Non - Violence Of The Brave:Inspirational Stories and real life Incidences.

It is nothing less than a miracle that someone like this in flesh and blood actually walked on this earth, "said the German born US Physicist who gave us the famous Theory Of relativity, one of the greatest scientists ever, Albert Einstein about Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhiji's most notable contribution to the humanity is undoubtedly his championing the art of 'Non-Violence'.

Now this is what is creating a dilemma and putting me in a catch 22 situation. Being part of armed forces, we cannot distance ourselves from violence and as a result, we end up getting distanced from the most important faces of the Gandhian Philosophy i.e. Non-Violence. Now, the irony of the situation is that the saviours of the 'Motherland' may probably be seen as working against the basic principle of the 'Father of Nation'. Hence it becomes mandatory to carry out some soul searching, self introspection and analyse. Gandhian Philosophy of Non-violence and its applicability to our organization. His philosophy challenges the basic tenet and the means of achievement of the goals of armed forces which is primarily violence based. Every soldier is trained for 'Shoot to Kill'. Does that mean that every bullet fired on the enemy is ricocheting and also hiting the principles of Gandhiji? Theoretically, the answer may be yes, but even the naive would call such comparisons to be absurd. Hence no more gragging of this issue.

The Oxford dictionary defines violence in two folds. Firstly, as a behaviour against somebody(physical violence) and secondly as a state of emotional force and energy(mental violence). Having identified the two faces of violence, when we put them through the realms of science which has conclusively proved that all our physical actions are controlled by the nervous system. Hence physical violence is nothing but manifestation of mental violence into physical violent actions. If somebody is able to prevent this manifestation, he will be physically non-violent in spite of being a mentally violent state.

Violence in nutshell is non-acceptance of laid down norms, an act of rebel. Gandhiji also never accepted the colonial rule of India and he rebelled against it. Thus he also underwent the mental violence phase of the 'Violence Cycle'. But he never allowed this mental violence to get manifested into physical violence and instead propagated the diametrically opposite concept of non-violence. Now this is what differentiates Gandhi ji from the common man who rarely can prevent such manifestation. Since how he reacted to his mental violence is a rare phenomenon, no wonder in addition to so many titles conferred upon him, he also has been referred to as 'Yug Purush', belonging to once in a life time category.

Gandhiji was very much aware that it was a freedom struggle and not the battle for independence. It was a rebellion against the ruled ones and not a War between the two armed forces. There were no guns to be fired across a well demarcated international boundary but it was to be fought in every nook and corner of this country. He was conscious of the fact that under such a scenario, violent means, if adopted, would have catastrophic effect and probably without achieving the desired goal. Hence he preferred the correct and the most viable option of Non-violence. It is not that tyhe Britishers were not aware that if Gandhiji wanted he could have urged the people to adopt violent means and with his mass appeal it was not difficult for him. It was a case of 'inspite of' and not 'because of'. It was a choice of the brave and not any compulsion of the coward.