The Myth of Religious Nonviolence

This paper draws on the insights of scholars of the secular to interrogate the foundation upon which contemporary theories of nonviolence--and civil disobedience, more specifically--rest: what I call the "myth of religious nonviolence." In short, no such thing exists; just as “religion” cannot precipitate violence, it does not cause nonviolence. I contend that post-war attempts to link religion and nonviolence in the aftermath of Indian Independence and the American Freedom Movement betray a misunderstanding of both religion and nonviolence and, in turn, reveal more about the preoccupations of post-war political philosophy than either phenomena. Namely, they illustrate that religious nonviolence, understood as a primarily or essentially communicative (rather than coercive) approach to public life underpinned by the dissident’s “religious” commitments, was invented to buttress secular accounts of civil disobedience and constitutional democracy and integrate nonviolence into their nascent theories of democracy.