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Reinterpreting Ahimsa for the
21st Century
Dr. Ramjee Singh
This is a paradox that those who have spent fantastic money of the taxpayers over acquiring nuclear stock-piles have been themselves forced to find out some solution to destroy them. They realise the dread and futility of an atomic war. It seems that war has lost its dynamics. Nuclear power has not remained the monopoly of a single nation and no nation, however small or big, lives in utter isolation. The concept of geopolitics has been made redundant. The paradox is that nations aspire for peace, but they prepare for war. It seems there is mal-adjustment with world-psyche. Unless we find out the solution of this malaise, our life in the 21st Century would be miserable. We shall not die but neither we shall be able to live with peace and happiness.
Hence before we embark upon global peace, we should learn the art of peaceful living. Non-violence is not an outward ritual, it is our life-style. The concept of nuclear preparedness, though anti-life and anti-civilization, is only the bye-product of our outlook and way of thinking, created by our belief in the Doctrine of Struggle for Existence and the Survival of the Fittest. We are led to think that struggle is necessary for existence and that a person, or a group or a country would be able to survive which is the fittest-in popular vocabulary as the 'mightest' politically, economically and militarily. We think that we must become powerful in order to survive and we try to cultivate more and more powers. Hence, unhealthy competition and violence become inevitable. Another reason for the growth of violence is our faith in the efficacy in the fragmentation of life. We think that there is one set of values for the individual and the family and quite another set for the society. But this is wrong. Our life is a unity and it cannot be divided into water-tight compartments called social, political or religious etc. All act and react upon one another. Even spiritual law does not work on a field of its own. It must express itself only through the ordinary activities of life. We have not only fragmented life outside and created compartments of life and mutually
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