Rights and Duties

153. The true source of rights is duty. If we all discharge our duties, rights will not be far to seek. If leaving duties unperformed we run after rights, they will escape us like a will-o’-the-wisp. The more we pursue them, the farther will they fly. The same teaching has been embodied by Krishna in the immortal words: ‘Action alone is thine. Leave thou the fruit severely alone.’ Action is duty: fruit is the right.
–YI. 8-1-25, 15.

The Greatest Good of All

154. A votary of ahimsa cannot subscribe to the utilitarian formula (of the greatest god of the greatest number). He will strive for the greatest good of all and die in the attempt to realize the ideal. He will therefore be willing to die, so that the others may live. He will serve himself with the rest, by himself dying. The greatest good of all inevitably includes the good of the greatest number, and therefore, he and the utilitarian will converge in many points in their career but there does come a time when they must part company, and even work in opposite directions. The utilitarian to be logical will never sacrifice himself. The absolutist will even sacrifice himself.

–YI, 9-12-26, 432.

Evolution and Revolution

140. Q. Have you studied history and noted the progress of nations? Have you at all noted that progress is made by growth and gradual development; and not by revolution and destruction? Do you ever notice how God works through nature that the life of plants and animals grows by slow advance, by evolution, not revolution? Do you ever watch the sky and the movement of the stars? The suns and systems which continue through the ages can scarcely be seen to move at all. To ascend a mountain the climber has to take slow and painful steps one after another. To descend quickly he need only step over the precipice and he is at the bottom in a few seconds.

A. The nations have progressed both by evolution and revolution. The one is as necessary as the other. Death, which is an eternal verity, is revolution as birth and after is slow and steady evolution. Death is as necessary for man’s growth as life itself. God is the greatest Revolutionist the world has ever known or will know. He seconds deluges. He sends storms where a moment ago there was calm. He levels down mountains which. He builds with exquisite care and infinite patience. I do watch the sky and it fills me with awe and wonder. In the serene blue sky, both of India and England, I have seen clouds gathering and bursting with a fury which has struck me dumb. History is more a record of wonderful revolutions than the so-called ordered progress no history more so than the English. And I beg to inform the correspondent that I have seen people trudging slowly up mountains and have also seen men shooting up the air through great heights. –YI, 2-2-22, 78.

The Meaning of Non-resistance

133. Hitherto the word ‘revolution’ has been connected with violence and has as such been condemned by established authority. But the movement of Non-co-operation, if it may be considered a revolution, is not an armed revolt; it is an evolutionary revolution, it is a bloodless revolution. The movement is a revolution of thought, of spirit. Non-co-operation is a process of purification, and, as such it constitutes a revolution in one’s ideas. Its suppression, therefore, would amount to co-operation by coercion. Orders to kill the movement will be orders to destroy, or interfere with, the introduction of the spinning wheel, to prohibit the campaign of temperance, and an incitement, therefore, to violence. For any attempt to compel people by indirect methods to war foreign clothes, to patronize drink-shops would certainly exasperate them. But our success will be assured when we stand even this exasperation and incitement. We must not retort. Inaction on our part will kill Government madness. For violence flourishes on response, either by submission to the will of the violator, or by counter violence. My strong advice to every worker is to segregate this evil Government by strict non-co-operation, not even to talk or speak about it, but having recognized the evil, to cease to pay homage to it by co-operation.-YI, 30-3-21, 97.

134. Passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms. When I refuse to do a thing that is repugnant to my conscience, I use soul-force. For instance, the Government of the day has passed a law, which is applicable to me. I do not like it. If by using violence I force the Government to repeal the law, I am employing what may be termed body-force. If I do not obey the law and accept the penalty for is breach, I use soul-force. It involves sacrifice of self.

Everybody admits that sacrifice self is infinitely superior to sacrifice of other. Moreover, if this kind of force is used in a cause that is just, only the person using it suffers. He does not make others suffers for his mistakes. Men have before now done many things which were subsequently found to have been wrong. No man can claim that he is absolutely in the right or that a particular thing is wrong because h thinks so, but it is wrong for him so long as that is his deliberate judgment. It is therefore meet that he should not do that which he knows to be wrong, and suffer the consequence whatever it may be. This is the key to the use of soul-force. –IHR, 45.

135. The method of passive resistance adopted to combat the clearest and safest, because, if the cause is not true, it is the resisters, and they alone, who suffer. –Nat, 305.

136. That is the way of Satyagraha or the way of non-resistance top evil. It is the aseptic method in which the physician allows the poison to work itself out by setting in motion all the natural forces and letting them have full play. * -H, 9-7-38, I73.

The Age of Miracles

118. It is open to anyone to say that human nature has not been known to rise to such height. But if we have made unexpected progress in physical sciences, why may we do less in the science of the soul?

–H, 14-5-38, 114.

119. In this age of wonders no one will say that a thing or idea is worthless because it is new. To way it is impossible because it is difficult, is again not in consonance with the spirit of the age. Things undreamt of are daily being seen, the impossible is ever becoming possible. We are constantly being astonished these days at the amazing discoveries in the field of violence. But I maintain that far more undreamt of and seemingly impossible discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence.

–H, 25-8-40, 260.