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Jaina View of Life It is the sacred duty of every Indian to fight for the nation in this hour of difficulty. On this depends our honour and integrity. This is a war, if it may be called so, not for the sake of war but for the sake of vindicating our right of existence as a free nation. Violence in self-defence is not to be considered as unjustified as long as we live and take interest in the activities of this life. And live we must; we must also take due share of the responsibility in social and political life in our country, although the consurnmation of the ideal would be renunciation. But universal renunciation is equally unjustified from the point of view of social good, unless one is a 'heaven born prophet' or an ascetic.
However, even in performing the duties of a citizen in defending our country we should see that we use the minimum of violence and sparingly. This is in keeping with the tradition of our country.
Still, this does not mean we have given up the significance of non-violence as a supreme principle of life and spirituality. We are now only to be aware of our imperfection and to adjust ourselves as best as we can in this imperfect life. We pursue the ends of this life, and moving on the wheel of life we have to see that our duty to others is also important in its own way. Considered rom the perspective of history and the present conditions of our society, it would appear strange that, we, in India, steeped in spirituality, should be disillusioned and now affirm the primacy of material progress; stranger still, that with our firm faith in non-violence, we should prepare ourselves for the inevitable war. But analysis of non-violence so far given shows that non-violence as preached by the Jainas would dispel our illusions about the impossibility of the practice of non-violence. We have tried to justify the ways of man to man in our preparedness for national defence, specially when we are threatened by the enemies at our frontiers.
Thus, the principle of non-violence is important in the context of the present political situation of the world. That
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