Non-Violence

Violence leads to destruction

Violence brings nothing but destruction. If the nations come out with heavy artillery against each other then the State, which gets more destruction is said to be the loser and that which faces lesser destruction is declared the winner. How strange are the criteria to judge the loser and the winner! It is probably based on the premise that man is primarily born to destroy or get destroyed with no other aim in life.

Gandhiji

Mahatma Gandhi who always followed the path of non-, violence proved that even the biggest problems can be solved without resorting to violence He also proved that there are some other weapons that are more effective than bombs and bullets and the most effective among them are truth and nonviolence.

Nehru’s view – Man’s history

About Gandhiji, J.L. Nehru wrote: “Gandhiji was essentially a man of religion, a Hindu to innermost depths of his being, and yet his conception of religion had nothing to do with any dogma, custom or ritual. It was basically concerned with his firm belief in the moral law, which he calls the Law of Truth or love. Truth and non-violence appear to him to be the same thing, and he uses these words almost interchangeably.”

Of course, man’s history through centuries has been a history of bloodshed. There is hardly a page in the entire history of mankind when man lived completely in peace and free from war and turmoil.

Nuclear weapons

With the advent of the Atom bomb, the man began to realize that now there might be no war, since, being afraid of the nuclear holocaust, a state may not venture to start a war against its adversary. No doubt, after World War II there have been no major wars like World War II itself. But we had the Korean War, the Congo War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Indo-China and Indo-Pak Wars, the Cuba crisis, the American operation against Iraq, and then Afghanistan.

Peace – Our goal and Nuclear energy for peaceful purposes

Then, have we really come nearer to the goal of total peace? Have we really gained from the invention of the Atom bomb? It cannot be denied that the nuclear power when used for peaceful purposes is of immense power to man, particularly in the matter of production of energy and curing of several critical ailments and deformities in the human body. That is truly the nonviolent harnessing of the demon of the atom. But what should we say in a nutshell, about nuclear weapons?

Stocks of nuclear weapons and terrorism

At present, a number of countries are having stocks of nuclear weapons which are a danger to the very existence of man.

The world has been coming closer and closer to a nuclear catastrophe. That is the violent aspect of the same atom.

Though terrorism in one form or the other is said to be as old as man, yet in the modern age, its ugly shape has sent a shudder through the frame of even the mightiest nations.

Let us follow Gandhiji

Now, we can say, with confidence that the way of nonviolence as shown by Gandhiji can be the only way out for mankind if it intends to save itself from extinction. Gandhiji brought the mightiest empire in history to its knees through his ways of non-violence. Then why not follow Gandhiji’s philosophy of non-violence in letter and spirit? If mankind remains adamant in not following the way shown by Gandhiji, certainly, the doomsday is going to become a reality rather sooner than later.