Sun-tse

Over fifty years of war have not brought victory for India, Pakistan, or the militants. It would be well to reflect upon the words of Sun-tse, a Chinese philosopher who lived five hundred years before the birth of Christ: "There is no art higher than that of destroying the enemy's resistance without a fight on the battlefield."-"Rules for Political and Psychological Subversion"

Gandhi and Nonviolence

Nonviolence is a perfect state. It is a goal towards which all mankind moves naturally though unconsciously. Man does not become divine when he personifies innocence in himself. Only then does he become truly man. In our present state we are partly men and partly beasts, and in our ignorance and even arrogance say that we truly fulfill the purpose of our species when we deliver blow for blow and develop the measure of anger required for the purpose. We pretend to believe that retaliation is the law of our being, whereas in every scripture we find that retaliation is nowhere obligatory but only permissible. It is restraint that is obligatory. Restraint is the law of our being. For, highest perfection is unattainable without highest restraint. Suffering is thus the badge of the human tribe.
The goal ever recedes from us. The greater the progress, the greater the recognition of our unworthiness. Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory.
Young India, March 9, 1922

Gandhi and Nonviolence

I have therefore ventured to place before India the ancient law of self-sacrifice. For Satyagraha and its offshoots, noncooperation and civil resistance, are nothing but new names for the law of suffering. The rishis who discovered the law of nonviolence in the midst of violence, were greater geniuses than Newton. They were themselves greater warriors than Wellington. Having themselves known the use of arms, they realized their uselessness and taught a weary world that its salvation lay not through violence but nonviolence.

Gandhi and Nonviolence

I am not a visionary. I claim to be a practical idealist. The religion of nonviolence is not meant merely for the rishis and saints. It is meant for the common people as well. Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute, and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law-to the strength of the spirit.

Gandhi and Nonviolence

"Nonviolence in it's dynamic condition means conscious suffering. It does not mean meek submission to the will of the evil-doer, but it means putting one's whole soul against the will of the tyrant. Working under this law of our being, it is possible for a single individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire, to save his honor, his religion, and his soul."
Young India, August 11, 1920