Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin 3

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

Page 28

THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF NON-VIOLENCE
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compromise had to be made with non-violence and the primacy of Swaraj for India vindicated. He said in 1942 :
“There is ordered anarchy all around and about us. I am sure that the anarchy that may result, because of the British withdrawal or their refusal to listen to us and our decision to defy their authority, will in no way be worse than the present anarchy. After all. those who are unarmed cannot produce a frightful amount of violence or anarchy, and I have a faith that out of that an rchy may arise pure non-violence. But to be a passive witness of the terrible violence that is going on, of the terrible anarchy that is going on in the name of resisting a possible foreign aggression, is a thing I can't stand. It is a thing that would make me ashamed of my Ahimsa....... I have not asked the British to hand over India to the Congress or to Hindus. Let them entrust India to God, or in modern parlance, to anarchy. Then, all parties will fight one another like dogs, or will, when real responsibility faces them, come to a reasonable agreement. I shall expect non-violence to rise out of that chaos."
Another possible limitation in Gandhi's theory of non-violence is that it does not adequately probe into the group-aspects of the phenomenon of violence, although it does examine the psychology of individual violence.89 Gandhi holds the view that the state is organised concentrated violence and says that there is violence in the state because there is the perverse craving for violence in the human heart. But he does not specify the concrete processes of the manifestation of this internal basic drive or "residue”40 of violence in the external institutional apparatus and structure of the state. The researches of the French sociologists like Durkheim, Tarde and G.LeBon have made us aware of the fact that group behavior presents a qualitatively different pattern from that of the individual. Those same persons who in private lives may act quite rationally are overpowered by unpredictable emotions and passions when
39. In a thought-provoking chapter “Conversion or Compulson" in
Autobiogaaphy, Jawaharlal Nehru has attacked the conversion of nonviolence into an "inflexible dogma" thus resulting in its loss of "spiritual appeal to the intellect, (p. 547 ). He rightly points out that non-violence may be made" a cloak for cowardice and inaction" (p. 546 ). Very correctly he says that even after the assumption of power through non-violent means the organized authority may have to take recourse to violent means if the recalcitrant elements take advantage of non-violence to create disturbances. (p. 546 ). Nehru has grave doubts about renunciation of power by classes and empires
in response to the appeals of non-violence (p. 514). 40. "Residue" is a term in Pareto's sociology. It means a basic drive,