Hatred is the only weapon that cuts the hand holding it before it ever reaches the enemy. Valluvar opens this chapter not with strategy but with a prohibition so absolute it feels almost spiritual: do not want enmity, not even as a joke. From there, the chapter maps the full terrain of hostility — whom you must never antagonize, how isolation multiplies your enemies' power, and the alchemy by which a truly skilled ruler turns enemies into allies. But Valluvar is no pacifist. The chapter's final kurals are brutally tactical: fortify yourself, read the battlefield, and if your enemy is still a sapling, uproot it before it grows thorns that shred your hands. The chapter arcs from moral caution to survival arithmetic, and its last image — the man who fails to crush his enemy's pride will not live long enough to draw another breath — lands like a closing fist.