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"NON-VIOLENCE OF THE WEAK" AND "NON-VIOLENCE OF THE BRAVE"
Sampooran Singh
The tool of Satyagraha (passive resistance, civil disobedience) having its foundations on Ahimsa (non-violence), in the hands of Mahatma M. K. Gandhi, brought liberation of India. The non-violence appeared to have failed to check the tide of communal disturbances in the middle of 1947. Gandhi wrote:
The non-violence that was offered during the past thirty years was that of the weak...... India has no experience of the non-violence of the strong...... The people had followed him then, because they knew they could not face the might of the British arms in any other way. It was the non-violence of the weak.1 It had become clear to him that what he had mistaken for Satyagraha was not Satyagraha but passive resistance-a weapon of the weak...... The attitude of violence which we had secretly harboured, in spite of the restraint imposed by the Indian National Congress. now recoiled upon us and made us fly at each other's throats when the question of the distribution of power came up.2
It was the duty of Free India to perfect the instrument of non-violence for dissolving collective conflicts, if its freedom was going to be really worth while."
Mankind at all times and at all places throughout history, has justified violence and was in terms of unavoidable self-defence. It was a simple rule that the violence of the aggressor could only be defeated by superior violence of the defender. Violence always thrived on counterviolence. All over the world man had thus been caught in fear and search for security which has led to the mad race
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