Krishna 's Counsel : Time Of War

As I was reading the passages in Gandhi and Beyond: Nonviolence For a New Political Age, the theme that kept coming up was that nothing has ever been solved by violence. Gandhi, a man with less earthly belongings than anybody I have ever met or ever read about, dedicated his entire life promoting the importance of peace amongst us.

Mohandas Gandhi was the first recorded individual to adopt a non-violent method based form for change. His primary objective was for people of all ethnicities and social class to live freely amongst each other, even those inflicted upon by India’s ancient caste system.

The Bhagavad Gita opens on a literal and intellectual battlefield. Arjuna, a warrior by caste, faces the prospect of riding into battle against his own family. Unable to bear the thought of slaying his own family, he offers his objections to the Hindu god Krishna. Krishna, in turn, introduces the concepts of detachment and selflessness to Arjuna, arguing that while man must sometimes take action, he should not relish the fruits of his action. According to Krishna, every man has his own dharma, or duty, which he must seek to fulfill via selfless devotion. However, the Gita’s conception of selflessness does not preclude war, and the Gita also argues that mortal human lives, including those lost in battle, are ultimately insignificant. As a warrior, Arjuna’s duty is to fight, even when it means prioritizing his dharma over deep familial concerns (Flood x). On the whole, the Bhagavad Gita supports just war in the context of Hindu thought.

Early Buddhism and the Bhagavad Gītā have a wide array similarities and differences. Both Buddhism and the Gita deal with an inner struggle. We see Arjuna dealing with the struggle of whether or not he should murder his family in order to obtain a kingdom. In Buddhism, we see the inner struggle as the quest to find nirvana and the pain that is the very act of living. Although there are some similarities, the differences between Buddhism and the Gita are clear. One of the biggest digressions between the two is how one deals with the notion of atman and how one must live their life in order to reach the ultimate goal of nirvana or moksha.

Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi was a spiritual leader from India. Dr. King was inspired by Gandhi after hearing a delivery by Dr. Mordecai Johnson president of Howard University. His words about Gandhi inspired King to want to learn more about him. He purchased all the books he could find and grew more passionately about Gandhi’s beliefs. Gandhi believed in non-violence. Gandhi tested various methods of non-violence. He felt that having high standards and morals did not make one weak. Gandhi felt that good should prevail over evil.

When Gandhi was trying to prove a point he did two main things, he would get arrested or he would stop eating. One of the main ways he got the Indians to stop using violence against the English was through not eating. He would not eat for days and sometimes weeks just to get his people to stop fighting. Although the founding father of civil disobedience was Henry David Thoreau but Gandhi was the first to really adopt the lifestyle of non-violence, he took constant beatings to show that being violent wa snot the answer. There was two different ways that Gandhi looked at violence, passive and physical. Passive meaning that you get under someone's skin and provoke the physical violence from the person. Physical obviously meaning physically harming someone or something. Gandhi used the term “Ahimsa”, which translates to nonviolence in english, when talking about nonviolence. The term means that no violence is okay passive nor physical. Gandhi also believed that violence was not a natural thing of humans, he believed it was learned through experience.

Mohandas Gandhi brought positive change to India without using violence. He once said, “There are two ways of countering injustice.

He believed that truth and nonviolence, above all were of the highest value. Raghavan Iyer, in discussing the writings of Gandhi states “Gandhi teaches that Truth is God, and that it is our sacred duty to seek it. If Truth was to Gandhi the Ultimate End, then ahimsa (nonviolence) was the perfect means of attaining that end.” Gandhi truly believed that the greatest power that any individual has is the power of non-violence.

History has been, and continues to be, revolved around the concept of violence. Violence is an unescapable subject that people, leaders, and countries are faced with whenever any conflict occurs. Everyone has their own opinion on whether or not violence is the solution to every problem. Specifically looking at Mohandas Gandhi’s Satyagraha, Frantz Fanon’s chapter titled “Concerning Violence” from his novel The Wretched of the Earth, and Benito Mussolini’s “The Doctrine of Fascism”, we gain a clear understanding whether or not they supported the use of violence and what their objectives were within their time period. Although Gandhi, Fanon, and Mussolini acknowledge violence as a widely used force to deal with political, social, and economic

The idea of non violence has stemmed off Gandhi in many forms. Gandhi once quoted “Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man” and he fulfilled what he said.

Many of which Mahatma lead was putting himself in great danger. Gandhi severely beaten and even put in prison many time but he never resulted in violence against his Enemies/oppressors. When Gandhi was older and unable to lead his youth physically, Gandhi was always well-spoken and wrote in defense of those in need. He also went on hunger strikes or fast to make his point. Gandhi was so loved by the people of India that even the Muslims would stop acts of violence so that he would eat again and stay with the Indian Peoples. His assassination by a religious and political rival was a great tragedy for the entire world. Using Gandhi method in today’s protesting is very helpful, no matter how much the opposite side results in violence doesn’t give protesters the right to turn

When oppression, repression, and suppression is all there is in a society, citizens have the right and must revolt against such tyranny, and they do, but often they counteract violence with more violence. Often, they retaliate with the same principle of injustice that creates enmity and separation from truth, harmony and justice. And much more often, they ignore the evil and corruption that now conquers their hearts, making them the new tyrants. Yet, Mahatma Gandhi, a humble man whose weapon was more powerful than all the guns and man’s power combined, showed us that non-violence is the most effective weapon to combat violence and transform enmity into friendship and hate into love, and ultimately find a truthful justice within a society.

Gandhi was leader of the Indian people. He wanted peace and nothing more. People took advantage of Gandhi because he was all speech, but physical action such as war. When looking at the quote by Gandhi we can break it down peace by peace. The quote starts off by saying “An eye for an eye.” The meaning of the quote is that the aggressive or harmful action committed against

Mohandas Karmchand Gandhi was born during the British rule in India on October 2, 1869. Gandhi in the year of 1888 was sent to England to pursue law, where he developed interest in the philosophy of nonviolence as expressed in the holy Bhagawad Gita, a scared text of Hindu scriptures. However after passing the bar, he found little accomplishment in his attempt to practice law in India, which is when he accepted a position in South Africa, where he assisted on a lawsuit. (Mohandas Gandhi, 2015)

The Bhagavad Gita is a sacred Hindu text that serves to illustrate many of the morals and ethics of Hindu culture, by way of the exchange between Arjuna and Krishna. One of the things Krishna tells Arjuna is that the war he is fighting in is righteous. Is this to say that all wars are righteous, that those of the warrior caste will know if a war is righteous, or that they have to guess and then suffer the consequences if they’re wrong? The first two seem naïve and oversimplified from the modern perspective, and the third seems unjust because regardless of caste, Hindus are said to be capable of fulfilling their dharma. Krishna also assumes that people know their purpose in life, which may have been the case at the time the text was written, but is no longer true. While in Arjuna’s day people were born into certain castes, today people are descended from a combination of what would have been considered castes, and often switch between castes within a lifetime. Regardless, Krishna’s argument for why Arjuna should fight seems relatively sound in that specific situation, but can be twisted to condone what many consider to be evil actions in others. Nonetheless, Krishna seems confident in the fact that it is a universal truth for everyone to know his or her dharma, and that he or she needs to follow it to achieve moksha. Although Krishna makes a strong argument for Arjuna’s specific case, it can be seen to condone evil, raising the questions that if all wars are righteous, and