Essay Test – October 7, 2017

1. Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind

With the first foot print of men on the earth, violence was conferred on them as a gift of GOD. From gathering of food to hunting of animals, from ruling on subordinates to perpetual craving of battle and war, violence has defined our society and way of living. Violence became on of the genetic feature of mankind’s race. History is painted with several facets of violence and still new pages are being added on. The wave of violence once sprouted, spilled all over the corner and galloped the whole world to its last destine of destitution and tyranny. The whole mankind has now being marred with poverty, inequality and exploitation. The burden of immorality and animal’s instinct has been shouldered by us one generation to another. In whole, goodness and moral values has reached to the dearth of slavery and soon a time will come when the whole mankind will rest in peace, our consciousness would be stranglehold by evils and our soul would be in the prison of hell.

Why violence has such a strong hold on the whole mankind? Did it really cursed us or has provided us an opportunity to develop the real conscious and awareness of true meaning of mankind? Why the long story of humanity starts with violence? Why we are still in its captivity when we applaud of being civilized? Is there any way to set us free from violence forever? There are innumerable questions arise in our mind and perhaps few questions would never found answers. Our life has always been directed by both violence and non-violence and perhaps, in reality, we have understood the value of light due to presence of darkness.

If we look at the violence in depth, we would found that violence is the part of living and without violence the existence of human being can’t be imagined. We force our children to go to school, train them to behave according to the societal norms, push them to step up the ladder of success and make them crave of wealth and position. Is it not violence against their childhood? Are we not snatching their innocence? Are we not making them a programmed living creature? Is it not violence against their freedom and own consciousness? Yes, we are doing violence against them but, since such violence are labeled with coup of civilization and are treated as a learning process, we have accepted.

Thousands of crores of rupees are spend every year on the name of religion and social customs. The gap of rich and poor has widen and we are proud to be a civilized man. Is it not violence against ill fate people? Women are bound to be subordinated to men in almost all society. Children are bound to be subordinated to their parents and old age parents are subordinated to their son. Is it not violence? Government is now fixing the way of living of its citizens. It has full control on income and expenditure of common people. The rules and policies governs us how we live in a society in acceptable manner. Is it not violence?

Actually, the problem is we have seen the violence through the lens of acceptance and social norms. What is conducive and approved according to the societal norms and religious belief, it is sanctified and appraised and thus, exclude such acts from the list of violence. Our society provides equality to women in almost all sphere of life like family affair, jobs, education, sport, social rituals and so on. That’s fine. But what about some tribal society where there is a norms of polygamy and polyandry? Their female members are married at the age of 12. Is it violence against women in such society? No, although violence from our so called civilized society. There are similar full of examples exist and we urge for movement for emancipate women and children. We abuse such practices and customs by accusing them as an act of violence. But, the truth is, we would never succeed in our goal. It is due to the very reason that such practices are not treated as a violence in those tribal societies.

There are several acts, customs and practices in our civilized society that are treated as an act of violence against other corner of world. The debate on what is violence and what is non-violence is totally unfruitful and we not reach any consensus. We applaud the non-violence concept of Mahatma Gandhi. With his teaching of non-violence our country got independence and our generation is pledged to his non-violence theory of mankind. But in reality, Gandhiji’s act of non-violence Satyagrah and freedom movement were also an act of violence albeit in very subtle way. Since, his structure of freedom movement was not intended to harm anyone, we appraised it as a non-violence step. However, his acts hurts the sentiment of extremists and others but we don’t care. Ultimately for what we had been struggling for a long time, we achieved it. So, we approved the Gandhiji’s ideology as a non-violence.

The moot point is how we perceive an act or practice as a violence or non-violence. A non-violence act may be violence in deep. Actually there is no clear demarcation between violence and non-violence. Rather, there is no clear set of rules or levels where we can accurately filter the violence acts. Even, it is not possible to have such universal tools of separating violence from non-violence.

It doesn’t mean every act can be justified as a violence. As stated earlier, violence or non-violence is approved according to our society structure and acceptable rituals and practices. So, first we need to make our society and people more aware and conscious. We should define our way of living and framing our thoughts from scientific point of views and at the same time, it must be justifiable according to humanity and kindness. Welfare of one set of people may cost the others and it can’t be prevented at all. But by making our society more humane, we can ensure the progressive act of non-violence over violence. We have lighten our houses in dark night by candles and bulbs but we would never eliminate the darkness. Similarly, violence would always be exist but the in the light of non-violence we could lessen the pain of violence and make our life easier and simpler.