Nonresistance

Nonresistance (or non-resistance) is "the practice or principle of not resisting authority, even when it is unjustly exercised". At its core is discouragement of, even opposition to, physical resistance to an enemy. It is considered as a form of principled nonviolence or pacifism which rejects all physical violence, whether exercised on individual, group, state or international levels. Practitioners of nonresistance may refuse to retaliate against an opponent or offer any form of self-defense. Nonresistance is often associated with particular religious groups, such as Anabaptist Christianity. Sometimes non-resistance has been seen as compatible with, even part of, movements advocating social change. An often-cited example is the movement led by Mohandas Gandhi in the struggle for Indian Independence. While it is true that in particular instances (e.g., when threatened with arrest) practitioners in such movements might follow the line of non-resistance, such movements are more accurately described as cases of nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. Anabaptist Christianity, which emerged in the Radical Reformation of the 16th century, became defined by its adherence to the doctrine of nonresistance, which they teach is found in the Bible in : “do not resist him who is evil.” The term nonresistance was later used to refer to the Established Church during the religious troubles in England following the English Civil War and Protestant Succession. Nonresistance played a prominent role in the abolitionist movement in the nineteenth-century United States. Leo Tolstoy, Adin Ballou, and Mahatma Gandhi were notable advocates of nonresistance. However, there were variations between them. Gandhi's Satyagraha movement was based on a belief in resistance that was active but at the same time nonviolent, and he did not believe in using non-resistance (or even nonviolent resistance) in circumstances where a failure to oppose an adversary effectively amounted to cowardice.