The Culture Of Violence Must End — Reclaiming Gandhi’s Path Of Non-Violence In A Turbulent World

With the growing number of mass shooting incidents happening across major powerful countries in the recent past, there is an environment of fear and anguish all across the world. Everyone will have their own assessment and opinion of these incidents.

However, what we, as a society, need to understand is that these acts should be opposed by the masses in a louder way so that it reaches policymakers who actually have the power to stop such incidents.

We all know that religious beliefs greatly influence our perceptions and attitudes. Hence, the commonly held belief that violence is justified to obtain your rightful due, or for victory of good over evil, and its corollary that good has to be more violent than evil so as to defeat it, need to be re-considered.

Because if we as a society encourage this wrong belief, then it would mean that a person driven by might would be considered to be right, and many young people, who have seen their families suffer a life of suppression and exploitation, will look at violence as the only way to make their voices heard.

Unfortunately, today such youth are continuously being 'misguided' by people and organisations with vested interests, alien ideologies, commercial cinema, television and the Internet, which justify and glorify the culture of violence to avenge the 'wrong'.

Gandhiji showed us that non-violence could be the basis for a collective response to achieve social or political goals. He also spoke extensively on the need to imbibe non-violence at an individual level, in thought and in action. This can be best achieved through early education within the family first, then the school, and finally society at large.

Education must, thus, become the central objective in our society, as all subsequent behaviour or action by individuals would be influenced by it. Today the need of the hour is to create a mass awareness among people to accept each other’s opinions or actions and live in harmony with each other. People in power should realise that value-building, especially among the youth, is the biggest call of our times.

The writer is a spiritual educator and popular columnist for publications across India, Nepal and the UK, and has written more than 9,000 columns. He can be contacted at nikunjji@gmail.com / www.brahmakumaris.com

news