VIOLENCE

No one likes violence. Still violence is everywhere in the world. Every day we read in news papers the incidences of violence of various sorts. All of us including me reads and forgets about it. The kinds of violence are horrible to very horrible level. Sometimes I do not read them so that I don’t think about it. Violence is not preached by religion or political parties. Violence is one of the human’s uncontrolled activities. Mostly it is induced by anger and frustration. Human beings are basically violent in nature. But civilization and education have transformed men and women non-violent to a certain extent. In a huge population running to billions of people in the world there are economical and educational inequality. Such situations stimulate people to involve in violence to achieve their goals.

We do come across various kinds of violence such as physical, domestic, sexual, gun, emotional psychological and verbal. All these kinds lead to hatred and division among people. Some of the violence takes place between individuals, some among groups and some between countries. Very often violence takes place between neighboring countries due to various reasons. At times it leads to war even. In fact, war between countries is always violent and kills large number of soldiers and civilians. It also destroys valuable monuments and big beautiful cities. All of us in deed know the cruelty of war. So many counties nowadays are against war. However, they get and stock all kinds of weapons and keep the army men and women ready for war. World War 1 and 2 had taught us a lesson that war is the worst solution for all disputes.

Many countries in the world were liberated from the colonial rulers through violent means. In some cases non-violence was used as in India. Non-violence is a philosophy employed to avoid violence by Mahatma Gandhi. It was in 1940s that many countries were liberated in the world to have their self-rule. Some of them adopted democracy for governing whereas others were ruled by military. Again those countries were subjected to internal violence. That is history!

Physical violence leads to disablement and death. Brutal means are used to beat and thrash people, set fire properties, destroy public properties such as public transports – buses, trains, vehicles etc. Government forces are there to control such violence by applying violence again. Still we find mobs once get violent lose their temperament and turn mad. They do not understand what they do and what will be the consequences. Physical violence produces great loss to the government and thus to all of us.

Another silent violence takes place in every family. This is called domestic violence. Mostly it occurs between husband and wife due to multiple reasons like economic, illicit relationships, dowry, property-sharing etc. Such violence may also extend from physical to emotional to psychological. Domestic violence may lead to separation of family members, divorce, killing, suicide, cheating etc.

Sexual violence occurs everywhere in the world wherever men and women live. It is gender related violence. The people involved are men and women or boys and girls. Even in advance and developed countries such violence takes place every day. There are millions of cases reported every day in the media. The damage caused by such violence is personal to family life. There are laws to prevent or punish the culprits, but the net results are not encouraging at all.

Recently, not quite recently we hear about gun violence in countries like the US, Canada, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Sweden. People can buy guns and use it as they like. People who possess guns are not generally careful. They misuse the guns against their enemies. Or some mad men senselessly shoot at school children, college students and staff, religious gatherings, restaurants, music festivals, sports stadium etc. Innocent people are the victims. Loss of life due to such gun violence is viewed seriously by judiciary. Invariably people who use their guns against innocent people are shot dead or they commit suicide by shooting themselves. Fun laws are brought in various countries. Still we do find mad men and women use guns against innocent people.

Apart from the above violence there are emotional violence, psychological violence and verbal violence. They are generally not physical but they are connected with mind and mental peace. Creating fear and despair in the minds of people, cheating, deceiving, stealing are some of them. Although, all governments try to protect people from violence of all sorts, the cruel habits are still prevalent among men and women of our society. Prevention is better than cure. There are laws to prevent violence but they are badly implemented or not implemented at all. Religious organizations preach non-violence as the solution for all problems, but the preaching are heard in the name of God and forgotten. Is it possible to live in this world without violence? I doubt. I think it is impossible. - NARA