Real World Ahimsa
TweetAhimsa seems to be cliched word nowadays or seems practically obsolete. But the philosophy of Ahimsa I feel, is relevant.
Ahmisa is the opposite of Himsa which means “Violence” this needs to be interpreted as not just physical violence but mental violence. I consider violence is an act performed to inflict PAIN be it physical or mental. So Ahimsa is the art of not causing pain to others in any form.
In this blog my quick thoughts at Ahmisa in the house and at work.
Himsa at home
* As children we talk back / defy parents.
* As spouses we scold / put down / insult / scorn our partners.
* As parents we do the same to our kids.
Himsa at Work
* Admonish subordinates when they make a mistake.
* Put down support staff.
* Launch verbal/non-verbal attacks on peers when in competition.
Somethings which come to my mind
* Never insult or scold loved ones.
* React in a delayed manner. Hold back instant reactions.
* Consciously make sure you do not hurt anyone with words. Pain caused by words never heal.
* NEVER EVER INSULT people. You can never win by insulting, maybe you can put them down for sometime. It is difference between capturing and winning over.
* Even though people around you don’t meet your standards in ethics/ hard work/ cleanliness/ sincerity whatever THEY STILL HAVE TO RESPECTED AS HUMANS. Having a bad habit is a criteria to treat another person as a lesser mortal ( being a smoker I personally know how this hurts). I guess that is also DISCRIMINATION. Discrimination in any form is bad.
I can hear people saying – “Dude, this is easier said than done , Thanks for the advice.” 🙂
Let me share some tips that I try to practice to achieve the above someday it will become a natural part of me I hope :-). It’s all about mental conditioning and hard work.
* Never think low of another person just because the other does meet your expectations. He does deserve respect as a human being. For e.g. this could be your 3 year old kid who did not drink milk for the 100th time.
* There is no way you can expect to get respected by someone who you just insulted.
* More often than not the ones who are subdued momentarily look for a chance to rebel. A friend of mine after adjusting to his parents for 30 years refuse to come to India just his parents stay here.
If we make a conscious effort not to inflict pain even unintentionally to people around us , our lives will become better. I guess there is a “Selfish” motive of wanting to do this , that being, I having a peaceful and harmonious life with my surroundings.
Would love to hear from others if I am practical or too theoretical here.
P.S. This a repost from my personal blog.
Sukumar,
On your challenge of evidences, i would like to bring to your point that congress has destroyed important evidences related to Nethaji.. And still now, they are not ready to declassify documents related to nethaji.. Also, due to hesitation of indian government, other governments like russia, and britain are not ready to release their archivals..
Everyone knows, winners write the history, and what we read are versions of the history written by gandhi, and britishers.. here, by winners, i not only refer congress.. but the britishers too.. Nethaji was an ally of axis powers (japan, germany and italy), and in that angle, the britishers had done everything to suppress everything about nethaji..
as you had said earlier, we need to have skeptism of everything, which includes the present history too..
also, is it not that the very act of concealing documents related to nethaji, by our indian government, indicates, that there is something extremely important.. this is also an indirect evidence, that present history written by congress are NOT entirely true..
Let me summarize my points..
1. Evidences related to nethaji are either destroyed or classified, by those who wrote the present history..
2. That your understanding of british offering independance right in 1942 to be wrong..
Hope, you will not again accuse me of repeating.. and also hope, that my above points would be kindly considered as worth..
Sukumar,
I am producing this news report of Time Magazine, dated “Monday, Jan. 14, 1946”
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,886833,00.html
This news was reported in 1946, and reflects the general mood of the people.. i am reproducing, how they reported in the first paragraphs of the above news..
Britain was treading warily in awakened India.
For two taut months the country had watched the Raj’s court-martial of three “Indian National Army” officers who had fought with the Japanese against Britain. More than 30 had been killed in protest riots (TIME, Dec. 3). A severe sentence might make these men martyrs, and touch off another nationalist explosion.
Note: Please note the sentences i have marked in bold..
Senthil,
1. Rajaram’s father’s orderly’s statement made in person to Rajaram is known as “hearsay” evidence. It is not evidence. I can make several claims of this type to support my viewpoints. Whether Rajaram is lying or not, is something, only Rajaram would know. The question is, whether his findings are admissable as evidence? The answer to that is no.
2. 2.5MM soldiers turning hostile is called speculation. On what basis was that conclusion reached? If your answer is it is based on Rajaram’s father’s orderly. Please find some other evidence.
3. Naval Mutiny is another incident and not a key incident. We have already gone over this before. please go back and read my response.
4. 2.5MM soldiers – At first you made it such a big deal that it was some kind of unprecedented event in history. Once you i told you that the same thing happened in WWI, you point out that there was no Bose. Which of course i know. The whole point is whether INA had that kind of influence which is pure speculation.
5. If you call Gandhi a Fascist, which is a term that is used for evil people like Hitler, you are branding Gandhi. So don’t preach what you don’t practice. I have more evidence to call the caste system evil than you will ever have on Gandhi as Fascist even if you work for a million years.
6. Senthil, thanks for the extract from the wikipedia link on QIM. This is why you need some amount of scepticism. First of all, when you see contradictory views on the same Wikipedia page, you should know that it is a controversial page. We all know that Cripps mission failed and Gandhi was jailed etc. Who sent the 2.5MM Indians to fight in WWII? Now before you jump to answer that question, think about this. If the Congress cooperation was not needed, why were the Brits negotiating with Gandhiji?
7. The most important point we are discussing though, just so you know, is whether Gandhi had the most important role to play in India’s independence or INA. Now, Gandhi started working in India from 1915. He hae done a lot of work in galvanizing into a legitimate freedom movement. This is why i say I need you to write a detailed well researched post showing that all the work Gandhi did from 1915 is useless but the INA with 40,000 people at its peak working with the evil forces of that time had more impact. I think this is what you are contending. I need you to prove it. Please do some research instead of throwing some random points.
8. For the last time, Gandhi’s role in India’s independence is well-attested. It is people who deny that that need to provide evidence because you are trying to revise established history.
9. If Netaji’s records have been suppressed, how is that you know what the records contained? Like I said before, why didn’t the BJP unearth all these and silence the Congress forever when they were in power?
10. The Time magazine quote. Obviously, when an occupying power punishes national heroes like the INA folks, it will cause revolts. Why do we need a TIME magazine quote to understand that? Again you have missed the point, the argument is Gandhi’s impact vs. INA’s impact. You need to write a post with researched references and prove that.
Hope that helps.
Senthil,
If facts are distorted, I have to raise them in order to let you hear my point. It becomes a natural consequence to sound like criticizing your arguments and convincing.
If we read your post, the only way you seem to be presenting your POV is by
* Showing Gandhi’s role minimal in independence
* Raising FUD about his capability
* Consequential results (like deaths of many millions) as Gandhi’s planned agenda
* Speculative greatness of Subhas’s political moves
Subhas Chandra Bose opposed Gandhi. In fact other than him, there is no formidable political opponent of Gandhi during the 1930s. Of course we know why. Both are patriots and were having different methods. Both thought they were right. Now read below.
If Japs occupied India successfully ( at least Indo Gangetic Plain), they would have eliminated Subhas and made a puppet leader as Indian president. They did the same in Singapore, Burma and Philippines. How would an average Indian life be different being under Empire of Japan than under Empire of Britan. At least we know what British can screw and we already were having experience in tackling that for few hundred years. Japanese would have been ruthless. If you want circumstantial evidence, check the history of the above countries. Then how on the world can Subhas can be politically smart? I would say with all due respect to Subhas, is it politically stupid move.
Again – nobody should give entire credit of Independence to Gandhiji. There is more than Congress. For example if you go to Pakistan, they would say ML under Jinnah got independence. And we all know how many years Mr Jinnah was in active politics. Or most Indians think Mohd Iqbal is a great Indian patriotic poet because he wrote “Saare Jaha Se Accha”. Mohd Iqbal would roll over in his grave as he is one of the key ideologues of Pakistan.
So history is very interesting and intriguing, and you will enjoy a lot if you go in with neutral mind, grasp and enjoy. Like in the book I was reading, if you have “Strong Opinions Weakly Held”, it will open lot of avenues. If your sources are old wives’ tales or alternate theories, better backup with lot of data.
Good rejoinder Vamsi.
Sukumar,
For narrowing down our discussion to the core point, i am replying only to the following points.. For other things, i will reply later..
/** Senthil, thanks for the extract from the wikipedia link on QIM. This is why you need some amount of scepticism. First of all, when you see contradictory views on the same Wikipedia page, you should know that it is a controversial page. We all know that Cripps mission failed and Gandhi was jailed etc. Who sent the 2.5MM Indians to fight in WWII? Now before you jump to answer that question, think about this. If the Congress cooperation was not needed, why were the Brits negotiating with Gandhiji?
**/
Let me take the wikipedia article with sceptism.. now, my questions below.
a) If Cripps mission failed, how come you have said in earlier comment, that british offered freedom in 1942?
b) If Gandhi was supposed to facilitated 2.5 MM indians to fight in the war, why should britishers put Gandhi and the entire Congress leadership in Jail till the end of the war? the 2.5M soldiers were recruited by britishers themselves through their resources.
c) If Congress had co-operated with british, why should they start the Quit India Movement in 1942?
There is not yet convincing answer to any of those above questions.
/** If you call Gandhi a Fascist, which is a term that is used for evil people like Hitler, you are branding Gandhi. **/
Sukumar,
This is a classical example of how we need to clear the fundamental distortions in the meaning of some words.
we have to understand that fascism is just one of the ideology, and those who follow fascism is called fascists, just as we call some people as capitalists or communists. Later due to propoganda of the winners of WW-II, this word became a slur.
Similar example in india is the word “Devadiya” in tamil.. This has been become (Rather made as) most demeaning word in tamilnadu. But the very literary meaning of the word is “Deva+adiyaal” which equates as “Deva+Daasi”, which means, the women who serves god.. This is equivalent (although NOT equal to) nun hood of the christianity, where the nuns take a vow marry none other than jesus.
However, the same word does not have such slur connotation in karnataka.. Please see the following link..
http://www.devadiga.com (which includes community like devadiga, sherigar, moily)..
They regard themselves as a community and do not shy themselves of calling as devadiga.. infact they add their community name in their profile .. (some names i saw in the matrimonial sections are SOUMYA DEVADIGA , Radha N. Devadiga, GEETA B. DEVADIGA etc) .. i was first surprised at this, but later understood that its also a community..
prominent persons in that community is our law minister “Veerappa Moily” , as seen in the above website..
I think, many will be surprised on reading this..
My contention here is that we should not be carried away by prevailing slur or distorted meanings of the names..
Now, calling Gandhi as fascists does not constitute branding..
Yet if you feel so, i will change my stance and call gandhi as a totalitarian 🙂
Senthil,
1. Perhaps you misunderstood my point. The QIM page in Wikipedia is disputed for the simple reason that it says on the page that some people believe it failed and some people say it is a success. That itself shows that the page is being contested by opposing views. For you to unearth what really happened, you need to read some more. For example, i read John Keay’s version of Indian history and he says that QIM proved to be one of the biggest problems for the Brits because the arrest of Gandhi and other leaders created widespread unrest across the country. I also read VP Menon and a few others to understand what happened. This is why i asked you to research and write a post. Just quoting from the Wikipedia which everyone can read, cannot be the solution. If you want to understand the truth, it requires effort and you must put that in. The reason you need to write is because you want to dispute commonly understood version of history. Yes, it is possible that that is incorrect, but for that correction to be made, you need to produce evidence. If you are so convinced that Gandhi did not play a key role, why don’t you prove it? Extracting a few lines from a disputed Wikipedia page won’t help.
2. just for your info, you seem to think that Gandhi’s role is restricted to the QIM. He has worked for India’s independence from 1915. Please do some more reading up about Gandhi from neutral sites. Obviously if you read the right wing sites, who have an axe to grind against Gandhiji, you will not get the truth.
3. I will say it again, if you are really interested in the truth do some research and publish your findings. No XYZ’s father’s orderly’s utterances should be included as evidence.
Senthil,
fantastic logic (sarcasm intended). I will from now on call the caste system – insidious and diabolical instead of “evil”.
Sukumar,
/** Please do some more reading up about Gandhi from neutral sites **/
It would be helpful to me, if you could provide the neutral sites that you are aware of.
Vamsi,
/** Again – nobody should give entire credit of Independence to Gandhiji. There is more than Congress **/
Thanks for your statement.. this is what i am claiming for long.. I may have my own views which you may not agree.. But, atleast, let’s focus on other parts of indian independance history, other than gandhi..
/** * Consequential results (like deaths of many millions) as Gandhi’s planned agenda **/
I am not saying gandhi planned these deaths… but we have to agree, that gandhi’s wrong decisions, and impractical leadership caused these deaths, which we are hesitating to discuss, and which gandhi is to be held accountable..
/** If Japs occupied India successfully ( at least Indo Gangetic Plain), they would have eliminated Subhas and made a puppet leader as Indian president. They did the same in Singapore, Burma and Philippines.
**/
This is pure speculation..
A true friend is revealed at the times of crisis. When japan was at the verge of surrendering, they have arranged for Nethaji’s escape, along with a diversion propoganda that he had died in a plane crash. Nethaji was safely carried by japan to russia’s border, whereupon he has to take care of himself.
They did not abandon him even when they themselves were at the verge of collapsing..
Pls compare that to what britishers did for india when they left..
Till now, when japanese leaders visit india, they pay homage to Nethaji’s memorial, a display of respect for their ally.
/** How would an average Indian life be different being under Empire of Japan than under Empire of Britan. **/
We cannot speculate over this. But, in my opinion, Indian life under japan would have been completely different for many reasons. The main reason is the cultural ethos of both nations, and that Japan’s main theme was “Asia for asiatics”. We can speculate many other possibilities, but, the core point is that indian life would be definitely better under japan.
/** At least we know what British can screw and we already were having experience in tackling that for few hundred years. Japanese would have been ruthless.
**/
I am surprised at this comment.. What experience did we had, other than brutal wars and suppression.. As per estimates, british induced famines in India had cost 2 crore lives .. prior to that, numerous villages were ravaged during 1857 war, which is hidden from official history..
We need to have indigenous thought process about our indian history.. We are colonised by britain at that time, and by that account, britain is our enemy #1. Its perfectly sensible to align with Japan, and throw off britain. Some may argue, japan is part of evil powers.. but that is a propoganda..
If Hitler and axis powers are evil for killing 6 million jews, what about america dropping atom bombs in hiroshima and Nagasaki? And not to discount the fact, that crores of red-indian were killed by britain..
The so called allied powers are No good.. we should not be caught in propoganda war and judge our history by our own interests. Why should we support Britain in WW-II?