NON-VIOLENCE THROUGH AGES
By
PROF. SUDHANSU BIMAL MOOKHERJI, M.A.
The
ideal of non-violence (ahimsa) dates back to the grey dawn of history.
It may have first flashed across the mental horizon of the holy sages and seers
(Rishis) in the sylvan retreats of
The
wheel of time revolved non-stop. Centuries rolled on. Waters flowed down
“I
undertake the precept from killing to abstain.”
(“Panatipata ceramani sikkhapdam samadyami.)
Buddha’s
non-violence was not a negative or passive concept. He made it an active and
positive virtue by enjoining that an evil tendency should be conquered by the
contrary good tendency. The Dhammapada, for
example, says that never should hostility be sought to be conquered with
hostility (“Na hi cerena cerani
sammantidha kadachanam”–Dhammapada, 5). We read elsewhere in the Dhammapada that anger, dishonesty,
miserliness and falsehood should be conquered with love, honesty, liberality
and truth, respectively.
It
may be noted in passing that, in between the age of the Mahabharata and
that of Buddha, the Jaina teachers–twenty four in all–also
preached and practised non-violence. Their followers
were to practise non-violence (ahimsa), truth (Satyam), non-theft (asteya),
non-acquisition (aparigraha) and
continence (brahmacharya). The Jaina concept of non-violence seems confused to the modern
mind as it attributes;” souls not only to birds and beasts but also to plants,
metals, water, etc.”
Buddhism
spread far and wide, and Buddhist missionaries were the torch-bearers of
civilization and culture in many a land steeped in superstition, ignorance and
barbarism. Buddhism is, in fact,
Lao-tze of
Plato,
the great Greek philosopher of the 4th century B. C., and some of the Hebrew
Prophets also spoke of returning good for evil (Vide Plato by Eric Leon, p. 30,
and Proverbs 24; l7, 29 and 25; 21).
Non-violence
found one of its greatest exponents in Jesus Christ nearly six centuries after
Buddha. Christ’s was a life dedicated to non-violence. He held fast to it even
in death, and prayed to God from the Cross to forgive those who had crucified
him. “But I say unto you,” he told his disciples, “that ye resist not evil; but
whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Matthew 5; 39). “Love your enemies,” he exhorted. “Bless
them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which
despite fully use you, and persecute you.” (Matthew 5; 44).
How very similar to the sermons of Buddha quoted above! A Semitic Buddha, it
seems, is delivering in Hebrew the same soul-stirring message as did the Aryan
in Pali six hundred years earlier.
Non-violence
preached and practised by Christ was not “passive
submission.” He wanted to fight evil with good. Christian Europe unfortunately
“mistook the bold and brave resistance, full of wisdom, by Jesus of Nazareth
for passive resistance as if it was of the weak ....” (Mahatma Gandhi in a
letter to a Swiss pacifist, Madamme Edmond Privat–Vide Harijan, December
7, 1947, p. 453.)
Islam,
universally regarded as a militant creed, has been compared to a “flaming
sword.” But the Quoran waxes eloquent
at places in its praise of forgiveness and benevolence, and advocates the
return of good for evil, e.g., “Turn away evil with that which is better” (Quoran 41; 34); “Paradise is for those who bridle their
anger and those who forgive men; for God loveth the
benevolent” (Quoran 43; 77). The teachings of
Islam on forgiveness and on returning good for evil have been summed up in the
following words: “Seek again him who drives you away; give to him who takes
away from you; pardon him who injures you” (Vide The Spirit of Islam by Syed Ameer Ali, p. 177).
Henry
David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, two of America’s foremost thinkers and
intellectuals in the 19th century, read the Bhagavadgita
and some of the ancient Indian literature in translation, and fell under
the spell of non-violence. Their thoughts and writings were considerably
influenced by the ideal of non-violence. Thoreau spoke and wrote against the
iniquity of the United States Government making war on Mexico. He refused to
pay taxes to such a Government, and was sent to jail for his principles. On release,
he published his famous essay The Virtue of Civil Disobedience.
A
copy of this essay was sent a few decades later by some one from England or
America to Count Leo Tolstoy in Russia. Tolstoy, a firm believer in
non-violence, had already written powerfully on the subject in his great essays
on the significance of the life and the mission of Christ. Mahatma Gandhi, who
was in South Africa at the time, had already read Tolstoy’s works, and had
developed a great admiration for him. Gandhi wrote to Tolstoy, and Tolstoy
responded. The latter sent a copy of Thoreau’s essay on Civil Disobedience to
the former. Gandhi was delighted to read it. Hundreds and thousands must have
read it before and after Gandhi. But on none perhaps did it leave a more
profound impression. It stirred Gandhi to the depths of his being. The reason
is not far to seek. Gandhi’s mind, steeped in the Hindu, Jaina
and Buddhist traditions of India, was fully prepared for the reception of the
age-old ideal of non-violence re-stated by Thoreau. The ideal–we all
know–yielded a rich harvest in the years to come. Gandhi adopted the phrase ‘Civil
Disobedience’ from Thoreau; and used it in his epic struggles
against the organised might of Governments at home in
India and abroad in South Africa. These struggles were, in Gandhi’s words, his
“Experiments with Truth.” Gandhi cannot–and he did not–claim that he invented
non-violence and civil disobedience. But both were transformed in his minds,
and, in the transformation, led to the emergence of Satyagraha. Satyagrana, translated as soul-force, assumes that the
world rests on the bed-rock of satya or
truth. Satya also means ‘that which is.’ Satyagraha, therefore,
means the soul’s battle for the realisation of Truth, which in its purest and
highest form is identical with God. The use of ‘Satyagraha’ in political
struggles by Gandhi elevated and ennobled politics. Politics was spiritualised; and Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence, the
prophet of ‘Satyagraha’, has been rightly described as “a saint among
statesmen” and “a statesman among saints.”
Non-violence
as conceived by Gandhi must not be mistaken for mere non-resistance. “It is,”
as Jawaharlal Nehru points out, “non-violent resistance–a positive and dynamic
method of action. It was not meant for those who merely accept the status
quo. The very purpose for which it was designed was to create ‘a ferment in
society’ and thus to change existing conditions.” (An Autobiography, p.
540)
Some
noble souls before Gandhi applied the method of love in their personal lives.
But the credit for having adopted it as a plan for social and political
liberation must go to Gandhi. Under his captaincy, organised
groups in India and South Africa used it on a large scale for the redress of
their grievances. He tabooed violence for the attainment of political ends and
developed a “new technique in the history of political revolution.” He believed
that “Ahimsa is always tested in the midst of himsa,
kindness in the midst of cruelty, truth in the midst of falsehood, love in
the midst of hate.” (Gandhi to his Muslim visitors at Delhi on the Id day,
1947.)
Non-violence
and Satyagraha have won laurels not only in South Africa and India but
in other countries as well. Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the
Prime Minister of Ghana (former British colony of Gold Coast), heard of
Gandhiji and of his non-violent political struggle while he (Dr. Nkrumah) was a
student at the Lincoln University in the U. S. A. He used the non-violent
technique successfully in his country’s struggle for independence. A firm believer
in non-violence and Satyagraha himself, Kwame
Nkrumah would have other African nations use them in their own fight against
foreign yoke.
Non-violence
had another feather added to its cap when sometime back Negroes in the city of
Montgomery, Alabama, U. S. A., were led by a Negro priest, the Rev. Martin
Luther King, in a successful, non-violent boycott to end racial discrimination
on a local bus line. Many Negro groups in the Southern States of the U. S. A.
are today eagerly studying the Gandhian method of Satyagraha.
Defence by violence
and arms is out of question in this so-called nuclear age. Some other method or
methods has or have to be devised. “The way to such a substitute,” writes the Vigil,
“has been shown by Gandhiji. The inexorable logic of the situation is
forcing men like Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall–not a pacifist but an expert
on military strategy–to the conclusion that defence
in the nuclear age must eschew arms and become non-violent. He has given a
detailed programme for a non-violent defence of
Britain under possible Soviet attack and Soviet occupation. What is remarkable
about it is not that many of Sir Stephen’s proposals appear to derive directly
from Gandhiji’s prescription–that was inevitable–but that even those who still
support the British Government’s defence strategy
based on the H-bomb as the ultimate deterrent, have treated Sir Stephen’s
thesis with respect and admit that it calls for a point-by-point reply.”
(‘Search for Security’–Leader in the Vigil, April 5, 1958.)
Non-violence
and Satyagraha, we believe, may finally prove to be the saviour of a world rushing headlong to the abyss.