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154
VAISHALI INSTITUTE RESEARCH BULLETIN NO. I
Thou sayest, Obrahma-kinsman, that impure food (a magandha) is not acceptable to thee, although thou enjoyest food made of rice together with well-prepared flesh of birds. Of what sort then, O Kashyapa, is thy impure food ? I ask the this question.
Answer kodho mado thambho paccuţthapană ca māya usnya bhassasamussa yo ca/ mānātimăno ca asabbhi santhavo
esāmagandho na hi mamsabhojanam // Anger, intoxication, obstinacy, bigotry, deceit, envy, grandiloquence, pride and conceit, intimacy with the wicked - this is impure food, and not the eating of flesh.
As regards war, Gandhi's non-violent substitute for it is satyāgraha, self-purification-culminating in the vow of brahmacarya which he took in the year 1906-being a preliminary to it (MET, p. 389) The original term was passive resistance' which was however found 'too narrowly construed'. Maganlal Gandhi coined the word sadagraha (sat=truth, āgraha = firmness), but in order to make it clearer, Gandhi changed it to satyagraha (ib). In the Boer War in the beginning of this century, in the Zulu Rebellion of 1906, and also in the First World War (1914-1918), Gandhi, however, offered his services for nursing the sick and the wounded soldiers, fully knowing that even 'those who confine themselves to attending to the wounded in battle cannot be absolved from the guilt of war' (ib., p. 429). He participated in the war because he lacked the capacity and fitness for resisting the violence of war' (ib., p. 428). Satyagraha was defined by Gokhale as follows (in 1909):
"It is essentially defensive in nature and it fights with moral and spiritual weapons. A passive resister resists tyranny by undergoing suffering in his own person. He pits soul force against brute force; he pits the divine in man against the brute in man; he pits suffering against oppression; he pits conscience against might; he pits faith against injustice, right against wrong." (MG, p. 165).
The victory of the moral force over physical violence and injustice is an ancient truth forcefully represented by Gandhi in The Doctrine of the Sword published in Young India of August 11, 1920. There he declares:
“Non-violence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law to the strength of the spirit.
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