A Letter to a Hindu | Page 5

not the destroyers of yourselves. Arise to your true Being, and
then you will have nothing to fear.__ KRISHNA.
New justifications have now appeared in place of the antiquated,
obsolete, religious ones. These new justifications are just as inadequate

as the old ones, but as they are new their futility cannot immediately be
recognized by the majority of men. Besides this, those who enjoy
power propagate these new sophistries and support them so skilfully
that they seem irrefutable even to many of those who suffer from the
oppression these theories seek to justify. These new justifications are
termed 'scientific'. But by the term 'scientific' is understood just what
was formerly understood by the term 'religious': just as formerly
everything called 'religious' was held to be unquestionable simply
because it was called religious, so now all that is called 'scientific' is
held to be unquestionable. In the present case the obsolete religious
justification of violence which consisted in the recognition of the
supernatural personality of the God-ordained ruler ('there is no power
but of God') has been superseded by the 'scientific' justification which
puts forward, first, the assertion that because the coercion of man by
man has existed in all ages, it follows that such coercion must continue
to exist. This assertion that people should continue to live as they have
done throughout past ages rather than as their reason and conscience
indicate, is what 'science' calls 'the historic law'. A further 'scientific'
justification lies in the statement that as among plants and wild beasts
there is a constant struggle for existence which always results in the
survival of the fittest, a similar struggle should be carried on among
human beings--beings, that is, who are gifted with intelligence and love;
faculties lacking in the creatures subject to the struggle for existence
and survival of the fittest. Such is the second 'scientific' justification.
The third, most important, and unfortunately most widespread
justification is, at bottom, the age-old religious one just a little altered:
that in public life the suppression of some for the protection of the
majority cannot be avoided--so that coercion is unavoidable however
desirable reliance on love alone might be in human intercourse. The
only difference in this justification by pseudo-science consists in the
fact that, to the question why such and such people and not others have
the right to decide against whom violence may and must be used,
pseudo-science now gives a different reply to that given by
religion--which declared that the right to decide was valid because it
was pronounced by persons possessed of divine power. 'Science' says
that these decisions represent the will of the people, which under a
constitutional form of government is supposed to find expression in all

the decisions and actions of those who are at the helm at the moment.
Such are the scientific justifications of the principle of coercion. They
are not merely weak but absolutely invalid, yet they are so much
needed by those who occupy privileged positions that they believe in
them as blindly as they formerly believed in the immaculate conception,
and propagate them just as confidently. And the unfortunate majority of
men bound to toil is so dazzled by the pomp with which these
'scientific truths' are presented, that under this new influence it accepts
these scientific stupidities for holy truth, just as it formerly accepted the
pseudo-religious justifications; and it continues to submit to the present
holders of power who are just as hard-hearted but rather more
numerous than before.

V
__Who am I? I am that which thou hast searched for since thy baby
eyes gazed wonderingly upon the world, whose horizon hides this real
life from thee. I am that which in thy heart thou hast prayed for,
demanded as thy birthright, although thou hast not known what it was. I
am that which has lain in thy soul for hundreds and thousands of years.
Sometimes I lay in thee grieving because thou didst not recognize me;
sometimes I raised my head, opened my eyes, and extended my arms
calling thee either tenderly and quietly, or strenuously, demanding that
thou shouldst rebel against the iron chains which bound thee to the
earth.__
KRISHNA.
So matters went on, and still go on, in the Christian world. But we
might have hope that in the immense Brahman, Buddhist, and
Confucian worlds this new scientific superstition would not establish
itself, and that the Chinese, Japanese, and Hindus, once their eyes were
opened to the religious fraud justifying violence, would advance
directly to a recognition of the law of love inherent in humanity, and
which had been so forcibly enunciated by the great Eastern teachers.
But what has happened is that the scientific superstition replacing the
religious one has been accepted and secured a stronger and stronger
hold in