Hajarimalmuni Smruti Granth

Author(s): Shobhachad Bharilla
Publisher: Hajarimalmuni Smruti Granth Prakashan Samiti Byavar

Page 980

Dr. Bool Chand
AHIMSA, THE BASIC SOCIAL ETHIC
All thoughtful people in the world today are thinking more and more in terms of Ahimsa (Nonviolence) as the only real solvent of world conflicts. Occasionally they do so without actually employing the term 'Ahimsa'. The great English philosopher Bertrand Russell has, for instance, in his book entitled 'New Hopes for a Changing World' spoken about the perplexities which torment mankind at present and tried to build up courage by pointing out that the rebuilding of 'all the impulses that are creative and expansive would save men from moral perplexity and from remorse and the condemantion of others. This is the new ethic which Russell offers to the world as a remedy of its difficulties; and it is nothing other than Ahimsa as preached by the leaders of religion in the East from quite immemorial times. This new ethic, says Bertrand Russell in his book, 'depends upon harmony with other men'. With its help 'it will be easy to live in a way that brings happiness equally to ourselves and to others'. If man, says Russell could feel in the way indicated by this new ethic, not only his personal problems but also all the problems of world politics, even the most abstruse and difficult, will melt away. Suddenly, as when the mist dissolves from a mountain top, will the landscape be visible and the way be clear. Bertrand Russell has acquired great reputation as a clear-headed philosopher. His reasoning is at once penetrating and satisfying. It is therefore a matter for some surprise that he should have failed to clearly mention that the new ethic described by him is only Ahimsa, which had been preached in India by the great savants Mahavira and the Buddha. These religious teachers had made Ahimsa the basic idea of their thouhgt structure. That the acceptance of this ethic by the people will help man to solve his many conflicts, Bertrand Russell is quite clear and even rather dogmatic about. In his book he has made anelaborate argument that it is in the nature of man to be in conflict with something and that there are three kinds of conflict in particular which pursue mankind, (1) the conflict of man and nature, (2) the conflict of man and man. and (3) the conflict of man and himself, and in a statement which is full of learning and historical details he has reasoned out his optimistic conclusion that in our society which would be recreated consequent upon the acceptance of this new ethic not only shall we secure the happy man' but we shall also be in sight of the happy world'. The happy man, according to Russell, would be a man without fear, and the happy world would be the world in which the three conflicts spoken of above have been effectually conquered, the conflict of man and nature by the establishment of an international authority controlling the production and distribution of food and raw materials and also tackling the population problem by the enforcement of a universal system of family planning, the conflict of man and man by
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