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Essay / Truth and non-violence as old as the hill: Mahatma Gandhi
Today marks 123 years since Gandhi was born. His assassination was a great shock. But, surprisingly, his demise shook those in India who had lost faith in non-violent coexistence. In fact, Gandhi's death taught everyone the value of communal affinities and social harmony. Gandhi himself was well aware of this, long before his return to India and his rise as a nonviolent leader of the Indian independence movement. For example, in a letter to his nephew dated January 29, 1909, he wrote: “I may have to meet death in South Africa, at the hands of my countrymen. . . If this happens, you should rejoice. It will unite Hindus and Muslims. . . The enemies of the community constantly strive to oppose such unity. In a business of this magnitude, someone will have to sacrifice their life. “It is interesting to see how Gandhi, throughout his life, spoke about his death with great openness and without any morality. It is as if for him the fundamental philosophical question: “should I live or die; to be or not to be? — had already found its answer in the idea of self-sacrifice. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essayMohandas Gandhi, a British lawyer turned politician, looked like "a half-naked fakir", as Churchill mockingly described him, ridiculing him, once said: "Truth and non- violence are as old as the hills. All I did was experiment with both, on as large a scale as possible. » I had nothing new to teach, but I was a great supporter of these two substantial and well-constructed orders. Today, it is fair to say that honesty is at stake: deception has become commonplace at all levels of contemporary life. We don't lie anymore. Instead, we “talk dirty.” We exaggerate. We are exercising poor judgment. Mistakes were made, we say. How do you define “truth”? The dictionary says it is the quality of being in agreement with experience, facts or reality; or, conformity with the facts. “Truth is what corresponds to its referent or to what it refers to, it is based on the real existence of the thing on which a thought or statement relates. Truth is defined by the conformity of the intellect and the thing; and therefore to know conformity is to know the truth. “The truth is discovered, it is not invented. It exists independently of anyone's knowledge. An example is the existence of gravity. There has always been gravity, and that is certainly true. It was discovered by Newton or just before him. Another fact is that truth is transcultural. If something is true, it is true for everyone, everywhere and at all times. A good example is that ten contains only one zero for everyone, everywhere and at all times. The truth is immutable, even if our beliefs about it change. Society once believed that the earth was flat. When it was discovered that the earth was round and not flat, the truth about the earth did not change, only our belief was sung. Beliefs cannot change a fact, no matter how sincere. Someone can sincerely believe something, but if that fact is not true, that means only one person is wrong. The truth is not affected by the attitude of the one who professes it. An arrogant person cannot make the truth he possesses false, nor can a humble person make the error he possesses true. All true truths are absolute. Ishwar Allah teri Naam sabko sanmati of bhagwan is to livetoday in a very different world called postmodern. His description says: “Truth does not exist objectively; it is a product of a person's culture. “The cultural situation in which we live can be described as “recognizing and respecting beliefs, practices, etc. of others, without sharing them” and “putting up with or putting up with someone or something”. not particularly appreciated, the new tolerance is defined as the idea that not all values, beliefs, lifestyles and truth claims are equal. Even the Bible makes it clear that not all values, beliefs, lifestyles, and truth claims are equal. It’s easy to see that there are some very significant problems happening in our culture. We also have more problems with "intolerance", which does not accept tolerance and is imposed by various kinds of sanctions. For him, non-violence meant respecting the truth in one's adversary. We are immersed in division and hatred. We live in troubled times. Look at the forms of violence that shape our daily lives. We had a formidable list of villains like Maoists, terrorists and anti-nationals. Now we have added new ones. This could include lawyers hitting someone they don't like on court premises and getting away with it. They could be cow smugglers, love jihadists, North-Easterners, child kidnappers, urban Naxals or a simple pickpocket – the list is endless. With a few significant exceptions, older governments have sought constitutional sanctions to stem the tide of violence. When governments mobilized their forces against militant movements in Nagaland, Kashmir, Punjab or Bengal, there was a semblance of the rule of law. The scale of the violence could have been terrible, but it seemed distant and there was a silent acceptance. This narrative was shattered when some elements of the government became complicit in communal riots. The anti-Sikh riots of 1984 or the Gujarat riots of 2002 are examples of this. Our public sphere is increasingly tinged with intolerance. The media today projects an image of war of everyone against everyone. Participants in television programs fill the air with swear words. Each spokesperson seems to lead a brigade of righteous people. It is a perverse celebration of “truth and righteousness.” No individual or party ever admits that they or their organization could be wrong. In a mediated world, strategic offenses committed by overly savvy panelists are interpreted by some viewers as signals of violence. The difficult part of the story is that while the “dangerous other” was located in the distant margins of the daily lives of visible urban dwellers, the narrative of otherness has now reached the Center. Everyone is therefore a potential “other” and, as such, a target of “just” violence. Those who mock the fate of victims today could find themselves on the wrong side of the spectrum tomorrow. Our society is fractured. We have seen violence in the name of “forward and backward castes”, non-Sikh Sikhs, Dalit-non-Dalit, Dravida-non-Dravida, Kannadiga-Tamil, Assamese-non-Assamese, Meitei- Naga, Bihari- Maratha, Jat-non-Jat – the list could be endless. Given the unstable world of shifting alliances and constellations that continually create new boundaries, each of us risks becoming the “hated other” and a target for abuse and murder. Hate speech that reduces humans to a despicable point on the wrong side of the gun is all fine, as long as it's the right oneside. It is in this context that we must remember Mahatma Gandhi. His struggles against the British are rightly remembered. What we forgot is that he fought even harder against his family, his supporters and the people of our country. Most of his Satyagraha fasts were not against the British, but against the unfair wages of workers by Indian capitalists, Indian violence against the British, communalism and Dalit issues. He identified so intensely with the Indian people that when he saw something unethical or unjust happening, he felt something was wrong within himself. He would therefore fast to purge himself and his people of their evil deeds. Gandhi's ability to introspect, publicly admit his mistakes and fast as penance is something we have completely forgotten. For Gandhi, “Truth” excluded violence because humans were not capable of knowing the absolute truth and therefore incompetent to punish. Gandhiji was imprisoned several times by the British, he lost his wife in prison and yet, if one reads his speeches against the British, there is a singular lack of bitterness. He never exaggerated the faults of his adversaries. To the end he showed courtesy to agents of the British government. For Gandhi, non-violence meant respecting the truth in one's opponent. For we all have a truth… for we all love and live, hope and dream. Our beauty is as real as our ugliness. So when he cast Satyagraha, he blessed the person he was protesting against. He could speak of means as well as ends in the making. Addressing the opponent's best self and not exaggerating his faults was at the heart of Gandhi's struggle. When he won, his opponent also won because the opponent had been purged of the bad parts of his personality. We must remember that the public sphere is an area of responsibility. The new age of media has given us technologies not only to point fingers, but also to introspect and confront ourselves. Fanatical fear and hatred lead us into downward spirals of misery. Rather than hypocritical moralism, we must create a sharing platform. Indian democracy has survived despite all its flaws thanks to the contributions of the people and the parties of the left, right and center. It is important for us to remember Gandhi's truth for our own survival as a civilized community. Through truth and non-violence, according to Gandhiji, often considered one of the founders of the non-violence movement, he spread the concept of ahimsa through his movements and writings, which later inspired the nation. He not only theorized on this subject, he adopted non-violence as his philosophy. and an ideal lifestyle. He made the people understand that the philosophy of non-violence is not a weapon of the weak; it is a weapon of strong and thoughtful heart. As for "truth", he did not mean the character of a proposition which is true or false, but he described truth as existence, consciousness and bliss (sat, cit and ananda). At the beginning, Gandhi said that God is the Truth. But later he converted The truth is God. Gandhiji ventured to introduce to India and the world the ancient law of self-sacrifice. For Satyagraha and its offshoots, non-cooperation and civil resistance are just new names for the law of suffering. In the Gandhian philosophy of resistance, we find the intertwining of non-violence and exemplary suffering. Perhaps self-sacrifice is the closest thing to an ethical death, in the sense that it is.