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The Way of Non-violence
M. K. GANDHI
Non-violence is ‘not a resignation from all real fighting against wickedness'. On the contrary, the non-violence of my conception is a more active and real fight against wickedness than retaliation whose very nature is to increase wickedness. I contemplate a mental and efore a moral opposition to immoralities. I seek entirely to blunt
e of the tyrant's sword not by putting up against it a sharperedged weapon, but by disappointing his expectation that I would be offering physical resistance. The resistance of the soul that I should offer would elude him. It would at first dazzle him and at last compel recognition from him, which recognition would humiliate but would uplift him. It may be urged that this is an ideal state. And so it is.
Ahimsā is a comprehensive principle. We are helpless mortals caught in the conflagration of himsā. The saying that life lives on life has a deep meaning in it. Man cannot for a moment live without consciously or unconsciously committing outward himsā. The fact of his living, eating, drinking and moving about necessarily involves some himsā, destruction of life, be it ever so minute. A votary of ahimsā therefore remains true to his faith if the spring of all his actions is compassion, if he shuns to the best of his ability the destruction of the tiniest creature, tries to save it, and thus incessantly strives to be free from the deadly coil of himsā. He will be constantly growing in self-restraint and compassion, but he can never become entirely free from outward himsā.
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