passive resistance a method of nonviolent protest against laws or policies in order to force a change or secure concessions; it is also known as nonviolent resistance and is the main tactic of civil disobedience. Passive resistance typically involves such activities as mass demonstrations, refusal to obey or carry out a law or to pay taxes, the occupation of buildings or the blockade of roads, labor strikes, economic boycotts, and similar activities.

Possibly originating with the Quakers, it was adopted by Africans, Indians, and U.S. civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War protesters. Among its most articulate advocates have been Gandhi, who maintained that action needs to be accompanied by love and a willingness to search for the truth, and Martin Luther King, Jr., who called for "tough-mindedness and tenderheartedness." Two of the most massive examples of passive resistance were the Solidarity movement in Poland (1980-81) and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia (1989). Opponents of passive resistance as a means of forcing a change in policy have criticized it for potentially fostering a general disrespect for law that could result in anarchy.

or passive resistance

Refusal to obey government demands or commands and nonresistance to consequent arrest and punishment. It is used especially as a nonviolent and usually collective means of forcing government concessions and has been a major tactic of nationalist movements in Africa and India, of the U.S. civil rights movement, and of labour and antiwar movements in many countries. Civil disobedience is a symbolic or ritualistic violation of the law, rather than a rejection of the system as a whole. The civil disobedient, finding legitimate avenues of change blocked or nonexistent, sees himself as obligated by a higher, extralegal principle to break some specific law. By submitting to punishment, the civil disobedient hopes to set a moral example that will provoke the majority or the government into effecting meaningful political, social, or economic change. The philosophical roots of civil disobedience lie deep in Western thought. Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, and John Locke, among others, appealed to systems of natural law that take precedence over the laws created by communities or states (positive law). More modern advocates and practitioners of civil disobedience include Henry David Thoreau, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

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