Aman Ahmad, Student of Law, Jamia Millia Islamia
“Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood.”
― Mahatma Gandhi.
From the First World War to the Second World War and to the latest, the war for the Gaza Strip, The world has seen the consequences of unethical values and violence. All of the world has seen destruction just for the sake of establishing hegemony. But we do not realise the fact that having a mere title is not as important as establishing mutual co-existence for all of us. That is where the importance of non – violence and ethics come to picture. There is not a single religion or a constitution or any other code of conduct in this world which teaches us to take human lives. Every religion and every other source for the code of conduct for humans have only been giving us ethical values and has been encouraging non-violence. A selfish and extremist human being draped in the cloth of democracy or unity has been coming to power and has been causing destruction from time to time. Extremism of any sort should therefore be discouraged in our lives because even a small start can have disastrous consequences throughout the world and it is time that all of us learn a lesson from the past. Condemning such acts and following the path of non-violencewill definitely lead us to a stronger and a better world. Therefore the most important task is to instil whole of the world with strong ethical values and teach them the importance of non-violence. But how can we do that? When seen from the global perspective there are deep values of nationalism throughout the world, there is extremism of all sorts that has been inculcated in all of us through persistent instruction which has ultimately resulted in friction between all of us which has led to a global tension. We will have to start this process of teaching the importance of non – violence and of ethical values from the adolescent age as it is when a person learns and imbibes ideologies and that is how ideas come out from a person and go on to become something big and have a global impact. Teaching non – violence will thus instil in a person, certain ethical values which will lead us towards peace which is the need of the hour. This is the bigger picture of teaching the importance of non – violence and ethical values, there are a lot of smaller benefits which ultimately lead to the above discussed benefit. One of the most important benefits of non – violence and ethical values is non – violence itself. There is a plethora of examples in the history books which state the consequence of violence. The loss of a human life is more than the loss of anything because it is the loss of humanity. So if a child is taught the importance of non – violence and is instilled with ethical values then there is no way that there will be a global problem because all of the major leaders for tomorrow are still at the learning age. Another importance of non – violence and ethical values is that the two qualities help develop an individual’s insight into reasoning which will help that individual distinguish between good and bad.
There is a need for all of us to realise that today we should lay emphasis not only on our needs but also on the needs of the majority and such an understanding can only be had by teaching ethical values alongside non – violence.