Gandhi Non Violence Quotes

I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil.

Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.

An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence. This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment.

I first learned the concepts of non-violence in my marriage.

Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.

The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty. Ghandi, quoted in Merton, p. 68

The first principal of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating.

Leo Tolstoy's life has been devoted to replacing the method of violence for removing tyranny or securing reform by the method of non­resistance to evil. He would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in self­suffering.

Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in the smoke of confabulation. There can be no peace on earth without the kind of inner change that brings man back to his "right mind." p. 31

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent.

Jesus lived and died in vain if He did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal law of love. Gandhi, quoted in Merton, p. 38

I have nothing new to teach the world.Truth and non-violence are as old as the hills.

The most awful tyranny is that of the proximate Utopia where the last sins are currently being eliminated and where, tomorrow, there will be no more sins because all the sinners will have been wiped out. p. 22

Cuida tus pensamientos, porque se convertirán en tus palabras. Cuida tus palabras, porque se convertirán en tus actos. Cuida tus actos, porque convertirán en tus hábitos. Cuida tus hábitos, porque se convertirán en tu destino.

I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.

Live simply so others may simply live

In fact, honour, duty and love of one's own kith and kin and country might often compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force.

world has things which full fill man needs, but not greeds.

It is true that neither the ancient wisdoms nor the modern sciences are complete in themselves. They do not stand alone. They call for one another. Wisdom without science is unable to penetrate the full sapiential meaning of the created and the material cosmos. Science without wisdom leaves man enslaved to a world of unrelated objects in which there is no way of discovering (or creating) order and deep significance in man's own pointless existence. (p. 4)

Even if we believe in non-violence, it would not be proper for us to refuse, through cowardice, to protect the weak. I might be ready to embrace a snake, but, if it comes to bite you, I would kill it to protect you. If Arjuna had forgotten the difference between kinsmen and others and had been so filled with the spirit of non-violence so as to bring about a change of heart in Duryodhana, he would have been another Shri Krishna. However, he believed Duryodhana to be wicked.

L'humanité court à son suicide si le monde n'adopte pas la non-violence.

In the use of force, one simplifies the situation by assuming that the evil to be overcome is clear-cut, definite, and irreversible. Hence there remains but one thing: to eliminate it. Any dialogue with the sinner, any question of the irreversibility of his act, only means faltering and failure. Failure to eliminate evil is itself a defeat. Anything that even remotely risks such defeat is in itself capitulation to evil. The irreversibility of evil then reaches out to contaminate even the tolerant thought of the hesitant crusader who, momentarily, doubts the total evil of the enemy he is about to eliminate. p. 21

most Americans think of Rosa Parks as a demur, pleasant-enough seamstress who backed into history by being too tired to get out of her seat on a bus one day, in reality she had been trained in nonviolence spirit and tactics at a famous institution, Highlander Folk School. It seems to be a difficult concept for most of us that peace is a skill that can be learned. We know war can be learned, but we seem to think that one becomes a peacemaker by a mere change of heart. (23)

La non-violence est la loi de notre espèce, comme la violence est la loi de la brute. L'esprit somnole chez la brute qui ne connaît pour toute loi que cette de la force physique. La dignité de l'homme exige d'obéir à une loi supérieure. à la force de l'esprit.

Non-violence is the summit of bravery.

I learnt the lesson on non-violence from my wife, when I tried to bend her to my will. Her determined resistance to my will on the one hand, and her quiet submission to the suffering my stupidity involved on the other, ultimately made me ashamed of myself and cured me of my stupidity in thinking that I was born to rule over her, and in the end she became my teacher in non-violence.

The five cardinal vows are: non-violence, truth, non-stealing, celibacy, non-possession. The five casual vows are: bodily purity, contentment, the study of the scriptures, austerity, and meditation of God.

Hindus should not harbour anger against Muslims even if the latter wants to destroy and kill us all. We should face death bravely. If Muslims established their rule after killing all Hindus we would be ushering in a new India.

Tolstoy’s most lasting influence was in India. He and M. K. Gandhi had begun a correspondence in the early years of the twentieth century, with Gandhi referring to himself as Tolstoy’s ‘humble follower’. Many of their beliefs have close affinities – the doctrine of non-violence, for example, and the belief that the kingdom of God exists within man. Gandhi’s campaign of civil disobedience and passive resistance, together with his abhorrence of Western ‘progress’, owe much to Tolstoy, although his engagements in the political arena do not. And it is in the East, particularly India, where the liberal democratic tradition continued longer, that Tolstoy’s ideas remained alive.

But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached - their faith in human progress - must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey. For if we lose that faith - if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace - then we lose what is best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass.

An armed conflict between nations horrifies us. But the economic war is no better than an armed conflict. This is like a surgical operation. An economic war is prolonged torture. And its ravages are no less terrible than those depicted in the literature on war property so called. We think nothing of the other because we are used to its deadly effects .... The movement against war is sound. I pray for its success. But I cannot help the gnawing fear that the movement will fail if it does not touch the root of all evil-human greed.

Language at best is but a poor vehicle for expressing one’s thoughts in full. For me non-violence is not a mere philosophical principle. It is the rule and the breath of my life. I know I fail often, sometimes consciously, more often unconsciously. It is a matter not of the intellect but of the heart.

...if we do not know how to defend ourselves, our women and our places of worship by force of suffering, i.e., nonviolence, we must, if we are men, be at least able to defend all these by fighting." (MLK) "...If given a choice between violent resistance and passive acceptance, King and Gandhi both accepted violence..." "...like violence, it [non-violent resistance] was aggressive, but it was spiritually, bot physically, so." "...At the same time the mind and the emotions are active, actively trying to persuade the opponent to change his ways and convince him that he is mistaken and to lift him to a higher level of existence.

Against these human frailties, there stood out the man of infinite goodness, a seeker all his life of Truth, which he equated to God, a pilgrim who believed that love was the greatest gift of man, and that love and understanding and tolerance and compassion and non-violence, if they were only practised, would liberate mankind from much of the burden, oppression and cruelty of life. This was not to be, in his own country or in any other, and probably, given the cussedness of the human race, it will never be. But Gandhi gave his life and his genius to make it so, or at least more so than it had ever been – he was too wise to have many illusions, but his hope was boundless.

On 1 August 1939, Savarkar spoke at a public meeting organized at Tilak Smarak Mandir in Poona. In his speech, he talked about the three different schools of thought prevalent in the Congress, led by three different leaders—Gandhi, Subhas Bose and Manabendranath Roy—and how it is different from the school of thought of the Hindu Mahasabha. He said: In today’s Congress, there are three schools of thought . . . Gandhian school of thought has truth and non-violence as its key ideas. But Gandhian non-violence is inimical to Hindutva. Hindu philosophy says violence for violence sake is bad, but violence is permissible to destroy evil and protect the good, and such violence is good conduct. But Gandhian thought makes no such distinction. They believe in non-violence under all conditions. Second school of thought is led by Subhas Bose and the Forward Bloc. His policies and means used are similar to our thought process and we could work together on certain issues, but even they are obsessed with this mirage of Hindu-Muslim unity. The third school of thought is of Manvendranath (sic) Roy and that is not acceptable to us at all. They believe in the policy of active Muslim appeasement. The Hindu Mahasabha has the interests of Hindus in mind always.

Antagonism between the classes will be removed. I do not envisage a dead and artificial level among the people. There will be a variety among them as there is among the leaves of a tree. There will certainly be no have-nots, no unemployment, and no disparity between classes and masses such as we see to-day. I have no doubt whatsoever that if non-violence in its full measure becomes the policy of the State, we shall reach essential equality without strife.

You have given me a teacher in Thoreau, who furnished me through his essay on the ‘Duty of Civil Disobedience’ scientific confirmation of what I was doing in South Africa. Great Britain gave me Ruskin, whose Unto This Last transformed me overnight from a lawyer and city dweller into a rustic living away from Durban on a farm, three miles from the nearest railway station; and Russia gave me in Tolstoy a teacher who furnished a reasoned basis for my non-violence.

If we see anyone who renounces his rights in regard to worldly matters and forgives even strangers, not to speak of relations, we should think of him as a good man. If we desist from beating up a thief or any other felon, do nothing to get him punished but, after admonishing him and recovering from him the stolen article, let him go, we would be credited with humanity and our action would be regarded as an instance of non-violence; a contrary course would be looked upon as violence.

Gandhi was one such bad parent who rewarded the ill-behaved and punished the well-behaved. He was harsh on the polemical but non-violent Swami Shraddhananda, and kind to the Swami’s murderer, about whom he stated in public: ‘Abdul Rashid is my brother.’ In settling his succession, he spurned his loyal and obedient friend Sardar Patel, and favoured the conceited and un-Gandhian Anglo-secularist Jawaharlal Nehru. His dealings with Suhrawardy were also read by the Muslim agitators as a sign of deference to Muslim aggression, an encouragement to continue on the chosen path of provocation and violence.

But how to “take the side” of the oppressed without “taking sides” against the oppressors? How to oppose without denouncing? How to “be with” without “being against?” No neat answers are possible. But I have found help from Gandhi’s example of ahimsa and from the ongoing practice of mindfulness-meditation. Gandhi’s program for non-violence was, I believe, precisely what we are talking about: he stood firmly with the colonized people of India, but he never hated, or humiliated, or spoke ill of the British colonizers. Thus, he never broke off his connections with them. They knew he opposed them, but they did not feel he was against them. Indeed, they knew he respected and cared for them. Gandhi opposed, but he also embraced. To do that, one must be acting from a well-nurtured spiritual center. This is another reason why all our liberating action must arise out of our uniting contemplation – why, as Roshi Bernie Glassman told me, I’ll never stop the death squads unless I realize my oneness with them.

Tilak had complained that Gandhi was asking too much of the Indian people. He was proved right. Non-violence, not harming the hated British, embracing jails, Hindu-Muslim unity, giving up titles, contributing money, the abolition of untouchability—each item on the long list was desirable, but also costly.

La civilisation moderne doit être rejetée : le progrès est fauteur de guerres et de violences ; la vraie civilisation en se trouve que dans la sainte simplicité de vie du paysan, de l'artisan qui travaillent de leurs mains, subviennent à leurs besoins

On 8 March, pressed by Punjab’s Sikh and Hindu leaders and shaken by the violence in Amritsar and Multan (apparently it had not yet learnt about Rawalpindi district), the Congress working committee, meeting in New Delhi, asked for ‘a division of the Punjab into two Provinces, so that the predominantly Muslim part may be separated from the predominantly non-Muslim part’.58

Mahatma Gandhiji had unlimited courage, so he could fight against the British at the risk of his life, not by talking of non-violence only. He never retreated when it was necessary to show courage. But what is the use of finding fault with weapons when we have no courage to fight? We were only boasting about non-violence without strength

The chief reason for this shameful defeat was our excessive passion for the ideology of non-violence… I feel the war of 1962 has done good to us because it opened our eyes and [punctured] our fanciful idealism… We soon realized the importance of the army and weapons.

Stating that wisdom had come to the West from the East, Gandhiji said: "..Before Jesus was Moses who belonged to Palestine though he was born in Egypt. After Jesus came Mohammed. I omit any reference to Krishna and Rama, and other lights. I do not call them lesser lights but they are less known to the literary world. All the same I do not know a single person in the world to match these men of Asia. And then what happened? Christianity became disfigured when it went to the West. I am sorry to have to say that.

What made Mahatma Gandhi's struggle a great success was not a doctrine—not even the doctrine of non-violence—but Gandhi himself. In our day a lot is written and read about the doctrine of non-violence, and people everywhere are trying to apply it. But they cannot rediscover the vitality of the kind that Gandhi had. The reason for this is that the "Gandhians" do not possess the spiritual force of Gandhi. They have faith in his doctrine but cannot set into motion a movement of great solidarity because none of them possess the spiritual force of a Gandhi and therefore cannot produce sufficient compassion and sacrifice.

If i understand what Gandhi is saying, non-violence requires something far more difficult than merely turning the other cheek; it requires empathizing with the fears and other feelings that provide that impetus for people to attack us. Being aware of these feelings we have no desire to attack back because we can see the human ignorance leading others to attack us; instead, our goal becomes to provide the education for our attackers which will enable them to transcend their violence and engage in cooperative relationships with us." - Marshall Rosenberg.

We also see the power of weakness. In Fourth Generation warfare, the weak often have more moral power than the strong. One of the first people to employ the power of weakness was Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi’s insistence on non-violent tactics to defeat the British in India was and continues to be a classic strategy of Fourth Generation war. When the British responded to Indian independence rallies with violence, they immediately lost the moral war.

Gandhi admitted he could never fight Hitler with his methods,” the professor continued. “Why? Because non-violence relies on shame. What if your enemy feels no shame? Non-violence is a political response to a matter of warfare. It means you are not willing to do everything you can for your noble goals, so how important were they? No? Anybody?

Bose stood for treating non-violence and satyagraha as only a means to an end—“to be adjusted and altered, as exigencies and expediency demand”—on the path to swaraj, or complete freedom from the colonial rule. Saint Gandhi, on the other side, would “adhere to that ideal of highest standard of non-violence, even if the pursuit means sacrificing and giving up the political goal of swaraj”. [1]

Woodstock, summer of 1969, was the turning point of rock festivals. Time magazine described this happening as “one of the most significant political and sociological events of the age.” One half-million American youth assembled for a three-day rock concert. They were non-violent, fun-loving hippies who resembled the large followings of Mahatma Gandhi in India and Rev. Martin Luther King in the USA, both strong advocates of non-violence. Both assassinated. It is important to understand the kinds of drugs and chemical agents available to stifle dissent, the mentality of people hell-bent on changing the course of history, to comprehend that cultures and tastes can be moved in directions according to game plans in the hands of a few people. Adolf Hitler’s first targets in Nazi Germany were Gypsies and the students. LSD was a youth-oriented drug perfected in the laboratory. When it was combined with other chemicals and given wide distribution, all that remained were marching orders to go to war.

Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Highlight at location 221-228 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:41:32 Those who are introduced to the Quran only through the media, generally have the impression that the Quran is a book of jihad, and jihad to them is an attempt to achieve one’s goal by means of violence. But this idea is based on a misunderstanding. Anyone who reads the Quran for himself will easily appreciate that its message has nothing to do with violence. The Quran is, from beginning to end, a book which promulgates peace and in no way countenances violence. It is true that jihad is one of the teachings of the Quran. But jihad, taken in its correct sense, is the name of peaceful struggle rather than of any kind of violent action. The Quranic concept of jihad is expressed in the following verse, ‘Do greater jihad (i.e strive more strenuously) with the help of this [Quran]’ (25:52). Obviously, the Quran is not a weapon, but a book which gives us an introduction to the divine ideology of peaceful struggle. The method of such a struggle, according to the Quran, is ‘to speak to them a word to reach their very soul’ (4:63). ========== Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Note at location 228 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:41:45 jihad ========== Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Highlight at location 232-235 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:43:12 It is true that there are certain verses in the Quran, which convey injunctions similar to the following, ‘Slay them wherever you find them’ (2:191). Referring to such verses, there are some who attempt to give the impression that Islam is a religion of war and violence. This is totally untrue. Such verses relate, in a restricted sense, to those who have unilaterally attacked the Muslims. The above verse does not convey the general command of Islam. ========== Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Highlight at location 239-244 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:44:16 This division of commands into different categories is a natural one and is found in all religious books. For instance, the Gita, the holy book of the Hindus, pertains to wisdom and moral values. Yet along with this is the exhortation of Krishna to Arjuna, encouraging him to fight (Bhagavad Gita, 3:30). This does not mean that believers in the Gita should wage wars all the time. Mahatma Gandhi, after all, derived his philosophy of non-violence from the same Gita. The exhortation to wage war in the Gita applies only to exceptional cases where circumstances leave no choice. But for general day-to-day existence it gives the same peaceful commands as derived from it by Mahatma Gandhi. ========== Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Highlight at location 244-245 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:44:39 Similarly, Jesus Christ said, ‘Do not think that I came to bring peace on Earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.’ (Matthew, 10:34). ==========

Gandhi calls the GEETA his mother, and yet he cannot absorb it, because his creed of non-violence conflicts with the grim inevitability of war as seen in the GEETA. So Gandhi finds ways to rationalize the violence of the GEETA: he says the war of Mahabharat is only a metaphor, that it did not actually happen. This war, Gandhi says over and over again, represents the inner war between good and evil that goes on inside a man. The Kurushetra of the GEETA, according to Gandhi, is not a real battlefield located somewhere on this earth, nor is the Mahabharat an actual war. It is not that Krishna incites Arjuna to fight a real Mahabharat, Mahabharat only symbolizes the inner conflict and war of man, and so it is just a parable.

Gandhi Topi' is no longer an attire of the pacifist.

In all countries truth, on such matters, spoken before it is stale, is unpatriotic.

Non-violence wasn't a simply rejection of force. It was more a matter of opposing physical force with the force of the soul alone. Gandhi did not say: make no resistance when the blows rain down, when the brutality redoubles. He said almost the opposite: resist with your entire soul by standing up for as long as possible, never surrendering any of your dignity, and without showing the slightest aggression or doing anything at all that might restore, between the whipper and the whipped, any reciprocity or equivalence in a community of violence and hate. On the contrary, show immense compassion for the one who is beating you. The relation should remain asymmetric in every respect: on one side a blind, physical, hate-filled rage, on the other a spiritual force of love. If you hold firm, then the relationship is reversed; physical force degrades the one who uses it, who becomes a furious beast, while all human qualities are reflected in his prone victim, raised to a state of pure humanity by the attempt to lay him low. Non-violence puts violence to shame. To continue beating someone who opposes physical brutality with pure humanity, simply dignity, is to lose your honour and your soul there and then.

Tagore acknowledged that Gandhi returned to the ‘motherland in the time of her need to remind her of her mission.... to purge her present-day politics of its feebleness....’ But he warned that 'passive resistance is a force which is not necessarily moral in itself; it can be used against truth as well as for it. The danger inherent in all force grows stronger when it is likely to gain success, for then it becomes temptation.' Tagore knew that Gandhi’s own desire was to ‘fight against evil by the help of the good’. But ‘such a fight’, he warned, ‘is for heroes and not for men led by impulses of the moment’. The words were prescient. As the violence that followed Gandhi’s arrest demonstrated, not all those who joined his movement had his own calm resolution and steady commitment to non-violence. On 18 April, Gandhi announced the suspension of civil disobedience. He hoped satyagraha could be resumed in a few months, by which time his associates would have spread and cultivated a spirit of disciplined non-violence.

In May, Gandhi was in Simla, the summer capital of the Raj, Malaviya suggested that he meet the new viceroy, Lord Reading. Gandhi, with his long-standing belief in dialogue, agreed. Reading was new to India; this was the time to press upon him the demands of the Indians. In the third week of May, Gandhi had several meetings with the viceroy. Afterwards, Lord Reading wrote to his son: ‘There is no hesitation about him, there is a ring of sincerity in all he utters, save when discussing some political questions.... [H]e is convinced to a point almost bordering on fanaticism, that non-violence and love will give India its independence...

Gandhi wrote: ‘I seem to have detected a flaw in me which is unworthy of a votary of truth and ahimsa. I am going through a process of self-introspection, the results of which I cannot foresee. I find myself for the first time during the past 50 years in a Slough of Despond.’ One wonders what readers of the press statement made of this decidedly odd interpolation. To them, the cause, manifestation and the precise nature of this flaw was left unelaborated. Gandhi’s close disciples knew the details; and the labours of the editors of his Collected Works have since made them public for us to examine it. Here is what happened. On 14 April 1938, Gandhi awoke with an erection; and despite efforts to contain his excitement, had a masturbatory experience. He was sleeping alone, and it was decades since he had been aroused in such a way. The details of the incident were kept from his ‘political’ followers such as Jawaharlal Nehru, but discussed with the spiritual followers who had stayed with him in Sabarmati and Segaon. To one Gujarati ashramite he wrote that ‘I was in such a wretched and pitiable condition that in spite of my utmost efforts I could not stop the discharge though I was fully awake.... After the event, restlessness has become acute beyond words. Where am I, where is my place, and how can a person subject to passion represent non-violence and truth?’ To Mira, Gandhi wrote in a language even more vivid in its self-abasement: ‘That dirty, degrading, torturing experience of 14th April shook me to bits and made me feel as if I was hurled by God from an imaginary paradise where I had no right to be in my uncleanliness.’ To his other close woman disciple, Amrit Kaur, Gandhi spoke of ‘an unaccountable dissatisfaction with myself’. But he had not lost faith, and was resolved to overcome the memory of his failure. ‘The sexual sense is the hardest to overcome in my case,’ he remarked. ‘It has been an incessant struggle. It is for me a miracle how I have survived it. The one I am engaged in may be, ought to be, the final struggle.’ Gandhi had taken a vow of brahmacharya, as far back as 1906. He thought sex was necessary only for procreation, and rejected the idea that sex might be pleasurable in and of itself. In his writings and speeches, he had often spoken of the importance of the preservation and husbanding of sperm, which he termed ‘the vital fluid’. After this (to him) shocking experience, how could Gandhi best control his passions, best preserve and husband that vital fluid? Several ashramites (Amrit Kaur among them) thought he should avoid close physical contact with women, especially younger women. He should abandon ashram girls as supports while walking (he rested his hands on their shoulders to propel his frail frame along), and discontinue the practice of having his nails cut or his body massaged by women disciples. Gandhi was not convinced of the sagacity of this advice. He had, he reminded one disciple, not ‘advocated total avoidance of innocent contact between the two sexes and I have had a certain measure of success in this’. To Amrit Kaur, he insisted that ‘it is not the woman who is to blame. I am the culprit. I must attain the required purity.’ Gandhi had wanted to write about the experience of 14 April in Harijan, baring to the world his failure and lack of self-control. He discussed this with Rajagopalachari, who was then in Segaon. Rajaji dissuaded him from making his experience public. Afterwards, Rajaji wrote to his son-in-law Devadas, who was also Gandhi’s son. The Mahatma, he said, was deeply worried ‘that he was still unable to overcome the reflex action of his flesh. He discovered, it seems, one day and he was so shocked and felt so unworthy that he was deceiving people and he wrote an article about it for publication in Harijan, which, thank God, I have stopped, after a very quarrelsome hour'.

A week later, Gandhi wrote to his long-time disciple Vinoba Bhave, a man he valued highly for his scriptural learning, and for being a more thoroughgoing ascetic than himself. Bhave had never married, never had a relationship with a woman. Even in matters of diet, clothing and transport, he was far more abstemious than his master. Gandhi now told Bhave that ‘the friends in our circle have been very much upset because of Manu’s sleeping with me’. These friends included Narhari Parikh, who had been with Gandhi as long as Bhave, and K.G.Mashruwala and Swami Anand, who had also been in the ashram for decades. But these criticisms notwithstanding, Gandhi said ‘my own mind, however, is becoming firmer than ever, for it has been my belief for a long time that that alone is true brahmacharya which requires no hedges’. Should his grand-niece Manu, Gandhi asked Bhave, stop sleeping in his bed ‘out of deference to custom or to please co-workers’? If she did stop, would Gandhi ‘not be a hypocrite of the type described in chapter III [of the Gita]? If I do not appear to people exactly as I am within, wouldn’t that be a blot on my non-violence?’ Gandhi asked Bhave, as a man more learned than him in these spiritual matters, to let him have his view on them. Bhave replied two weeks later. ‘For the sake of achieving brahmacharya,’ he remarked, the experiment conducted by Gandhi was irrelevant. ‘Even if we do this for the sake of consolation,’ he continued, ‘sleeping naked is unnecessary. A father never does it with his daughter even innocently.’ In Vinoba’s view, to be self-conscious about the difference between man and woman was contrary to brahmacharya. As he put it: ‘If I don’t think of sleeping with a man, what is the purpose of sleeping with a woman?’ If Gandhi had indeed become a proper or true brahmachari, if he had indeed achieved that ‘passionless state’, he wouldn’t need to sleep with a woman to confirm or prove it.

To describe his method, Gandhi coined the expression satyagraha, literally, ‘holding on to truth’ or, as he variously described it, truth-force, love-force or soul-force. He disliked the English term ‘passive resistance’ because satyagraha required activism, not passivity. If you believed in Truth and cared enough to obtain it, Gandhi felt, you could not afford to be passive: you had to be prepared actively to suffer for Truth. So non-violence, like many later concepts labelled with a negation, from non-cooperation to non-alignment, meant much more than the denial of an opposite; it did not merely imply the absence of violence. Non-violence was the way to vindicate the truth not by the infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on one’s self. It was essential to willingly accept punishment in order to demonstrate the strength of one’s convictions.

It cannot too often be repeated that with him non-violence was not a simply marginal and quasi-fanatical indulgence of personal religious feeling. It belonged to the very nature of political life, and a society whose politics are habitually violent, inarticulate, and unreasonable is a subpolitical and therefore subhuman society. (from Thomas Merton's introduction to Gandhi on Non-Violence, pg 8. Italics original)

Violence is essentially wordless, and it can begin only where thought and rational communication have broken down. Any society which is geared for violent action is by that very fact systematically unreasonable and in articulate." (from Thomas Merton's introduction to Gandhi on Non-Violence, pg 7)

A society that lives by organized greed or by systemic terrorism and oppression (they come too much the same thing in the end) will always tend to be violent because it is in a state of persistent disorder and moral confusion. The first principle of valid political action in such a society then becomes non-cooperation with its disorder, its injustices, and more particularly with its deep commitment to untruth." (from Thomas Merton's introduction to Gandhi on Non-Violence, pg 9. Italics original.)

An armed conflict between nations horrifies us. But the economic war is no better than an armed conflict. This is like a surgical operation. An economic war is prolonged torture. And its ravages are no less terrible than those depicted in the literature on war properly so called. We think nothing of the other because we are used to its deadly effects…. The movement against war is sound. I pray for its success. But I cannot help the gnawing fear that the movement will fail if it does not touch the root of all evil—human greed. —M. K. Gandhi, “Non-Violence—The Greatest Force,” 1926

The pith of non-violence, in Gandhi’s philosophy, was abstention from sexual intercourse: the soul would reach exalted heights only if it learned to ‘crucify the flesh’.

Once the land of non-violence which gave birth to the fathers of non-violence, Gautama Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi, is now turned into a land of inevitable violence and hatred.

Gandhi gave a statement at his trial. “I am endeavoring to show to my countrymen that violent non-cooperation only multiplies evil and that as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence,” he said.

India—the land of Buddha, Mahavir, Ashoka and Gandhi—imagines itself to be a civilization rooted in non-violence. But the fact that these great apostles of peace belong to India only accentuates the terror that has blighted this land for centuries. Unfortunately, the history, geography, composition and reality of Indian society make terrorist violence almost inevitable. This would be true of any society with similar characteristics—a hugely diverse population that is riven with divisions and inequities. And it is our misfortune that we have rarely been blessed with a strong, non-partisan, non-sectarian leadership that can keep turbulence in check.

The British, representing a democracy with a free press and conscious of their international image, were susceptible to such shaming. But in Mahatma Gandhi’s own day non-violence could have done nothing for the Jews of Hitler’s Germany, who disappeared into gas chambers far from the flashbulbs of a war-obsessed press. It is ironically to the credit of the British Raj that it faced an opponent like Mahatma Gandhi and allowed him to succeed. The power of non-violence rests in being able to say, ‘to show you that you are wrong, I punish myself’. But that has little effect on those who are not interested in whether they are wrong and are already seeking to punish you whether you disagree with them or not. For them your willingness to undergo punishment is the most convenient means of victory. No wonder Nelson Mandela, who wrote that Gandhi had ‘always’ been ‘a great source of inspiration’, explicitly disavowed non-violence as useless in his struggle against the ruthless apartheid regime.

When Greenberg’s article was brought to his notice, Gandhi replied to it in Harijan, arguing that while non-violence would surely be harder against dictators, it must still be tried. ‘Its real quality is only tested in such cases,’ he observed. ‘Sufferers need not see the result during their lifetime. They must have faith that if their cult survives, the result is a certainty. The method of violence gives no greater guarantee than that of non-violence.’49

I’ve also been pleasantly surprised how this proposition—the message that Jesus shows us what God is like—is often well received by those who don’t profess Christian faith. If I say, “God is love and Jesus was love incarnate,” no problem! Jesus is seldom the issue, even for a rabid, self-avowed ‘non-Christian’ such as satirist Bill Maher. His primary attacks are not against Jesus at all, but against Christians whose religion does violence in the name of the Prince of Peace. He castigates: If you’re a Christian that supports killing your enemy and torture, you have to come up with a new name for yourself. …‘Capping thy enemy’ is not exactly what Jesus would do. For almost two thousand years, Christians have been lawyering the Bible to try to figure out how ‘Love thy neighbor’ can mean ‘Hate thy neighbor.’ … Martin Luther King Jr. gets to call himself a Christian, because he actually practiced loving his enemies. And Gandhi was so f-ing Christian, he was Hindu. But if you’re endorsing revenge, torture or war, …you cannot say you’re a follower of the guy who explicitly said, ‘Love your enemy’ and ‘Do good to those who hate you.’ … And not to put too fine a point on it, but nonviolence was kind of Jesus’ trademark—kind of his big thing. To not follow that part of it is like joining Greenpeace and hating whales. There’s interpreting, and then there’s just ignoring. It’s just ignoring if you’re for torture—as are more Evangelical* Christians than any other religion. You’re supposed to look at that figure of Christ on the Cross and think, “how could a man suffer like that and forgive?” … I’m a non-Christian. Just like most Christians. If you ignore every single thing Jesus commanded you to do, you’re not a Christian—you’re just auditing. You’re not Christ’s followers, you’re just fans. And if you believe the Earth was given to you to kick ass on while gloating, you’re not really a Christian—you’re a Texan.[3]

Violent thought affects your inner peace and Happiness more than you can ever imagine. When you are on the street and you use an expletive to yell at an errant road user, that is violent thought. This tendency to think ill of someone, even if you have been provoked or wronged, has to cease. This is the ahimsa that Gandhi talked about. It wasn’t just about violent action being given up, it was also about violent thought ceasing. When you train your mind to be non-violent in thought, and of course action, that is when you will discover that you are the Happiness that you seek!

Ahimsa is as relevant today, particularly to our inner well-being, as it was to Gandhi or during his time. Ahimsa is not about non-violent action. It is about non-violent thought in the first place. A lot of the negativity in us comes from how much anger we are carrying in us – for the people and situations around us. Just stopping to curse errant people on the street is a good starting point to embracing ahimsa. Practice it. It works big time!

L'économie est devenue le succube de l'homme. Toute notre vie est déterminée par l'économie. Je pense que la grande bataille de notre avenir sera la bataille contre l'économie qui domine nos vies, la bataille pour le retour à une forme de spiritualité - qu'on peut appeler religiosité, si l'on veut - à laquelle on puisse s'adresser. Car c'est une constante dans l'histoire de l'humanité, ce désir de savoir ce qu'on est venu faire sur Terre. Il nous faut de nouveaux modèles de développement. Pas seulement la croissance, mais également la parcimonie. Tu vois, Folco, je dis, moi, qu'il faut se libérer des désirs. Mais, précisément à cause du système pervers de notre société de consommation, notre vie est entièrement axée autour des jeux, du sport, de la nourriture, des plaisirs. La question est de savoir comment sortir de ce cercle vicieux : petit à petit, l'oiseau fait son nid. Mais, putain, ce système nous impose des comportements qui sont complètement absurdes. On ne veut pas certaines choses, mais le système de la société de consommation nous séduit et nous convainc de désirer ces choses-là. Toute notre vie dépend de ce mécanisme. Il suffit pourtant de décider de ne pas participer à ce système en résistant, en jeûnant ; alors, c'est comme si on utilisait la non-violence contre la violence. Finalement, à quoi bon toute cette violence ? Ils ne vont tout de même pas nous les enfourner dans la gueule, leurs trucs ! Ce qu'il faut, c'est un effort spirituel profond, une réflexion profonde, un réveil profond. Ce qui, du reste, a quelque chose à voir avec la vérité, dont plus personne ne se soucie. Et là, une fois de plus, Gandhi était extraordinaire. Il cherchait la vérité, ce qui est derrière tout. "Avant, je croyais que Dieu était la vérité. Maintenant, je dirais que la vérité est Dieu." (p. 459-460)