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The unique principles of Anekantvad/Syadvad, relativity of thought or truth explains violence and non-violence at levels beyond the physical. Reality is multifaceted, and the attitude of condemning one facet due to ignorance is violence. After all, the truth, as you know it, may be just one facet of the whole, and the knowledge about the same fact may be understood differently through other facets. Condemning or denying the others' viewpoint without examining all the facets is violence.
Anekantvad/Syadvad, as many interpret, is not an effort toward compromise, or concept based on indecisiveness. It is acceptance of the truth from a viewpoint different from our own. If knowledge is multifaceted, it is also dynamic. There was a time when it was believed, on the basis of available proofs, that light travels in a straight line. As more knowledge was acquired, it was proved that light travels in waves. Going still further, it was found that it travels in impulses of particles. None of these statements can be termed as false; each is true from one particular viewpoint and up to a certain level of knowledge. Accepting all the three, once the level of knowledge is attained, can certainly not be termed as compromise or indecisiveness.
Anekantvad/Syadvad keeps one's mind open to various possibilities and curiosity alive to reach new dimensions of knowledge. Once a truth is accepted as one-faceted, the chances of exploring its other variants are reduced, and the knowledge remains incomplete. It is the unrestricted flow of pure knowledge from all directions that is the ultimate Ahimsa or Keval Jnana through which the soul transcends to the state of liberation or Moksha.
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AHIMSA: THE SCIENCE OF PEACE Jain Education International
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