^^
The Kshatriya dharma is first and foremost to protect the people, to fight against
internal and external conflict, to ensure a just and resolute society in order that the other
Varnas are free to create without fear.If the Kshatriya does not follow his true law, the
nation is at risk to all sorts of disaster and misery.This is why if the Kshatriya deemed
the use of violence necessary in order to protect the people, then it was used, whether in
response to provocation or not.
It was this right arm of the Kshatriya that Gandhi abhorred.Believing that the user of
violence invariably met his death by violence, Gandhi proposed a different route.In it,
the fighter of injustice, the Kshatriya, was not to lay a finger on the proponent of
adharma.Instead, the Kshatriya was to willfully allow himself to be attacked by the
enemy, accepting death without a fight, while the other party was spared.This was
Gandhi’s famous Satyagraha:
The Kshatriya, while having no fear of death, was supposed to value life –
his own and that of the people he was protecting.For if the Kshatriya put himself
submissively in the way of harm, who was to protect the masses in the aftermath?It was
this truth Gandhi ignored, refusing to acknowledge the great responsibility he held.For
despite the common view of him as the austere Saint living in an Ashram, Gandhi was
heavily involved in Kshatriya activities, having spent the majority of his life as either the
leader (official or de-facto) of both the Congress Party in India and the South African
Indian Congress.As a Kshatriya, it should have been his svadharma, his natural law, to
protect the lives of his people, instead of telling them to lay down their lives in a bizarre
idea of ‘self-defense”
The true Kshatriya would not put his hopes in a miraculous change of heart by an enemy
that knew the Kshatriya did not believe in fighting.In such an instance, the aggressor
would achieve his objective due to the foolishness of the ahimsa-following Kshatriya.
The true Kshatriya knew that counter-violence in such a case of direct confrontation was
necessary, because without it, a steeled heart and strong determination could have no
external result.The Kshatriya fought back because it was the law of his being to protect
the nation from suffering, to not expose his nation or himself to it.Indeed, not only
would the Kshatriya fight back in such circumstances, he would also be inclined to take
the war into the enemy’s home, to strike at their heart.A Kshatriya did not restrict
himself to one tactic such as ahimsa in the face of battle.In fact, ahimsa or mute self-
sacrifice in battle has never been anywhere close to a significant war strategy or tactic.
Meeting the enemy in battle, negotiating with the enemy (yet trying to achieve the best
possible terms for his nation), setting up defensive barriers, allying with enemies of the
enemy, were among the many tactics used by the Kshatriya.Ahimsa never crossed the
mind of the true Kshatriya because ahimsa was never considered part of the Kshatriya
dharma.It was a virtue of the Brahmana.
The Brahmana dharma was not actively involved in the protection of the nation through
physical means.It was not their dharma.For this reason, they were free to practice
ahimsa, non-violence or more appropriately, non-maliciousness.Their contribution to
the defense of the nation was through religious and intellectual activity, education, direct
guidance of the Kshatriya, or through occult or mystic avenues.In the occasions that the
Brahmana gave consistent guidance to the Kshatriya, it was rarely coming from a realized
Yogi, let alone a Sadhaka.This is especially true in modern politics which is replete with
forces hostile to the aspirations of the seeker, who in turn will likely avoid that field.
And if the Brahmana did advise the Kshatriya, he was wise to the distinctions between
the law of the Brahmana and the law of the Kshatriya – he did not force his law upon
someone else.
Ahimsa, a virtue of a section of Brahmanas, the Sannyasi, was undertaken to help move
the Sannyasi from rajasic (characterized by action, passion) impulses into a sattvic
(characterized by peace, harmony) state of mind, in order to make it easier for the
Sannyasi to obtain his individual spiritual aspiration.A strict following of ahimsa,
therefore, was not even meant for all Brahmanas; it was indicated for the individual who
aspired for liberation.It was also meant for those with the inherent will to practice it.It
was not supposed to be the mass movement Gandhi desired:
Ahimsa, unlike svadharma, was never ‘a way of life’ that all of India followed; it was a
means to an end for the spiritual seeker just as brahmacharya was.This abstaining from
violence, along with vegetarianism, celibacy, humility, elimination of intake of
intoxicants, and many other practices, was used by the Sannyasi to obtain a Sattvic state.
From this evolved mentality, the foundation was set for spiritual realization.These
practices were not done simply to become a person of high morals; they were done with
the penultimate purpose in mind.
Ahimsa and its role in Indian society was not the only exaggeration Gandhi placed on
certain aspects of Hindu religion and Hindu history.Gandhi took his view of ahimsa to
such an extreme that he claimed Hinduism itself had never permitted the use of violence.
To understand how Gandhi mistakenly took his ahimsa to be an act of love in accordance
with the Kshatriya dharma, we only need remember Shri Krishna’s words to follow ones
dharma.If Gandhi had a few tendencies that were harmonious with the Kshatriya
dharma, such as his willingness to support a cause he considered worthy, his obsession
with turning ahimsa into a Kshatriya trait was what made his actions adharmic.The
obscure impetus behind Gandhi’s fetish of ahimsa was well intentioned - that of bringing
spirituality into politics.However, making politicians and soldiers28 practice ahimsa or
even the spinning of cloth was not the way to spiritualize the Kshatriya varna. The
method of spiritualizing politics had already been revealed in the Gita in the path of
Karmayoga.In order to spiritualize politics and warfare, both being professions of high
activity, the surrender to God of both the fruit of the labor and the actual process of the
labor is the first step for the individual. For national polity, the Kshatriya’s aims of
upholding dharma and stamping out injustice internally or externally driven, can be
spiritualized by facilitating the national expression of the highest Truth, the Absolute, the
Divine, something far more luminous than the petty (in relation) and ego-dependent
moral or ethical truths of Gandhi.
In trying to spiritualize politics, Gandhi only succeeded in confusing the efforts of the
political and military classes of his and subsequent times, hindering their actions,
preventing them from fully acting according to their dharma, consequently impeding their
life-force and Will through his moral positions and fasts of blackmail.In trying to bring
the Brahmana principles into the Kshatriya varna, Gandhi would make declarations of the
most shocking variety, not befitting of one considered the Father of the Nation, nor one
granted the title of Mahatma.
Clearly there is nothing wrong with gentleness and toleration in proper relation to the
whole, except the same argument can be made about aggression, that there is nothing
inherently wrong with it as long as it is harmonious with other qualities a nation needs.
The argument against aggression is a mere opinion from minds such as Gandhi that
naturally quiver from it because it doesn’t suit their nature. People born with this sort of
nature would best remain in their field of social activism, or altogether avoid activities
meant for the Kshatriya, whose inner law, whose dharma demands he defend his nation.
Fortunately for India, there have always been enough men in India with the will to
champion the Kshatriya dharma, even when serving an enfeebled political class.
Unfortunately, these Kshatriyas, who have sacrificed far more than the decadent scions of
political dynasties, remain beholden to those incapable of securing lasting protection to
India.The likes of imitative statesmen at play with words while India’s neighbors East
and West silently plot, tentative chieftains who prevent the Kshatriya from carrying out
the destiny of his birth, capricious legislators vacillating from one peripheral aim to the
next, and duplicitous intellectuals who obfuscate the actual intentions of the adversary,
continue to grow bloated on the spoils of their positions as the enemy creeps nearer to its
goal of murdering the past and the future.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/29991057/Viol ... iya-Dharma
