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that an exaggerated practice of Ahimsa synchronised with our becoming bereft of manly virtues. During the past 1,500 years we have as a nation given ample 'proof of physical courage, but we have been torn by internal disseasions and have been dominated by love of self instead of love of country. We have, that is to say, been swayed by the spirit of irreligion rather than of religion
I do know how far the charge of unmanliness can be made good against the Jains. I hold no brief for them. By birth I am a Vaishnavite, and was taught Ahimsa in my childhood I have derived much religious benefit from Jain religious works as I have from scriptures of the other great faiths of the world I owe much to the living company of the deceased philosopher Raichand Kavi who was a Jain by birth. Thus though my views on Ahimsa are a result of my study of most of the faiths of the world, they are now no longer dependent upon the authority of these works. They are a part of my life and if I suddenly discovered that the religious books read by me bore a different interpretation from the one I had learnt to give them, I should still hold the view of Abimsa as I am about to set forth here
Our Shastaras seem to teach that a man who really practises Ahimsa in its fulness has the world at his feet; he so effects his surroundings that even the snakes and
