The following personal essay by Benjamin Kany ’18 was selected as a top winner of the 2016 Mahatma Gandhi Art and Writing Contest. The “Mahatma Gandhi Peace and Harmony Award,” sponsored by AIA-SJ, the Association of Indians in America South Jersey Chapter, is open to high school and middle school students throughout New Jersey. The goal of the award is to spread Mahatma Gandhi’s message of peace, racial and religious harmony, and tolerance for each other and for each other’s culture. This year’s contest theme was “when violence appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”
Justified Violence?
I was eight years old when I did something that scared me for the rest of my life. I was waiting for my best friend after recess and when he never caught up with me to go to lunch, I ran back to the hill where I had come from. What I saw affected me so personally that it caused me to act irrationally. I saw my best friend being bullied.
“Hey! What are you doing?” I yelled.
Mikey lay on the dirt ground, still. Richard kicked him twice, hard. I winced.
“Stop!” I yelled.
I took off running down the hill. Richard kicked Mikey in the side one more time. I stumbled. I knelt down next to Mikey and then looked at Richard, who was smiling.
I stood up in front of Richard and punched him in the face, hard. He fell to the ground. I looked at my hand. It was bleeding.
I still remember that day that day like it was yesterday. I had never punched anyone before. And I have not punched anyone since. Then why did I think in that moment that using violence was the necessary action to take? Was my violence justified? For that brief moment of time, using violence caused me to lose who I really was – who I really am.
Now, when I look at my right hand, my eye is drawn to the indentation between my pointer and middle finger, which, instead of reminding me of defense, reminds me of my irrationality and decision to use violence. Through this experience and throughout my life I have learned two important lessons about violence. The first: non-violence does not always work, and it may take time to achieve a desired result through non-violence. The second: violence never works.