Dharma (himsa tathaiva cha) -4.
03/01/2018
4.
To me it seems that the only solution for the day’s internal chaos is to bring home to the people the significance of the much neglected teaching of dharma – himsa. As it is, a misled and over – excited minority in the country has the sole monopoly of violence; and non – violence is a dangerous folly.
However ideal a moral precept may be, so long as, in a society, innocent children, helpless women and defenceless old are left to be butchered dishonoured and tortured, while the youth of the land is made to watch impassionately the hellish scene, we are to conclude that either the idea is a dangerous one, or that we have not rightly understood the full meaning of the precept.
Under the present available scheme of chaos in this country, when under the planned instigation of a few power blind, reckless men, a minority community is rendered into a murderous gang of fanatics, it is the duty of the majority to win back the erring thousands. The cure depends upon the disease; the potency of the medicine is decided upon the virulence of the illness.
Today when looting, arson and rape are the dharma of a few, it is rank cowardice for the many to suffer the tyranny of the unprovoked violence in meek submission. In the battlefield, when violence is rampant, it is the dharma of everyone to meet that maniacal violence with determined, restrained, violence not only in self – defence but also to convince the aggressive vicious few that ‘it rarely pays to be violent.’
Swami Chinmayananda
The End.
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