Non-Violence

(This essay, written by Aldous Huxley, is taken from Essays, Short Stories and One Act Plays by RK Kaushik and SC Bhatia, Eds.)

The main ideas of the essay are:

• Organized and intelligent non-violence is the best, the most practical policy.
• There have been mass movements in which the principles of non-violence are applied to the relations between large groups of entire population and their government. Of these, the movements best known to English-speaking readers are those organized by Gandhi in South Africa and later in India.
• One example: The discriminatory legislation against the Hindus in South Africa was repealed in 1914, entirely as the result of non-violent resistance and non-cooperation on the part of the Indian population.
• Another example: A threat of non-violent non-cooperation by British Labour Movement in 1920 forced British government to abandon its plan for sending British troops to Poland for an attack upon the Russians. This averted the war with Russia.
• The nation is personified in our imagination as a being superhuman in power and glory, but sub-human in morality. When a government becomes unjust and oppressive, the best way to oppose it is through organized and intelligent means of non-violence.
• We are living in the machine age. Machine production cannot be abolished. But the wealth created by machine production should be distributed is such a way as to secure the maximum of social justice. Government and private companies in the ordinary way of business are not disposed to do so. The task, therefore, devolves upon associations of devoted individuals.
• Devoted and trained individuals in the ways of non-violence should be deployed. But good intentions and personal devotion are not enough; scientific methods must be combined with them.  
• Scientific method must be applied to machines, to workmen, to an office organization. But machines must be bought and supplied with their motive power, and workmen and administrators must be paid. Hence, the capital investment is needed.
• Devoted and intelligent individuals living in association and working systematically to find the best forms of practice (listed in the essay) in every area will be able quite quickly to build up a working model of a more satisfactory type of society.