Indians in South Africa were rightly incensed. The Hindus and Muslims of Transvaal wanted Gandhi to voice their protest. But what must be the strategy of this protest? Passive resistance was not an option. There was nothing passive about Gandhi.

Madan Lal Gandhi, a second cousin of Gandhi who lived in Phoenix Farm, suggested ‘sadagraha’: ‘firmness in a good cause’ as a kind of mass opposition to the government’s unfairness. Gandhi amended it to ‘satyagraha’. ‘Satya’ is truth, which equals love and ‘agraha’ is firmness or force. Satyagraha means truth-force or love-force. Truth and love are attributes of the soul.

This became Gandhi’s target: to be strong not with the strength of the brute but with strength drawn from God. Satyagraha, said Gandhi, is the vindication of truth not by infliction of suffering on one’s opponents but on one’s own self. It requires self-control. The weapons of the satyagrahi are within him.

Satyagraha is peaceful. If words fail to convince the adversary, purity, humility and honesty will. The opponent must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. Weaned, not crushed; converted, not annihilated.

Acts of violence create brutality in victors and leave bitterness in survivors. Satyagraha seeks to elevate both sides to a higher level of sensibility. The Mahatma lived out this principle of satyagraha in his own life, from September 11, 1906, till the fanatic shot him dead.

For Gandhi, the satyagrahi bids goodbye to fear. He is never afraid of trusting the opponent. Indeed, an abiding trust in human nature is the very essence of his creed.

It was said that Gandhi borrowed this idea from Thoreau. Gandhi himself denied this. Thoreau’s idea was one of civil disobedience. Gandhi adopted the phrase ‘civil resistance’.

Gandhi took words and ideas seriously, and when he accepted an idea in principle he felt that not to practise it was dishonest. He asked himself the question: How can you believe in a moral or religious precept and not live it? For him, in the gulf between word and belief lay untruth. The dissonance between creed and deed is the root of innumerable wrongs in our civilisation.

It is quite appropriate to remember September 11 as the day on which the mighty US was shaken by the attack on the World Trade Centre at New York. It is said that this is ‘the day when the earth stood still’. But for Indians, September 11 must also be a reminder of the precepts and practice of Mahatma Gandhi. In fact the principle and practice of satyagraha can electrify not only India but the globe.

Martin Luther King adopted Mahatma Gandhi as his guru; Nelson Mandela also acknowledges his debt to the Mahatma. In truth, the principle of satyagraha, when honestly practised, can help resolve many conflicts of today and tomorrow. It is the science of conflict resolution of the future.

In the Mahatma’s message at Transvaal may lie the lasting solution to the agonising uncertainties that have beset the globe in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in New York. Bush’s infamous ‘axis of evil’ will be neutralised and eradicated not by a war or victory or holocaust but by focusing on creating a world with mutual trust alongside the pursuit of military strategies to dismantle the Al-Qaeda network. A new foreign policy must be framed, one that starts from trust in others and does not end up creating new terrorists.

The writer is a senior Congress politician, former chief minister of Karnataka and head of the Oversight Committee on reservations