AHIṂSᾹ. The Sanskrit term ahiṃsā (literally "non-injury"), often translated as "nonviolence," has been taken into Western languages as a result of the influence of Mohandas Gandhi. Gandhi explicitly associated ahiṃsā with chastity and the absence of possessions as well as with the conviction that one should identify with all beings; he considered ahiṃsā to be based on self-control, necessitating preliminary (self-)purification. He also stressed that ahiṃsā is a condition of truth, which in turn can be equated with God. Hence Gandhi's invitation, in the last sentence of his autobiography: "In bidding farewell to the reader … I ask him to join me in praying to the God of Truth that He may grant me the boon of ahiṃsā in mind, word and deed" (Gandhi, 1929).

Considering the traditional Hindu equation of reality with truth (satya...