Ashoka rejected military conquest, adopting a policy he called " conquest by dharma" – a religious and moral law consisting of generosity, nonviolence, and truthfulness.
It's a strategy called " aggressive nonviolence." I'm curious to know whether you interact or have interacted much with whalers directly, and tried to understand their perspective.
And in terms of civil rights, it was Martin Luther King and that relationship with Gandhi and nonviolence, and that power of love was much more powerful than enmity or violence.