IF ONE does not practice non-violence in one's personal relations with
others, and hopes to use it in bigger affairs, one is vastly mistaken.
Non-violence like charity must begin at home.
But if it is necessary for the individual to be trained in non-violence,
it is even more necessary for the nation to be trained likewise. One cannot be
non-violent in one's own circle and violent outside it. Or else, one is not
truly non-violent even in one's own circle; often the non-violence is only in
appearance. It is only when you meet with resistance, as for instance, when a
thief or a murderer appears, that your non-violence is put on its trail. You
either try or should try to oppose the thief with his own weapons, or you try
to disarm him by love. Living among decent people, your conduct may not be
described as a non-violent.
Mutual forbearance is non-violence. Immediately, therefore, you get
the conviction that non-violence is the law of life, you have to practice it
towards those who act violently towards you, and the law must apply to nations
as individuals. Training no doubt is necessary. And beginnings are always
small. But if the conviction is there, the rest will follow. (H, 28-1-1939,
pp441-2)
Universality of Non-violence
Non-violence to be a creed has to be all-pervasive. I cannot be
non-violent about one activity of mine and violent about others. (H,
12-10-1935, p376)
It is a blasphemy to say that non-violence can only be practiced by
individuals and never by nations which are composed of individuals. (H, 12-11-1938,
p328)
In my opinion, non-violence is not passivity in any shape or form.
Non-violence, as I understand it, is the most active force in the
world...Non-violence is the supreme law. During my half a century of
experience, I have not yet come across a situation when I had to say that I was
helpless, that I had no remedy in terms of non-violence. (H, 24-12-1938, p393)
Cultivation of Non-violence
I am an irrepressible optimist. My optimism rests on my belief in the
infinite possibilities of the individual to develop non-violence. The more you
develop it in your own being, the more infectious it becomes till it
over-whelms your surroundings and by and by might over sweep the world. (H,
28-1-1939, p443)
I have known from early youth that non-violence is not a cloistered
virtue to be practiced by the individual for his peace and final salvation, but
it is a rule of conduct for society if it is to live consistently with human
dignity and make progress towards the attainment of peace for which it has been
yearning for ages past. (GCG, pp42-44, pp170-1)
To practice non-violence in mundane matters is to know its true value.
It is to bring heaven upon earth. There is no such thing as the other world.
All works are one. There is no 'here' and no 'there'. As Jeans has
demonstrated, the whole universe including the most distant stars, invisible
even through the most powerful telescope in the world, is compressed in an
atom.
I hold it, therefore, to be wrong to limit the use of non-violence to
cave-dwellers and for acquiring merit for a favoured position in the other
world. All virtue ceases to have use if it serves no purpose in every walk of
life. (H, 26-7-1942, p248)
Use on Mass Scale
Unfortunately for us, we are strangers to the non-violence of the
brave on a mass scale. Some even doubt the possibility of the exercise of
non-violence by groups, much less by masses of people. They restrict its
exercise to exceptional individuals. Only, mankind can have no use of it if it
is always reserved only for individuals. (H, 8-9-1946, p296)
Efficacy
I have been practicing with scientific precision non-violence and its
possibilities for an unbroken period of over fifty years. I have applied it in
every walk of life, domestic, institutional, economic and political. I know of
no single case in which it has failed. Where it has seemed sometimes to have
failed, I have ascribed it to my imperfections. I claim no perfection for
myself. But I do claim to be a passionate seeker after Truth, which is but
another name for God. In the course of that search, the discovery of non-violence
came to me. Its spread is my life mission. I have no interest in living except
for the prosecution of that mission. (H, 6-7-1940, pp185-6)
There is no hope for the aching world except through the narrow and
straight path of non-violence. Millions like me may fail to prove the truth in
their own lives, that would be their failure, never of the eternal law. (H,
29-6-1947, p209)