A COSMOPOLITAN LAWYER: JUST SOME READINGS I HAVE ENJOYED LATELY

First, this blog replaces my previous blog, thecosmoplitanlawyerblogspot.com . Second, unlike that earlier blog, the present one is primarily meant as a record of my readings. It is not meant to suggest that others will be or should be interested in what I read. And third, in a sense, it is a public diary of one who is an alien in his own American culture. A person who feels at home just about anywhere, except in his birthplace . . . America.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

NON-VIOLENCE, THE MORE ACTIVE FORCE

Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi Before India (New York: Knopf, 2014) ("For Gandhi, those who wrote history were preoccupied with wars and bloodshed. Thus, if two brothers quarrelled, their neighbors and the newspapers, and hence history, would take notice of it; but if they peacefully settled their dispute, it would remain unrecorded. Extrapolating, Gandhi said, in a striking passage, that 'hundreds of nations live in peace. History does not, and cannot, take note of this fact. History is really a record of every interruption of the even working of love or of the soul.' Contrary to what was popularly believed, non-violence had been a far more active force in human affairs than violence. The 'greatest and most unimpeachable evidence of the success of this force is to be found in the fact that, in spite of the wars of the world, it still lives on'." Id. at 368.).