An Eye For An Eye

‘An eye for an eye and soon the world will be blind.’ These famous words were said by Mahatma Gandhi. It is only human to want revenge on equal bases, but when you are personally involved, you will always overreact. To wreck vengeance is the immediate reaction of an aggrieved victim of a violent clash and to over react is the common instinct of victims. In case of clashes between people of different communities, the loss of life of an innocent offspring of a person from one community often explodes into major communal violence, resulting in the death of scores of innocents from both the communities due to unreasonable and unchecked rage. By not the fighting back, but turning the other cheek it makes h the aggressors look bad. It is a form of moral challenge directed at the aggressors which makes them appear bad and guilty in the eyes of people because of their unjustifiable aggression against the defenseless. The vicious circle of violence building further violence is very hard to break.

In this age of nuclear weapons, the only philosophy or rather way of life that ensures our existence as a species on earth is nonviolence. It will take only a pull of the nuclear trigger to wipe away every trace of life from this earth, and turn it into a nuclear wasteland. Today, with irresponsible, fragmented and fanatical regimes, acquiring nuclear capabilities and delivery systems, violence only pushes the hand of the fanatic closer to the trigger. Violent and aggressive civilisations have thrived momentarily but in the end, they have all met with a very violent end, it is the comparatively more humane and nonviolent societies that have been blessed with survival of their societies.

Some amount of violence has and will always exist as long as there is life; but to let violence, aggression and dominance by terror be the dominant principles of life only hastens our slide towards obliteration. An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind.