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WAR & AHIMSA IDEOLOGY
• Dr. Bool Chand
Director, Ahimsa Shodh-Peeth
THERE are those who argue that relief and the urge to return to 'normal'
e aggressivness being a fundamental as quickly as possible. In this cycle instinct of man, war is an inevitable the adjustment of individuals and groups factor in human affairs. With such to the conditions of war has to be made thinkers Ahimsa philosophers do not perforce. The psychological patterns agree.
of violent human behaviour such as are Ahimsa believes, first, that aggressi
noticeable in times of confict are neither veness is merely a derived instinct,
a natural nor a normal condition of and secondly, that even if aggressi- men. veness of man were regarded as a Permanent Elimination of war primary instinct it is quite easily possi- Living in a world in which violence ble to give to it an outlet that would between man and man is an unceasing provide personal satisfaction and yet fact of life, however, Ahimsa philosonot destory society. A sociological phers have naturally concentrated analysis of war shows that war is in their thought on the analysis of the reality a stage in a cycle, the cycle of causes of violence. At the same time war, peace and war again. In human the ethos of their integral thinking has societies this cycle takes more or less been naturally directed to a society distinctive forms. In the beginning a where violence would disappear and strain or problem occurs in the normally perfect harmony and integration would peaceful and accomodative relations of rule. sovereign states, this is followed by the It is interesting to note that even the development of what is called the war Marxists have been doing their thinking fever; after that hostilities begin, when on the same lines. They have sought military and international policies come to explain human conflicts in terms of to overshadow domestic ones and economic interest and then concentrated restrictions on free speech and freedom their attention upon the ultimate establiof assembly are willingly accepted; shment of a class-less non-vioient the newly developing situation is found society of the socialist civilisation. The to have effects on family, education, assumption of economic class interest as recreation and other phases of commu- an explanation of all violence in human nity life; ultimately there is the termi- society appears wholly unrealistic to nation of war with a general sense of the Ahimsa analysts. But a society
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