ENDS AND MEANS - THE ETERNAL DEBATE

End and Means - the eternal debate.

Do ends justify the means? "No", said M K Gandhi. Professor J K Mehta, economist, professor at Allahabad, and philosopher, argued that by adopting wrong means, the end achieved is never what you seek to achieve. But with due respect to Gandhi and Prof Mehta, it is certainly debatable whether ends justify means or not.
A goonda is molesting a woman. You are present, but you are a pacifist who considers violence wrong means. Will you try to persuade him or physically stop him? Even Gandhi made an exception in the case of Kashmir in 1947 when he approved of the Indian Army's intervention against foreign invaders.
It is often said that there is no such thing as a "justified war" or a "war for preventing future wars". But what would one say about the war against Adolph Hitler? No amount of passive resistance could have stopped Hitler. If only non-violent resistance was used against Hitler, his tyranny and that of his successor dictators might have lasted long. One cannot justify misery and pain for millions of victims for years even if a better world might emerge later.
While Gandhi was a great believer in the Gita, Krishna's views on this important question of "ends and means" are almost diametrically the opposite of Gandhi's. Several episodes in the Mahabharata like the killing of Dronacharya (by saying "Ashwatthama Mara Gaya"), the killing of Karna against the rules of war while he was repairing his chariot, the killing of Bhishmapitamaha through Shikhandi, the killing of Duryodhana through the unfair act of pointing out to his (vulnerable) thighs - all at the initiative of Lord Krishna himself - seem to suggest that to achieve justice, unfair means would be quite in order. Where to draw the line of justification or non-justification?
Would it be right for a man who has been insulted and abused to shoot down the abuser and take his life? What about terrorism? If ends justify means, can even genuine freedom fighters make use of "terrorism" as a weapon to fight their cause? There can possibly only be what has been described as "situation ethics" - individually each situation's ethics would need to be determined. There can be no rigid principles or criteria. And yet, most of us would feel that in our conscious and sub-conscious thinking, there are some factors which make us decide one situation as being a fit case for ends justifying means and another, as not being of that nature.
One almost universally applicable factor would be that we should not be the first to use "unfair means". If a criminal has kidnapped my child, I may use almost any means like deception or forgery to trap and apprehend the criminal because it would be against a grievous act of injustice and inhumanity coupled with the fact that I was not the first to have used unfair means. Second, my unfair act should not be completely out of proportion to the unfair act of my opponent. These two factors "no first use" and "no first disproportionate escalation", would perhaps have a high degree of applicability. But they do not represent an exhaustive list of relevant factors. For group, as against individuals, considerations of a "societal" nature count. For example, in case of 'terrorism', history would show that deliberate killing of innocents creates terrible chain reactions and the outright banning of terrorism is a necessity arising out of societal wisdom and ethics, irrespective of "no first use" and "no first disproportionate escalation".
But the question remains: Who is to judge what is justified use of "unfair" means and what is "disproportionate escalation".