The Power of Peace is Greater than
the Power of Violence
Subhas Chandra Bose (1897 – 1945) was a great leader of India. The goal he had set for himself was to free India of the British rule. He gave this slogan to Indians: ‘Give me blood, and I shall give you freedom.’
The Indian people gave him blood in the form of the Azad Hind Fauj (Indian National Army). However, this strategy completely failed. Subhas Chandra Bose himself died in an accident before he was able to fulfil this goal.
Mahatma Gandhi emerged as the true leader of the Indian freedom struggle. But he opted for a different course to achieve his goal—that of peace. His slogan for his people was: ‘Help me in my non-violent activism, and I will give you freedom.’
Gandhi’s peaceful strategy worked and India successfully won its freedom on August 15, 1947.
The strategy of Subhas Chandra Bose was based on violent struggle. This strategy was bound to provoke counter-violence from the British rulers, who were in a much stronger position. Therefore, Subhas Chandra Bose’s strategy failed to work and British rule stayed in place.
Mahatma Gandhi’s approach was the opposite. When he declared that he would continue the freedom struggle – but by the power of peace and not by the power of violence, the British rulers lost all justification for their violence. It is said that after Gandhi’s announcement, a British collector sent the following message to his secretariat by telegram: ‘Kindly wire instructions how to kill a tiger non-violently.’
The above experience of Indian politics shows that the power of peace is far greater than the power of violence.
A parallel historical example is that of the Prophet Muhammad, who started his mission in 610 AD in Arabia. At that time Arabia was tribal in its culture. Due to the conditions prevalent in that age, there were initially some violent clashes between the Prophet and his opponents, and the situation remained unsettled.
However, the Prophet wisely managed to conclude a peace agreement, which has come down in history as the Hudaybiyyah Agreement (628 AD). This was a no-war pact between the two parties. Consequent upon the pact, the Prophet found ample opportunities to further his mission by engaging in peaceful activity. The result proved to be miraculous: within just a few years, the whole of Arabia had accepted his ideology.
The American writer Michael H. Hart acknowledges the Prophet Muhammad as the supremely successful man in history.1 But, what was the secret of this supreme success? It was certainly ‘peace’. By dint of wise planning, the Prophet established peace in Arabia, and this allowed him and his companions to avail of the opportunities that were subsequently opened up. His miraculous success was due to this peaceful strategy.
The general policy of the Prophet is given in this Hadith:
‘Whenever the Prophet had to choose between the two, he always opted for the easier course of action over the harder course of action.’
Here, the easier course of action means the peaceful course and the harder course of action is the violent course. It was this policy followed by the Prophet that made him supremely successful.
Scope for peaceful planning exists everywhere and at all times. The sole prerequisite for this is patience. For it is patience which gives one the ability to analyze situations with an objective mind. When one is free of prejudice and predilection, one becomes a super-planner. Historians generally acknowledge that the Prophet Muhammad was an extremely successful person in world history, the reason for his great success being simply his clear-mindedness about planning along peaceful lines.
The target of the violent method is negative, while that of the peaceful method is positive.
Why is peace more powerful than violence? The reason is that the sole objective of one who adopts the violent method is to make the rivals incur loss, while one who adheres to the peaceful method aims to make himself strong. The target of the violent method is negative, while that of the peaceful method is positive. It is a truism of life that however many losses one makes the other party suffer, it will never cause one to become strong oneself. The secret of success is to make one’s own self strong, and this is possible only when one does not set a negative target for oneself, but rather moulds one’s policies with a view to arriving at a positive outcome.
