So matters went on, and still go on, in the Christian world. But we
might have hope that in the immense Brahman, Buddhist, and Confucian
worlds this new scientific superstition would not establish itself, and
that the Chinese, Japanese, and Hindus, once their eyes were opened to
the religious fraud justifying violence, would advance directly to a
recognition of the law of love inherent in humanity, and which had
been so forcibly enunciated by the great Eastern teachers. But what has
happened is that the scientific superstition replacing the religious one
has been accepted and secured a stronger and stronger hold in the East.
In your periodical you set out as the basic principle which should guide
the actions of your people the maxim that: 'Resistance to aggression is
not simply justifiable but imperative, nonresistance hurts both Altruism
and Egotism.'
Love is the only way to rescue humanity from all ills, and in it you
too have the only method of saving your people from enslavement. In very
ancient times love was proclaimed with special strength and clearness
among your people to be the religious basis of human life. Love, and
forcible resistance to evil-doers, involve such a mutual contradiction
as to destroy utterly the whole sense and meaning of the conception of
love. And what follows? With a light heart and in the twentieth
century you, an adherent of a religious people, deny their law, feeling
convinced of your scientific enlightenment and your right to do so, and
you repeat (do not take this amiss) the amazing stupidity indoctrinated
in you by the advocates of the use of violence--the enemies of truth,
the servants first of theology and then of science--your European
teachers.
You say that the English have enslaved your people and hold them in
subjection because the latter have not resisted resolutely enough and
have not met force by force.
But the case is just the opposite. If the English have enslaved the
people of India it is just because the latter recognized, and still
recognize, force as the fundamental principle of the social order. In
accord with that principle they submitted to their little rajahs, and
on their behalf struggled against one another, fought the Europeans, the
English, and are now trying to fight with them again.
A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions.
Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp
what these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand men, not
athletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two hundred
million vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people? Do not the
figures make it clear that it is not the English who have enslaved the
Indians, but the Indians who have enslaved themselves?
When the Indians complain that the English have enslaved them it is as
if drunkards complained that the spirit-dealers who have settled among
them have enslaved them. You tell them that they might give up drinking,
but they reply that they are so accustomed to it that they cannot
abstain, and that they must have alcohol to keep up their energy. Is it
not the same thing with the millions of people who submit to thousands'
or even to hundreds, of others--of their own or other nations?
If the people of India are enslaved by violence it is only because they
themselves live and have lived by violence, and do not recognize the
eternal law of love inherent in humanity.
_Pitiful and foolish is the man who seeks what he already has, and does
not know that he has it. Yes, Pitiful and foolish is he who does not
know the bliss of love which surrounds him and which I have given him._
KRISHNA.
As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to
their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance
by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in
violence--as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to
enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single
individual. Do not resist the evil-doer and take no part in doing so,
either in the violent deeds of the administration, in the law courts,
the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, and no one in the
world will be able to enslave you.