New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1939. First edition. A Near Fine copy in Very Good dust jacket. xl, 351 pp. Publisher's black cloth. Slight rubbing to one corner. Faint foxing to edges of closed text block and to lower pastedown. Red topstain mostly faded. Scarce dust jacket with spine faded, some foxing to spine and flaps, and a bit of chipping to edges and folds. Overall, an appealing copy of an uncommon work on Gandhian nonviolence strategy that inspired Black civil rights activists including Martin Luther King, Jr., Bayard Rustin, and the Freedom Riders.

War Without Violence, the first English-language book by the Indian writer and civil rights activist Dr. Krishnalal Shridharani (1911 - 1960), analyzes nonviolent civil disobedience, particularly the strategy of satyagraha developed and named by Gandhi during the Indian civil rights movement. In the book, Shridharani describes the techniques, philosophy, and successes of satyagraha, and advocates for its use in civil rights struggles in the western world: "Like war, Satyagraha demands public spirit, self-sacrifice, organization, endurance and discipline...and I have found these qualities displayed in Western communities more than in my own," Shridharani writes, "Perhaps the best craftsmen in the art of violence may still be the most effective wielders of non-violent direct action" (p. xxxvi).The work had a profound effect on Black American activists – many of them friends and compatriots of Shridharani – including Martin Luther King, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois, Pauli Murray, and Bayard Rustin, the latter of whom described the book as "the gospel, our bible" during the Black civil rights struggle in the 1940s (quoted in Iyengar). War Without Violence continued to influence Black activists in the 1950s and 60s: King studied the book during the Montgomery bus boycott, and organizers with the Congress of Racial Equality read it in preparation for the Freedom Rides in 1961.

Though Shridharani died young, at the age of just forty-nine, he had a rich activist career that begun when he was a university student. In 1930, he participated in the Salt March led by Gandhi, and was imprisoned during the nonviolent raid on Daharasa Salt Works in Gujarat. In the early 1930s, Shridharani moved to the United States to pursue his graduate studies, and began befriending and collaborating with many Black civil rights activists including Rustin and Du Bois. He spoke for the NAACP several times and contributed to The Crisis. Along with Shridharani's own experiences in the Indian civil rights movement, War Without Violence was inspired by this contact with Black American activists during the 1930s; the work, in turn, inspired Black activists for decades, long after Shridharani's return to India and his death in 1949.

Iyengar, Malathi. "Activist, Scholar, Dandy: Krishnalal Shridharani in the United States, 1934-1946." South Asian American Digital Archive. Near Fine in Very Good dust jacket. (Item #7923)