the “great war” that collapsed one of its two great empires, he returned home to India from South Africa and soon launched a great nonviolent war against British control of his homeland. Millions marched, refused to pay taxes, quit their colonial jobs, spun their own fabric to avoid buying English cloth, and began to realize that to take control of India, they first had to refuse the terms of British control. The scope of resistance sobered the few colonial leaders who understood what was happening. “England can hold India only by consent,” said Sir Charles Innes, a provincial governor. “We can’t rule it by the sword.” But that consent evaporated. The great political thinker Hannah Arendt defined the process well: Where commands are no longer obeyed, the means of violence are of no use The sudden dramatic breakdown of power that ushers in revolutions reveals in a flash how civil obedience – to law, to rulers, to institutions – is but the outward manifestation of support and consent. Gandhi’s campaigns in India were the first stories of mass civic resistance to be reported worldwide by broadcast media. Ever since, the rate with which people have applied this new force has accelerated. The Danes obstructed German occupiers in World War II by strikes, work slow-downs and otherwise bedeviling Nazi war plans. African-Americans defied and dissolved legal segregation. Polish workers refused to leave their shipyards unt

FAQs

What events in Johannesburg set the tone for Gandhi’s non-cooperation?

A mass meeting in Johannesburg rejected the government’s proposal requiring Indians to carry registration cards. Participants resolved to refuse the ordinance, burned registration cards, marched illegally, and endured imprisonment.

How does the lecture explain the difference between consent-based power and violence?

It argues that power collapses when commands are no longer obeyed, making violence ineffective. Civil obedience reflects support and consent, so withdrawing consent can transform political outcomes without violent coercion.

Why does the lecture claim people-led movements can create sustainable democracy?

When ordinary people march, strike, or sit in, they become stakeholders in the results. Because change is carried out by civilians rather than a foreign government or violent vanguard, it can better sustain democratic governance.

Aug 23, 2026

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