Chapter X
INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM
TVTE have seen that the only effective methods for
\V carrying out large-scale social reforms are non-violent
methods. Violence produces only the,results of violence
and the attempt to impose reforms by violent methods is
therefore foredoomed to failure. The only cases in which
violent methods succeed are those where initial violence is
rapidly followed by compensatory acts of justice, humane-
ness, sympathetic understanding and the like. This being
so, mere common sense demands that we shall begin with
non-violence and not run the risk of stultifying the whole
process of reform by using violence, even as an initial
measure.
Non-violent methods of reform are likely to succeed
only where a majority of the population is either actively
in favour of the reform in question, or at least not
prepared actively to oppose it. "Where the majority is
not either favourable or passively neutral to the reform,
violent attempts to impose it are certain to lead to
failure,
In communities ruled by hereditary monarchs it has
sometimes happened that an exceptionally enlightened
king has tried to make reforms which, though intrinsically
desirable, did not happen to be desired by the mass of his
people. Akhnaton's is a case in point. Such efforts
at reform made by rulers too far advanced to be under-
stood by their subjects are likely to meet with partial or
complete failure.
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