hen our politics runs hot, the default response is to cool the streets using bans, blackouts, baton-charges and requests to stay home. Order returns, but briefly. As any community organiser will tell you, that temporary absence of visible conflict is negative peace. Johan Galtung drew a sharper distinction between negative and positive peace. You only get the latter when grievances are addressed and institutions treat people fairly. Pakistan knows the difference. We have had long stretches of quiet that were anything but peaceful.

If we want movements to secure lasting change rather than cathartic headlines, we need to relearn a simple truth: non-violence is not passivity; it is a strategy. Gene Sharp’s core claim was disarmingly practical. He argued that political power rests on consent of the pillars of support that keep any system standing. These include bureaucracy, business, media, civil service, security forces and moral authority. Non-violent movements work by shifting these pillars, without trading blows in the street. They discipline anger into tactics that grow legitimacy and shrink the opponents’ coalition.

Three mindset shifts follow; each of those matters in Pakistan. First, conflict is not the enemy, only violent conflict is. Social change requires contention. Trying to erase conflict produces pressure cookers that have a calm surface but boiling interiors. Movements need peace literacy, not peace-and-quiet. This includes the skills to surface disagreements safely; argue in public without dehumanising; and advancing claims without crossing into harm. That means training and adopting codes of conduct, and planning lawful, highly public steps that force a choice without inviting crackdowns. These sound like luxuries until you tally the cost of one afternoon of chaos that includes injuries, arrests, polarisation and the loss of public sympathy.

Second, visibility must be earned; it cannot be seized. Media rewards spectacle, and it is tempting to chase the clip that trends by sundown. However, non-violence plays a longer game by wagering that legitimacy outlasts virality. That’s why discipline matters. Movements that remain unprovoked, win over a spectrum of allies that are the undecided middle who ultimately decide outcomes. One reckless act can flip the frame from citizens-with-demands to security-versus-disorder. Winning that frame is important to the non-violent struggle and can decide outcomes.

Third, the real battle is for the pillars, not the podium. The point of protest is not to deliver the perfect speech. It is to move the people and institutions whose quiet cooperation upholds the status quo. Non-violence gives them a safe bridge as civil servants may refuse an unlawful order; businesses may refuse to bankroll repression; journalists may choose context over caricature; teachers may make space for debate. Violence saws off that bridge. Once people feel physically threatened, they retreat to their corners and the pillars harden.

In a country where escalation is dangerous, non-violence is not a call to the square. It is a call to a temperament of restraint in speech, care with facts, refusal of humiliation and fidelity to means that do not poison ends. 

There is also a rhythm to successful movements that our public conversation often misreads. Bill Moyer’s Movement Action Plan described predictable phases: take-off, peak, apparent decline, renewal. After the first wave of energy, every movement enters a valley of discouragement and it looks like you’ve failed. In reality, that is when strategies mature as organisations consolidate, tactics diversify and new leaders emerge. Too many promising efforts in Pakistan die here, mistaking a normal consolidation phase for defeat and turning inward or turning reckless.

What would it look like to centre non-violence as strategy? It would begin by redefining peace and treating conflict as a civic skill, not a scandal. Disagreement is inevitable in a plural society. The question is whether we can argue without dehumanising. Our vocabulary matters and words like ghaddar, fitna and anti-state end conversations before they start. A non-violent mindset asks for precision, i.e. name the claim, test the evidence, refuse the shortcut of insults. That can be mistaken for softness but at its core this is discipline.

Non-violence can reframe power but it requires patience with the movement cycle and holding our nerve. Centring non-violence will change what we measure. We are quick to count crowds or clashes but slower to count trust. If the goal is positive peace, the indicators are straightforward, like responsiveness of offices, fairness in procedures, language in public debate and the ease with which an ordinary person can seek redress. These are not dramatic shifts, but they provide the ground on which drama becomes unnecessary.

Finally, centring non-violence will lower the heat but raise moral clarity. In a country where escalation is dangerous, non-violence is not a call to the square. It is a call to a temperament of restraint in speech, care with facts, refusal of humiliation and fidelity to means that do not poison ends. The argument is simple: how we struggle determines the country we inherit when the struggle is over.

Violence is often a response to real injury and long neglect. But that is exactly why non-violence is not a moral luxury. It is the only approach with a track record of separating just demands from destructive escalations of growing movements instead of burning them out. Crucially, it keeps the door open for constructive programmes, community-run services and parallel institutions that build the positive peace Galtung described.

We cannot outsource learning non-violent strategies to emergencies. By the time a crowd forms or a cordon tightens, everyone is improvising. The invitation is to practice non-violence before the sirens. If we aim only for quiet, we will keep getting calm days and dark nights. If we aim for positive peace, we will perhaps argue more, but our arguments will be inside a sturdier house.

In this era marked with global social movements, it is important to recognise that non-violence is not the absence of struggle. It is winning without destroying the ground you hope to stand on together. In a country that has known too many pauses mistaken for peace, non-violence is not optional. It is nation-building.

Shiza Nisar is a doctoral student at Kent State University, USA. Her research interests include media, gender and technology in the Global South