Real nonviolence

Speaker:  Srila Prabhupada
Source: People Are Being Killed

Sometimes in the year 1950 or ’51 I went to Jhansi, and it happened so that the…, the friend in whose house I was staying, he was a leader, and there was a meeting for Gandhi’s disappearance day. So I was asked to speak. At that time I was not sannyasi. I was asked to speak something on nonviolence. So I explained that violence means if you have got some right and if somebody by force stops you to utilize your right, that is violence. That is violence. I have got some right to take something, so, or enter in some room, and, if somebody checks me by force, that “You cannot enter,” that is violence and it is criminal.

So I explained in that meeting that “After many, many births, one is given the opportunity to take birth in this holy land of Bharatavarsa. Unfortunately, you people, you are, by force, making them materialist. They had the opportunity to take advantage of the contribution of great sages, rsis, to study and to become a successful human being, but you are, by force, dragging them from that attitude to this materialistic way of life. This is violence. This is violence. What you are speaking of, nonsense, nonviolence? This is violence.” So about twenty years ago I was thinking like that. So actually, people are being killed not only in India, but outside also, by these blind leaders. They do not know how to lead people, how to make them happy, how to make them successful in their human form of life.