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Born in a family of devout Jains who have for generations taken such keep interest in the preservation of the Jain heritage, and in the promotion and propagation of Jain values, AHIMSA as a precept has been instilled in me from my very childhood Maturity and serious thinking, however, have brought home to me that the Principles and precepts are extremely hard to put into practice and require a great deal of sensitivity and compassion in one's being to assimilate them One has only to look around the world, not excluding our own country, to witness the callous indifference of man to the destruction of even his own species In the face of such gross insensitivity, to expect him to show compassion towards other species would be, to say the least, naive So long as there are negative elements like covetousness, greed, envy, lust and the like dominating the human psyche, and smothering all sensitivity, expectation of the state of AHIMSA will remain illusory It requires a high degree of sensitivity to feel a natural revulsion for depriving a living being of life All religious injunctions are ways and means of self-purification to attain that state of serenity and peace whereby the rule of AHIMSA can become feasible
What we confront today is, to borrow Dr Radhakrishnan's phrase, a 'crisis of character and nothing short of a complete transformation of the human psyche can reverse the dangerous drift The rule of AHIMSA can never be brought about through legislation or an executive fiat HIMSA is too deep-rooted and complex a phenomenon to be dispensed with so perfunctorily If we are truly concerned about establishing the rule of AHIMSA, we shall bave to squarely confront the fact that it can only be done by the spiritual elevation of man A near impossible task one might say But then it would not help to sit back and passively watch the suicidal decline either Even Shraman Bhagwant Mahavir and Lord Buddha did not liberate all mankind But they strove relentlessly through the conduct of their lives that what is important is not the extent of achievement but the doing of one's sincerest best
That is what we need to do too Without being overly presumptuous regarding our capacity to usher in, with the waive of a wand, the rule of AHIMSA, let us sedately chalk out a course of action whereby we might make a contribution, however small, in the right direction
We are all aware, for example, that nearly half of the world's resources are wasted in destructive armaments in the name of defence If this expenditure is kept within the limits of genuine defence requirements, enough resources can be salvaged to offset the need to export meat and fish With the economies of nations getting even more intricately entangled and the defence expenditure becoming a global vicious circle, even this is not easy But then nothing good or great is easy of achievement Any measure of success in this direction too will need sustained, hard work of educating the people for creating an effective enough public opinion
Lalbag' Shahbag, Ahmedabad-380004 Gujarat (India)
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