Gandhi and the meaning of dharma and Violence

I had just got into a taxi when the driver began shouting at some unknown offender in the chaotic traffic. His rage was so overpowering that he started to get out of the cab, determined to beat the other driver who had annoyed him.

- Rajni Bakshi

I had just got into a taxi when the driver began shouting at some unknown offender in the chaotic traffic. His rage was so overpowering that he started to get out of the cab, determined to beat the other driver who had annoyed him. "Please, please let us go," I pleaded, "I am in a hurry." Maybe because this appeal came from a senior citizen woman in the back seat of his cab, the man grudgingly agreed to drive on.

But his desire to beat that other man to a pulp remained strong. For most of the half-hour that I was a passenger in his taxi, the driver ranted on about why the offending driver should be beaten. He even made vague allusions to the offending driver's whole jat (group) deserving a trashing. There was no point in asking him for any demographic details of which group was the target of his wrath. This man's rage was clearly more to do with his own temperament and the daily misery of struggling with aggressive, noisy traffic just to earn a living.

By the end of the journey, he had only moderately calmed down. But, as I got out of his cab, the driver did say: "You saved that man today, if you had not stopped me, I would have beaten him."

Where does this everyday rage fit into the larger issue of which violence is dharma (righteous) and which violence is adharma (wrong)?