Civil disobedience
Topic: Political Theory: Freedom and Rights · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
Civil disobedience means openly and peacefully breaking a law you think is unjust. The person also accepts the punishment. The aim is to touch the conscience of the majority and get the law changed. Henry David Thoreau wrote about it in 1849 after he refused to pay a poll tax that supported slavery and the Mexican War. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. later used it on a mass scale.
Example
In Gandhi's Salt March (1930), Indians made salt in open defiance of the colonial salt law and accepted arrest. In the USA, King led the Montgomery bus boycott (1955-56).
Don't confuse with
- Satyagraha: Gandhi's wider idea of "truth-force". It includes civil disobedience but also non-cooperation and self-suffering, with the aim of changing the opponent's heart.
- Peaceful protest: in India today this is a protected right under Art. 19(1)(a)-(c). It does not involve breaking any law.