Shivani Bothra
Vow Two:
I will not attack anybody. I will not support aggression. I will endeavor to bring about world peace and disarmament.
The second vow is also a continuum of the commitment to ahimsa, nonviolence. Here Tulsi is again acknowledging a widespread modern concern about combating the fears of terrorism and traumas of war inflicted upon humanity. Tulsi imagined that Jain experiences with the action of taking vows could possibly be beneficial to secular society when combined with a willingness to be consciously aware of how actions, whether they are actions of an individual or of a whole nation, affect other beings. Mahapragya provides an analogy of a house in which these small vows are like screens or covers, which protect the interior against the detriments of variable weather patterns. By undertaking a vow, an individual re-directs his or her energy inward and attempts to fight the coercive power of hatred, jealousy, anger and greed that reside within oneself.
The question that springs up in mind is what does Tulsi mean by endeavoring world peace. Since my respondents did not contribute much on the vow, I looked into the available written material and discovered that one way the movement contributed in promoting peace was by holding multiple national and international conferences on peace and nonviolent action. The conferences were held in Ladnun and Rajsamand in Rajasthan, India and the participants were representating more than 20 countries. These conferences could create a theoretical atmosphere of peace among the intellectuals but what about the practical implications upon individuals? To answer my own question, I found an article helpful, from the yearly special issue of the Anuvrat magazine titled In Pursuit of Peace. The author of the article states: "To achieve peace means to change both individuals and systems."[93] In the same article, the author further quotes a British peace-leader: There is only one person in the world I can disarm - myself.[94] Views obtained from such quotations re-emphasize Tulsi's unwavering confidence in human potentiality for cultivating an atmosphere of peace.
