Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin 3

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

Page 17

VAISHALİ RESEARCH BULLETIN NO.3
“When two nations are fighting, the duty of a votary of ahimsa is
to stop the war. He who is not equal to that duty, he who has no power of resisting war, he who is not qualified to resist war, may take part in war, and yet wholeheartedly try to free himself, his nation and the world from war. I had hoped to improve my status and that of my people through the British Empire. Whilst in England I was enjoying the protection of the British Fleet, and taking shelter as I did under its armed might, I was directly participating in its potential violence. Therefore, if I desired my connection with the Empire and to live under its banner, onc of three courses was open to me : I could declare open resistance to the war and, in accordance with the law of Satyagraha, boycott the Empire until it changed its military policy; or I could seek imprisonment by civil disobedience of such of its laws as were fit to be disobeyed; or I could participate in the war on the side of the Empire and thereby acquire the capacity and fitness for resisting the violence of war. I lacked this capacity and fitness, so I thought there was nothing for it but to serve in the war. I make no distinction, from the point of view of ahimsa, between combatants and non-comba. tants. He who volunteers to serve a band of dacuits, by working as their carrier, or their watchman wbile they are about their business, or their nurse when they are wounded, is as much guilty of dacoity as thə dacoits themselves. In the same way those who confine themselves to attending to the wounded in battle cannot be absolved from the guilt of war."17
But it may also be pointed out that in the course of the Second World War he categorically refused to adopt a position similar to the one adopted in 1918.
Although opposed to militarism, power politics, violence and imperialistic vandalism Gandhi was not a believer in peace at any price. He said that he did not want the peace of the stone or the grave. Peace is not to be equated with feebleness, inertia and exhaustion. An individual or a nation can only want peace with honour. Peace does not mean appeasement of the aggressor or acquiescence in his imperialistic adventures. Gandhi's comment on the Munich Pact of 1938 as being a settlement for "peace without honour" is significant. A genuine peace must be founded on the rectification of the forces that threaten peace. Hence it must accept the conception of justice as the apportionment of due claims and rights is thoroughly antithetical to the imposition of the will of the aggressor. Addressing a prayer meeting at Sodepur on November
17. M.K. Gandhi, "A Spiritual Dilemma", Autobiography, p. 285.