Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin 3

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

Page 16

THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF NON-VIOLENCE
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and the display of the military livery by the soldiers is a sign of decadeace and not of progress. The cult of armament and preparedness is the indirect testimony to the wide prevalence of fear, distrust and suspicion. Hence Gandhi wanted the freedom to preach non-violence as a "substitute" for war. He condenned war as an absolute evil15 and would not accept even the plea of a defensive war or a just war. He would have absolutely repudiated the notion of an anticipatory war. He felt that there is always some party which is guilty of initiating a war. It is not correct and adequate to state that war is the mechanism of devil or of uncontrollable forces. He said that behind the hand that hurls the sword, there is always the brain and the mind that prescribes the use of the sword. He wrote : “When two nations are fighting, the duty of a votary of Ahimsa is to stop the war.” Leo Tolstoy also recog. nized the clamouring contradiction between the profession of Christianity and the simultaneous acknowledgement of the necessity of armaments for national security. Gandhi taught the absoluteness of peace and had even visualized universal disarmament.16 His Ahimsā provides an ultimate vision of universal fraternity and he hoped that in world politics there would be the increasing resort to consultation and arbitration in place of armed conflicts.
Although, according to Gandhi, all war is unjust from the standpoint of Ahimsa, still the aspirant after freedom would distinguish between the aggressor and the defender and render all moral support to the latter.
etimes a contradiction has been felt to exist between Gandhi's non-violence and his participation in some form in wars. During the time of the Boer War in 1899 he raised a Volunteer Corps. In 1906, he raised a stretcher-bearing party of twenty Indians at the time of the Zulu Rebellion. In 1914 he raised a Volunteer Ambulance Corps in London consisting chiefly of Indian students residing in London. In 1918 he nearly killed himself by strenuous activity for the recruitment of Indian soldiers for the war on the British side. While Tilak wanted to help the Allies through recruitment only on certain conditions being fulfilled, Gandhi was for unconditional military support. Hence it is asked that if Gandhi was a votary of absolute Ahimsa why did he participate in any way in a war. When he was helping recruitment in 1918, was he not aiding in planning the killing of German soldiers? But Gandhi had defended his action on the ground that so long as he was a subject of the British Empire it was his duty to help it in times of crisis. He says in his Autobiography :
15. In an article entitled "Moral Support" in the Harijan, August 18,
1940 Gandhi wrote : "I believe all war to be wholly wrong. 16. Harijan, August 22, 1940,