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Chapter 16
CONFLICT BETWEEN THE DIVINE AND THE DEMONIACAL TENDENCIES
90. Four Stages in The Development Of Nonviolence
8. Thus the divine and the demoniacal qualities are arrayed against each other. We should stick to the divine qualities and shun the demoniacal ones. Development of the divine qualities like truth and non-violence has been going on since time immemorial, but still there is much to be done. There is unlimited scope for development so long as we live in society. Even if an individual develops himself to perfection, scope for social, national and global development ever remains. Individuals have to use their own development to stimulate development in others just as manure stimulates growth of the crops. We can take in this context the example of the development of non-violence which has been going on for ages and is still going on. 9. It is worth studying how non-violence has developed progressively. We would then understand how spirituality has progressively developed in life and how it can develop further. The problem of protection from violent attacks had always been there before the non-violent man. At first he devised the idea of having a special class of fighters—the Kshatriyas—for the protection of the society. But that class itself turned against the people. The non-violent Brahmins then had to tackle the problem of protecting themselves from the Kshatriyas who were intoxicated with power. Parshuram, although non-violent, took to violence and started exterminating Kshatriyas. He resorted to violence to make the Kshatriyas abandon violence. It was certainly an experiment in non-violence, but it could not succeed. Parshuram is said to have exterminated the Kshatriyas twenty-one times; still they survived, as the attempt was basically flawed. How can Kshatriyas be rooted out when you yourself become a violent Kshatriya? The seed of violence survived. One may go on cutting trees; but new trees will continue to come up so long as the seeds are not destroyed. Parshuram was undoubtedly well-meaning, but his experiment was strange. He was trying to exterminate the Kshatriyas by becoming a Kshatriya himself. In fact, he should have begun by chopping off his own head! I am pointing out the flawed nature of Parshuram’s experiment, not because I am wiser; I am a child before him. But I am standing on his shoulders and can therefore see much farther; and it appears to me that the basis of his experiment was wrong. Resorting to violence to counter violence results only in increasing the number of the violent. But this was not realised at that time. Good-natured and wellintentioned people of that time, men of non-violence, experimented according to their lights. Parshuram was a firm believer in non-violence and he resorted to violence, not for the sake of it, but to establish non-violence. |
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