Gandhi's Views on Nonviolence VS Martin Luther King's Views on Essay

Gandhi's Views on Nonviolence VS Martin Luther King's Views on Nonviolence - Essay Example While Martin Luther King considers nonviolence as the fundamental code of life in all situations irrespective of the complexity of the circumstances, Mahatma Gandhi believed in a balance between violence and nonviolence to attain a holistic control over both the external and the internal factors influencing one’s life. This paper draws a comparison between the views of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi regarding nonviolence. Martin Luther King thought of the society as one unit in which if one is affected by the violence in some way, its consequences are borne by all people in the society indirectly. Therefore, the first and the foremost responsibility of every citizen is to feel this sense of belongingness and concernedness when somebody experiences violence. Martin Luther King believed that a nonviolent campaign basically consists of four steps; determination of the existence of injustice by collection of facts, dialogue, self-purification, and lastly, the direct action. None of these steps imparts the need for one to be violent in one’s attempt to eradicate violence from the society and spread peace. Even the â€Å"direct action† which apparently seems to be a little rough approach towards the resolution of the matter is not-so-rough in the real sense, as it is also nonviolent. Examples of the nonviolent direct action are marches and sit-ins. The only purpose of these nonviolent direct actions is to convince the other party to conduct dialogue and negotiations with the concerned party to ease the tension. While negotiation is a fairly effective way of reducing tension between two or more parties, the results are not always very objective and solid because of the non-seriousness of some people in the concerned groups. Unlike Martin Luther King, Gandhi has considered violence not only a useful but also compulsory way of attaining control over the external factors. â€Å"Violence is needed for the protection of things external,