Y.S. Vagrecha,
Dr. H.S. Gour University
Sagar (M.P.)

Violence in interpersonal relationships, in social and collective life and between nations is due to absolute claim for truth. When one closes oneself, mentally and emotionally, to the truth of others, it creates the very first condition for violence. Every form of human violence (take any example) has emerged from the competing one-sided notion of truth -- that my truth is truth and your truth is the falsehood. When one is guided by the deterministic philosophies, where cause and effect are predetermined and there is no free choice, one is bound to generate violence. Non deterministic philosophies and a relativistic approach to truth liberate us from violence of one-sided truth and strengthen the unity of human consciousness. The Upanishad's every assertion about reality is added with neti-neti (It is not this alone, it is not this). The Mahabharat similarly points out to the other truth of every thing. Jainism does not believe in absolutism and propagated Syada-Vada and Anekanta-Vada, claiming that there are many ways to describe a thing. There is no fixed, absolute truth about the physical universe also. Philosophy, religion and science thus attempt to describe different aspects of reality about which nothing definite can be said, and that there is universal consciousness.