General Discussion

But the English dealt with him because many others chose violence, and he would not have gotten the concessions he did except that English had the wit to see that by dealing with him, they could lessen the scope available to the violent.

But the tipping point which convinced the English they could not hold India was a tremendous spasm of mob violence occurring after arrest of Congress leaders as the Japanese were advancing in Burma. It was only barely contained, and the military authorities recognized they probably could not do it again, particularly if a larger portion of people participated, as seemed likely would be the case in a repetition.

Beyond the particular case, it is observable fact that there are times when pacific detachment is effectively siding with an aggressor engaged in atrocity. Gandhi's advice to Jews under Nazi rule, you may recall, was for them all to commit suicide, and while he may have conceived this as being a vast and powerful spiritual rebuke to evil, its end result in practical terms would have been indistinguishable from success in an exterminationist project....