Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin 3

Author(s): R P Poddar
Publisher: Research Institute of Prakrit Jainology & Ahimsa Mujjaffarpur

Page 14

THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF NON-VIOLENCE
alienation by love. Hence Gandhi wrote in his Autobiography "I must reduce myself to zero. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility." The supreme vocation of man is the purposive evolution of Ahimsa as universi positive love. Ahimsa, as thus conceived by Gandhi, is a power of profound social import. Aristotle had said that friendship is the cohesive bond of communities. Gandhi also pleaded for brotherly ethic and believed that Ahimsa has, almost an obligatory and compelling power to bring peace and unity to the world.
He also interpreted human history in terms of the slow evolution. Like some of the western anthropologist he says that "our remote ancestors were cannibals." That was succeded by the second stage of chasethe life of wandering hunters. The third stage was of agriculture which marked the growth of civilized stable life. Man "founded villages and towns, and from member of a family he became member of a community and a nation. All these are signs of progressive ahimsa and diminishing himsa. Had it been otherwise, the human species should have been extinct by now, even as many of the lower species have disappeared." It may appear surprising to several students of Gandhism to find Gandhi speaking here as an adherent of the school of evolutionary anthropology rather than one deriving his theory of social origins from the Purusha Sukta or the Puranas. He regarded the process of human evolution as a vindication of the superiority of Ahimsa as love. "It is my firm faith that man is by nature going higher", he wrote.
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The social application of Ahimsa, according to Gandhi, is postulated upon the acceptance of spiritual metaphysics and the implied necessity of the growth of social charity. He stressed Ahimsa because the universe is permeated with a divine spirit and all life ir sacred. Ahimsa is vitally integrated with Truth or God. All men, sccording to Gandhi, are children of God.10 Hence to slight a single human being is really to inflict injury upon the divine spirit in man and thus it amounts to an injury upon the divine spirit in man and thus it amounts to an injury upon the whole world. "The Bible rightly taught that vangeance belonged to God."11
and regard as a robber, dacoit, or worse, and you are one, and that therefore, it is better that you die at his hands than that he, your ignorant brother, should die at yours." ( our Italics).
10. In an article entitled "The Best Field for Ahimsa", the Harijan, July 21, 1940 Gandhi stated: "The alphabet of Ahimsa is best learnt in the domestic school, and I can say from experience that, if we secure success there, we are sure to do so everywhere else. For a nonviolent person the whole world is one family. He will thus fear none, nor will others fear him."
11. Harijan, April 27, 1947.