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Gandhi was a strong believer and follower of Non violence. He was the one who started the Non violence act in India and freed India from British rule. Since that period, the country is talking about Non violence. Non violence has been preached over and over again, politically, religiously, by various leaders, but non-violence is not a fact, just an idea, a theory, a set of words. India after thousands of years of suffering, struggle, obeying, accepting, destroying each other is reduced to a wilderness of wild thoughtless human beings, who do not care for the earth, or for the lovely things of the earth, for the beauty of the lake, of the swift running river. None of us seems to care. All that we are concerned with is our own little selves, our own little problems.

When Gandhi started this act, he thought he was teaching non-violence, but in fact he was teaching people to be violent to themselves. The man who believes in non-violence will be very careful not to be violent to anybody – he will be too careful! If he is angry with someone and wants to give a hard slap to that person, then he will resist and try not to utter even a word to that person because rationally he has concluded that path of non-violence is good. But is not resistance a form of violence? By resisting he has not become non-violent; in fact it has turned the violence to himself. The proportion of violence is same.

The non-violence believer does no violence to others physically, but psychologically he becomes very violent. People who believe in non-violence automatically start believing they are saints, superior beings, higher than everybody else. Psychologically they will try to prove their superiority in every possible way. .

The actual fact is that a person is violent by inheritance from the animal, from the ape and so on. And while we are pursuing non-violence, we are sowing the seeds of violence all the time. Non violence has not helped people to discourage, to discontinue violence but it has just turned the table the other way around, it has turned violence to people themselves. Gandhi himself was very violent. If anything went against his will, he used to go on fast. Fasting is again violence. If keeping others starving is violence than starving yourself, again is violence.

Violence to others is better than violence to your own being. Because if a person is violent to other, than there is a possibility that the other person may retaliate and stop the person to be violent. But once a person is violent to himself, the body cannot retaliate, it cannot prevent you. It is the most helpless and the most innocent victim.

So Non-violence does not have the power to make you free of violence, it can only turn the violence from others to you, which is more destructive.

 - J Krishnamurthy