Religion Practice and Science of Non Violence

Author(s): O P Jaggi
Publisher: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt Ltd

Page 59

PRACTICE OF NON-VIOLENCE
All religions teach the individual to be non-violent, the A primary aim is the good that it earns for the individual; the benefit to the society being only a byproduct.
In contrast to the above narrow objective, there is another approach wherein the benefit to the society is the primary aim, and in the process of attaining it, the individual works actively and suffers hardships and sacrifices. Such an approach motivated many people when larger, more complex, industrial cities and societies came into being. This social objective took different practical shapes under different environments. People motivated by this objective ushered in (1) Non-Violent Resistance (2) Satyagraha (3) Peace Organisations. Through these, the principle of non-violence was used as a means to bring about social justice among people, which was the need of the day. We shall now see how these movements developed and how far they achieved their objective.
Non-violent Resistance
About the middle of nineteenth century, in the U.S.A., a group of people advocated resistance to violence or social injustice, through non-violence. This was not an entirely new approach, yet by laying stress upon it and elaborating it further, it proved to be almost a new method.
Adin Ballou's Non-Violent Resistance
Adin Ballou (1803-1890) was one of the earliest proponents