Mahatma Gandhi News Digest, Germany : Issue for August 21-27, 2006
Mahatma must-see
The Star – Malaysia – by Lee Tse Ling – August 27, 2006
SAMMY! The Incredible Journey of Mahatma Gandhi takes its audience down many roads. Some are textbook-familiar, others less taken and startling in their revelations.
On the surface, it is about the journey of a green lawyer who grapples with racism in Apartheid-gripped South Africa (Act One), and how he becomes the otherworldly leader of an independent India (Act Two). Thats the story everyone knows.
Then playwright Partap Sharma goes deeper, and shows us that Sammy! is also a journey of reconciliation between Mohandas (Joy Sen Gupta) and his wife, Kasturba (Neha Dubey).
From a relationship born of blind passion (an accusation Mohan hurls at Kasturba as they quarrel over whats best for ones people versus whats best for ones family), they develop a tender, enduring love that is evident in the jokes they share and the kindness they exhibit toward one another.
As the play progresses, we see Mohan who could be quite feudal with his wife, as one member of the audience put it become very much the modern man, according her equal status and the respect she deserves.
He even encourages her to lead the Indian women and children on a peaceful protest march after the South African Supreme Court ruled that only Christian marriages would be legally recognised in the state, thus invalidating all Indian marriages.
Kasturba is incensed that the ruling relegates her to the status of concubine, but the idea of taking to the streets is so alien that she balks, initially. Besides, I dont know how I would survive on a jail diet, she pouts. This prompts Mohan to suggest she go on a hunger strike until they provide her with a fruit diet.
Ehh! First you want to send your wife to jail, then you want her to die in jail! she exclaims.
If you die in jail, I will always worship you as a goddess, he offers.
Though they both share a good laugh over this, you get a clear idea of what she had to put up with being married to him, and your empathy for Kasturba just grows and grows.
Finally, Partaps excellent script peels away one last layer by depicting the journey from Mohandas to Mahatma. This progression from turmoil to inner peace is marked by debates between Mohan the mortal man and the embodiment of the Mahatma (played by Ravi Dubey) or great soul.
What is the right action? the young Mohan constantly asks himself, upon which the old Mahatma steps in to direct him, prodding, poking and provoking. And so they argue, but when the answers click in his head, Mohan chuckles to himself, as if stunned by how easy it all is.
Such polarised exchanges of I cannot! and Yes, you can! dissipate toward the end of the play as the aging Mohan finally catches up with the Mahatma. From then on, they are in agreement, and speak to the people of India with one voice.
Sometimes you wonder who the Mahatma is meant to be. A form of divine inspiration, wise as he was beyond Mohans years and clothed in ascetic white? It certainly seems that way when, near the close of the play, the Mahatma reflects on how far Mohan has come, and tells him to be brave.
To which Mohan answers, Courage is doing what you believe in, making the Mahatma smile.
And you conclude that the Mahatma of the play, and perhaps the Mahatma the world knows, is really Gandhis conscience an intrinsic part of himself that Mohan found the courage to realise.
Read more about Sammy
Historic sojourn
The Star – Malaysia – by Rubin Khoo – August 25, 2006
The legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, leader of Indias independence movement, continues to be remembered by many. Playwright Partap Sharma presents a different side of Gandhi in the play Sammy! The Incredible Journey of Mahatma Gandhi.
Even to the uninformed, Gandhi represents modesty, humility and freedom. In the award-winning film directed by Sir Richard Attenborough, it seemed like that was his destiny from the start. But was his quest so clear to the young lawyer who led India to independence?
That is the focus of the play Sammy! The Incredible Journey of Mahatma Gandhi by Partap Sharma, currently playing at The Actors Studio Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur. The play revolves around the transformation of the young protester in South Africa, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who would eventually become known to the world as Mahatma Gandhi.
Sammy! revolves around Gandhi and traces his life from South Africa to his assassination. It also looks at the various events that surrounded Indias fight for independence. But the play is not just about history or politics.
The theme of the play essentially is that one person with spirit and a sense of what is right can succeed against overwhelming odds, just as Gandhi took on an empire, before which the whole world feared, and won over it, said Partap in an e-mail interview.
To many, Gandhi has a larger-than-life presence. His achievements are well known. But as with most historical figures, it is the end result that we are familiar with. We do not really know how arduous the journey was. Was he plagued with self-doubt as most mortals are? These are the aspects that Partap chooses to focus on.
The play reveals many aspects of Gandhi that have been swept aside by the grandeur of history, which usually notes only the milestones achieved and not the rigours and joys of the journey, said Partap who described his research as being so thorough that scholars may dispute it but not defeat it.
Sammy! also brings forth many aspects of Gandhi that we are not familiar with.
Apparently, he was often cranky. But he also had an amazing wit and humour that balanced it. He was also not always convinced of his destiny. While he led, he was also searching. The world may view him with great awe but in his research, Partap discovered that Gandhi didnt take himself very seriously.
The focus of the play is on Gandhis ability to see the funny side of things.
There were also other discoveries that he made about Gandhi. Like spiritual leaders such as Mother Teresa, he was able to evoke love because he gave it. He was also blessed with the ability to make complex matters simple.
In telling the story, Partap employs a unique method. We are shown two aspects of Gandhi played by two different actors one is the younger Mohandas and the other is the older and wiser Mahatma.
Exploring the psyche with two actors isnt a style that he usually embarks on but for this play it was something that evolved naturally.
Initially, he found that he was unable to make sense of his own words.
As a playwright, I believe in crafting carefully, like a shipwright or wheelwright. But, in this instance, many years ago, the first two scenes just poured out of me.
I stopped and re-read the opening and couldnt explain the first two phrases to myself! said the writer whose other work includes A Touch of Brightness, Power Play and Zen Katha.
Partap started on the play 20 years ago, but frustrated by the process he cast it aside.
In one of the scenes, Partap has Mahatma saying, I am a shadow. The shadow of an actor. But in the early stages of the play he had no idea what those words meant.
Why had I written them? I was so disgusted with myself that I abandoned the work. Intermittently, I looked at it. I thought of leaving out the opening but there was a sort of integrity and integrality about it as if it was part of a crystal that was forming.
Then, for nearly 18 years, I forgot about it. One day, I came upon the unfinished manuscript and immediately understood the complexity that was at work.
The play, he discovered, wasnt just about Gandhi and his inner voice. It was about people striving to live up to an ideal, it was about acting and it was about metamorphosis, which resulted in the play using two actors.
Sammy! is directed by actress, director and producer Lillete Dubey, who is well known for her roles in films like Monsoon Wedding, Baghban and Kal Ho Na Ho.
Dubeys Primetime Theatre Company, which was set up in 1991 with the objective of promoting original Indian writing, staged two plays here in 2004 Womanly Voices and 30 Days in September.
Sammy! stars two of her children, Ravi and Neha, while the cast also includes Joy Sen Gupta and Zafar Karachiwala, who performed here in 2004 as well.
Casting the actors to play such memorable characters proved to be challenging, admitted Partap. But equally challenging was deciding which historical characters to include in the play.
I chose those persons who had interacted with Gandhi on three levels personal, political, philosophical. To offset the familiarity of the originals, I concentrated on unfamiliar episodes and situations that were revealing of other aspects of their character and yet progressed the narrative through subtle or overt conflict.
Sammy! has been performed at numerous theatre festivals including the Nehru National Theatre Festival in Mumbai, the Bangalore Theatre Festival and the Habitate National Theatre Festival in New Delhi.
The word sammy along with the word coolie was used as a derogatory term by the whites in South Africa to insult Indians and other coloured people.
It originated from the word swami which actually means master or guru.
Gandhi’s potential sleeps within us
The Olympian – USA – by Ron Davis – August 26, 2006
As a young man, Mahatma Gandhi was excruciatingly shy and fearful.
He mentions how ashamed he felt that his young wife had no fear of serpents and ghosts and could go anywhere in the dark while “darkness was a terror for me.”
At his first very routine court case as a British-trained lawyer, he stood up to cross-examine but was so nervous, he could not speak and had to leave the room in total embarrassment.
But there was some force within him that gradually drove him to experiment with transforming and remaking his own mind and life.
During a period of years, he began to discover a boundless capacity to overcome every fear and limitation he en countered within himself.
As a result of his devotion to this inner work and its application to the campaigns of social justice he led while living in South Africa, he knew when he returned to India at age 46 that, if his leadership was accepted by the people, he was ready to lead an angry India to independence from harsh British colonialism without recourse to even a single act of violence.
He eventually came to be called “Mahatma”- Great Self.
What was his secret? How did he so radically transform himself?
He combined two Sanskrit words to describe his spiritual path and the basis for his social and political activism: satya-graha, literally “holding to the truth.”
Satya, truth, is derived from the root sat, “that which is,” often translated as existence or being. It means that Truth alone “is,” it alone exists, it alone never changes or is absent.
By remembering the truth that he was inwardly one with all people, Gandhi transformed feelings of anger and fear into opportunities for love, connection and service.
Later in life, he said: “To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face, one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself.”
He treated his attackers with the same deep respect and trust that he accorded to himself. No person, however violent, could be his “enemy.”
Can you and I follow his method to achieve similar results?
Admittedly, we are not Gandhi; only a few are destined to lead entire nations as he did.
Yet the same potential sleeps within us, waiting until we are ready.
When it awakens, we begin a journey of development that in the end will enable us to become fearless and imbued with spiritual power.
One thing we can all do every day is to watch how stealthily fear enters our minds. Fear wears a thousand faces and is present in almost everything we do and think.
Let us learn to see it, and when we do, to apply Gandhi’s principle of satyagraha. Let us hold to the truth that we are not separate little selves subject to dangers of all kinds, but rather are universal spiritual beings with no reason to fear anyone or anything.
Oh yes, the challenge of such a simple inner discipline is very great indeed. Even a little experimentation with it will convince us of the magnitude of what Gandhi and others like him accomplished.
It surely is “a path with a heart,” and invites us to take daring little steps of courage in abandoning our sense of separateness and all that goes with it. Those steps will make each of us a different person than we were before and will propel us toward our true destiny.
What if Mahatma hit baseball in US
IBNLive – India – by Anirudh Bhattacharyya – August 26, 2006
New York: Mahatma Gandhi played baseball during a top secret visit to the USA in 1933hold on! this is not historical fact but the fiction of a film.
Gandhi at the Bat shows the Mahatma playing for the New York Yankees, but US President Franklin D Roosevelt ensures that the trip is kept secret in national interest. However, long after the visit, baseball historians are intrigued by stories about a mysterious pinch hitter.
The film, touted as a mocumentary, has been made by Los Angeles-based Alec Boehm and Stephanie Argy and comes from the production house Mental Slapstick.
“It was a short story that was in the New Yorker magazine published in 1983. My co-directing partner Stephanie found the story in a book on great sports humour and she said, we have to make a film of this, Boehm said.
However, the story was based on a long lost news account of the incident so they decided to make it into newsreel that was only recently discovered.
The filmmakers plan to take the film to the festival circuit and it can also be found in the Web site www.gandhiatthebat.com .
So we can now watch the Mahatma as he gets on the baseball diamond in sepia tones and flickering motion. And Gandhi, though in real history went to bat with great success for India. But, as a person with a great sense of humour, he probably would also have enjoyed the spoof.
Gandhi Institute in US to organise rally on Sep 11
DailyIndia.com – India – August 25, 2006
New York, Aug 25 (IANS) Few in the US know that on Sep 11, 1906, Mahatma Gandhi launched his first public non-violent campaign in Johannesburg, South Africa and to mark the occasion, a US-based institute will organise a rally in Washington.
The Tennessee-based M.K. Gandhi Institute is organising a public rally on the historic Lincoln Memorial grounds on the Mall in Washington, as a dramatic pro-active ‘Day of prayer, peace, reconciliation, and non-violence’, against terrorism and other forms of violence worldwide.
‘While for all American people, September 11, 2001, is a black day of mourning and hopelessness, it can be transformed into a day of hope and harmony,’ said Arun Gandhi, founder of the institute.
The rally will be preceded by a daylong conference on peace and non-violence Sep 10 at Georgetown University, Washington.
Krishna K. Roy, chair of the M.K. Gandhi Institute, said she expects the rally to attract a significant gathering.
‘I chose the Lincoln Memorial grounds for this rally because this is where, in 1963, Reverend Martin Luther King delivered his historic ‘I have a dream’ speech, turning the tide against segregation in the United States that led to the 1964 Civil Rights Act,’ Roy said.
‘This conference is designed to bring together policy makers, mediators, activists, educators, game developers and others to explore how diverse peace actors can work together to increase their impact,’ she added.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi: A Saint With Warts
Blogcritics.org – USA – August 24, 2006
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Porbander, October 2, 1869 New Delhi, January 30, 1948) may qualify as the most visible invisible Indian in India. His journey was an eclectic one, from founding father, to icon on the currency notes, to a figure relegated to the dusty bookshelves. He is remembered officially a few times a year, his portrait adorns government buildings, and his face is on the bills surreptitiously exchanged in payola daily.
Other than that, Bapu’s three principles of satyagraha, ahimsa and tapasiya are lost in the maze of hazy fog of an undisturbed past.
Rama Luxmi wrote about the “frail, half-naked ascetic” who is the main attraction at an interactive multi-media museum in New Delhi. This is the same exhibition about which Desicritic Kim explored in a photo essay on May 27, 2006.
Sacred World Foundation, the creators of this interactive museum, have this to say about the exhibits:
A language
derived from classical symbols of the spinning wheel, turning of the prayer wheels, touching symbolic pillars, the act of hands touching sacred objects
the touching and rotating of prayer beads. These tradition-based interactions inspire a rich panorama
that allow people to access the multimedia imagery and multidimensional mind of Gandhiji.
Gandhi’s statues adorn London, Toronto, Winnipeg, San Francisco, New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Washington, DC, Pietermaritzburg, Moscow, Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Lisbon, Canberra, Santiago de Chile, Mexico City, Port of Spain and San Fernando.
“Gandhiji’s image has definitely changed since when I was growing up. Then he was a symbol of all that was good and pure, reflected in the oft-heard plaintive wail, Bapu kya ho gayaa tere desh ka (roughly translated what have they done to your country, oh father?). No doubt, this holier-than-thou image was attributable to decades of Congress rule and the accompanying whitewashing of history books.
But some things endure his commitment to the truth at all costs, his brutal honesty, his devotion to his principles, and his undoubted contribution in securing the nation’s independence. At the end of the day, despite the barbs and the derision heaped on him by no end of detractors, he remains a real man, the greatest to emerge from India and one of the world’s most influential people. That, along with his face on every currency note printed in India, is his enduring legacy,” wrote a writer friend from Banglore.
Another friend echoed, “The world changed before he could achieve his goals. He allowed his personal feelings to cloud his better judgement, and used emotional appeal like few politicians to get his way, but he had the country’s best interests at heart.”
Ironically, a man so revered world over is relegated to ceremonial platitudes in his own country. While some still hate him bitterly, the majority is ambivalent.
One Indian mother says, “I read somewhere that Gandhi was irrelevant to today’s India because today’s India is very different from the India of fifty to hundred years ago. I would argue that historical figures never become irrelevant. Obviously his way of life, his thoughts and ideas, and the way he fashioned his revolt against British oppression had a positive impact on India’s independence movement.”
Gandhi was a saint with blemishes and warts. That his legacy survives his eccentricities and human frailties is a tribute to his greatness. He has inspired an array of world leaders including the likes of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
His dream of eradication of caste discrimination remains largely unfulfilled. One need only scan the matrimonial ads in Indian newspapers and websites for proof of this. Gandhi’s other dream, freedom from the colonial yoke, is a reality. His India is racing to claim its rightful place among the First Nations of this world before the end of this century.
The Washington Post article quoting Savita Singh, director of the Eternal Gandhi museum and memorial concludes: “Gandhi can be discovered in many ways, this is just one,” she says. “What makes his message eternal are not these computers anyway.”
What the world needs today is more Gandhis and Mandelas. I hope this museum exhibit tours North America. And I hope it is opened by Nelson Mandela.
Agitation on at Narmada valley even as more villages submerge
OneWorld.net – by Ashish Mandloi, Kamala Yadav, Kailash Awasya, Yogini Khanolkar, Rohan Joshi – August 24, 2006
NARMADA: SARDAR SAROVAR DROWNS THE ADIVASIS BUT NEITHER THEIR SPIRIT NOR THEIR STRUGGLE
The situation in the Narmada valley today is nothing unexpected yet the most shocking. The Sardar Sarovar Dam, with the height raised, has silently killed the Adivasi communities in the Nandurbar district of Maharashtra, Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh and many in Badwani and Dhar districts of Madhya Pradesh too.
These generations’ old Adivasis in the Satpura and Vindhya have lost their main sources of livelihood, land, to the sea that the roaring river water is converted to. The houses at higher levels in the hills and mountains and small patches of degraded sloppy land are what they are left behind with. Yet, even after they are pushed to a corner with backs to the mountains and left without any transport, a school, a functional ration shop, with hardly any grain left in the house and no potable water around, mostly, they continue to be satyagrahis, asserting their right to land and life, both.
The Satyagraha continues in village Chimalkhedi in Nandurbar, Bhitada in Jhabua and Chikhalda in Dhar representing 3 sub regions. The Nimad region in Madhya Pradesh have about 100, of 177 villages which are threatened by the dam and can face submergence this monsoon itself. It has not occurred still but those continue to house thousands of families.
All those 25,000 families which Shunglu Committee and National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) interviewed in the submergence area of 122 meters of dam and those they left out due to flaws in research methodology and deliberate manipulation and misinterpretation of data, are the ones which NBA claimed to be affected illegally, without rehabilitation, with no cultivable and irrigable land offered in either Madhya Pradesh or Maharashtra today. With Resettlement & Rehabilitation sites and house plots not ready for thousands of families, the monstrous dam is proving to be a killer as many other projects in the country.
Whatever regulation of water has occurred with the upstream dams filled till now and rains, even if heavy, in different parts of the Valley at different times and dam raise stopped at 119 meters instead of 122 meters, the highly populated non-Adivasi and mixed villages and towns are saved as yet. Those may not escape flooding during the next heavy rain fall in the coming month.
The scenario on the other side of the dam is the most revealing. When the reservoir is full with swollen water body, the canals are empty for anyone to see. This has once again vindicated NBA’s position that Gujarat Government and Narendra Modi pushed the dam, fooling the Prime Minister and the Court with stories of water crisis and without the necessary readiness to use the additional waters. The canal network with 40,000 cusecs capacity is far from complete and when Gujarat could not use the water at 110 meters to satiate thirst of all 8000+ villages, which was technically possible, it cannot, at 119 meters as well.
The villages on the bank of the canal whose houses and fields drowned due to breaches in 2003-2004, again faced submergence in 2 villages of Pavi-Jetpur tehsil, Vadodara, which led them to threaten and prevent the Government from releasing waters into the canals. The canal-head power house could not function to produce the expected power. The tragedy is obvious and people of Gujarat, having faced floods everywhere, are to now raise questions including their own: .Who is allowing the rain waters to go to the sea and why?, before an additional 20,000 Crores of rupees are spent and lakhs of other people are affected and victimized raising the Sardar Sarovar Dam height beyond 119 meters.
Iran: Jailed Writer’s ‘Confession’ Worries Activists
Payvand – Iran – by Golnaz Esfandiari – August 23, 2006
PRAGUE, August 22, 2006 (RFE/RL) — Iranian officials say prominent writer and philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo has confessed to pursuing nonviolent revolution in the country. Colleagues and human rights activists had expressed concern when Jahanbegloo was arrested in late April that he might be coerced into a confession.
Their fears were realized on August 17, when Iran’s prosecutor-general was quoted as saying Jahanbegloo had admitted to plotting a “velvet revolution” and apologized for his “mistakes.” The method has been used in the past by the Islamic republic in order to discredit its critics.
Harvard- and Sorbonnes-educated Jahanbegloo is the most prominent intellectual to have been arrested in Iran in the past year.
A researcher on Iran for the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), Hadi Ghaemi, tells RFE/RL that the country’s judiciary is trying to silence critics by charging Jahanbegloo with plotting against the establishment.
“The goal is to create fear among activists and intellectuals in Iran so that they know that even someone like Jahanbegloo — who was not involved in political issues — can be charged with instigating a velvet revolution,” Ghaemi says. “They want others to be careful.”
Been Seen Before
For many, Jahanbegloo’s detention and his purported confessions in custody are reminders of a familiar pattern in the Islamic republic’s clampdown on critics: Activists, journalists, and intellectuals are jailed and denied access to lawyers or family members. Within a few weeks or months, they issue purported letters of confession or appear on state television to confess and repent. Their crimes often include attempting to overthrow the Islamic establishment and maintaining ties with unspecified “enemies” of Iran.
But many observers have questioned the authenticity of past confessions. And right advocates have rejected them as a farce.
Iranian activists have also come forward to expose the nature of such “confessions,” drawing on their own experiences. They have said that they were forced to make false confessions under extreme duress.
Political prisoners have also claimed they were pressed into writing letters incriminating themselves or confessing to charges as dictated by their interrogators.
Speaking From Experience
One case included several online journalists who were arrested in 2004.
Weeks later, they appeared on television to say they had been encouraged by foreign enemies to tarnish Iran’s image.
Five days later, in a meeting with government officials, they retracted their confessions. They said they had been made were under physical and psychological pressure.
Journalist and blogger Omid Memarian was among those who withdrew their confessions. He tells RFE/RL that confessions by prisoners under duress, and who are denied contact with the outside world, are worthless.
“Especially for intellectuals like journalists and professors, prison is very destructive — their statements [under custody] have no weight,” Memarian says. “They would say anything in order to free themselves from the conditions they are facing. In solitary confinement, individuals reach a point where they believe things can never be normal again, so they repeat whatever the interrogators say. I think that until Jahanbegloo is freed in a normal situation, whatever he says has no legal value.”
‘Testing’ The Public
News of Jahanbegloo’s “confessions” was first reported by hard-line publications, including the newspaper “Resalat.”
That daily suggested in late July that a tape of the confessions was being shown in what it described as “cultural circles.”
“Resalat” claimed Jahanbegloo said he was in contact with individuals in Canada and that he was on a mission to participate in a Czechoslovak-style “velvet revolution” in Iran.
Weeks later, Prosecutor-General Qorbanali Dori-Najafabadi announced in mid-August that Jahanbegloo had acknowledged his involvement in a revolutionary plot.
Some have speculated that Jahanbegloo’sconfessions might be shown on television.
A spokesman for Iran’s hard-line judiciary, Jamal Karimirad, recently suggested as much to journalists.
Prosecutor-General Dori-Najafabadi then claimed that Jahanbegloo had agreed to the broadcasting of his confessions. He added cryptically that “whether they are [actually] broadcast or not is another matter.”
Unintended Consequences
Journalist and former prisoner Memarian insists Iranian officials are testing the waters.
“As in past years, news of the confessions is first spread through certain circles; then they check with society to gauge reactions. Then, based on those reactions and a calculation of its pros and cons, they broadcast it. It’s the same now. It seems that officials who are behind [Jahanbegloo’s confessions] have not learned their lesson. The topic of coerced confessions has really lost its effect, and people don’t believe it. I think it actually harms the judiciary.”
Human Rights Watch’s Ghaemi says he thinks broadcasting the confessions will further damage Iran and its credibility on human rights issues.
“I think there are individuals inside the Iranian [establishment] who know that these confessions do not solve any problem,” Ghaemi says. “In fact, it has been proven that they are not credible and have no validity. So maybe those who think about it logically know that no one will be convinced — it will only damage the human rights situation in Iran and the way [Iran] is viewed abroad.”
Jahanbegloo’s arrest has been condemned by human rights groups, who have called for his release.
The European Union and Canada have expressed concern over his fate.
Activists in Iran, the United States, Britain, and several other countries held a three-day hunger strike in July to call for the immediate release of Jahanbegloo and all of Iran’s political prisoners.
Jahanbegloo is a noted scholar who has published books in several languages on issues that include modernity in Iran, and Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi and his teachings on nonviolent resistance. He has also interviewed prominent international figures, including the Dalai Lama.
Finding My Religion
SFGate.com – USA – by David Ian Miller – August 21, 2006
Subba Rao has spent his life promoting and living the peace-loving principles of Mahatma Gandhi
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world,” said Mahatma Gandhi. As a young man, Dr. Subba Rao took those words to heart, and he has dedicated his life to bringing people of all religious traditions together.
Rao, 75, grew up in British-controlled India and began to follow Gandhi as a teenager. He studied law at Brown University, worked as a translator for the prime minister of India and founded the National Youth Project of India. Over the decades, he has transformed the lives of hardened criminals, world leaders and children through humanitarian work that focuses on fostering religious tolerance, service to humanity and self-reliance.
I spoke with Rao by phone last week from the Vedanta Society of Northern California’s retreat center in Olema, where he was running a weeklong Gandhi Youth Camp — one of many he runs around the world — based on the principles of India’s famed advocate of nonviolence.
Q: You’re teaching kids about Gandhi’s core ideals — truth, tolerance and self-help. What are you teaching them about religion?
A: Gandhi said that if India was to live in peace we must recognize the value of every religion. India is a nation that has been home to all the religions in the world. Four religions were born there — Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism. And we have many Christians and Muslims, as well as members of other faiths.
More than 100 years ago, Swami Vivekananda said that we have to accept the idea that all religions are different paths leading to the same God. Gandhi accepted this proposition, and in his ashram people recite prayers from all religions. They start with a Buddhist hymn, follow it with a Hindu hymn and then comes Islam, Sikhism, Jainism, Christianity — all religions, one after another. The whole congregation prays all of these prayers.
If we want a peaceful world in the future, the best thing is for everybody to accept — not only tolerate, but accept — all religions as true. And that is what we try to inculcate in the minds of the children who are here.
Q: That’s a wonderful goal, but how can you expect people to overcome their religious differences? They’re so deeply ingrained.
A: There are two layers of religion: One is the basic fundamental [ideas], and the other one consists of superficial ritual exercises. If you go to the basis — speaking truth, being honest, being compassionate, loving thy neighbor — these are common to all religions. The differences are superficial; one may have a different hairstyle, and one may have some mark on the head. Unfortunately, it is for these superficial differences that people are fighting.
We are all small people, and we have made our gods small. The Christian thinks Christ belongs to him. The Hindus think Rama and Krishna belong only to them, and the Muslim thinks Allah belongs to Islam. And so on. But this isn’t correct. Once, when Gandhi was asked, “What is your religion?” he said, “Well, I am a Hindu, I am a Muslim, I am a Christian, I am a Sikh — I follow the basic principles of all religions.”
Q: Do you find that some people have a hard time with this? I mean, if they grew up believing that their religion was the one true way …
A: Unfortunately, for their own reasons, people who think they must be loyal to their religion [also] think that means hating the other religion. Hatred is totally irreligious. No religion has a place for it. If you only take a positive look at every religion, every religion has such noble sentiments in it. Everyone has something to teach.
Q: I read a wonderful story about you: It said that you, armed only with a bag of candy, followed 550 bandits to a mountain cave and somehow convinced all of the bandits to put down their weapons and assist nearby villagers with community development work. Can you tell me more about this?
A: Well, I don’t know about the candy. My actual weapon was that I sang devotional songs — songs where I repeated God’s name — and I would talk to them. And I was not alone. There was a group of about 15 or 20 people with me.
Q: So what happened? How did you get them to listen to you?
A: First, we approached their friends and sometimes their relations and wives, and we basically said, “There is a better way to live than this.” You see, many of these bandits had looted a lot of money but they could not enjoy it. They were always on the run from the law. We told them: “What can you do with all this money? Millions of rupees, but you cannot have a good meal because when you are eating the police come. What is this life? Come back to the mainstream.” Slowly they came around. The first installment [of bandits] was only 20 in 1960. Then in 1972 we had a bigger number — 500. Ultimately, there was a total of 654.
Q: What happened to them after they surrendered?
A: They all went to prison. Now they are out living normal lives.
The understanding was that they should serve out their sentences, whatever they were, and that the government would be lenient with them because they had surrendered. Most of them came out with confessions. They said: “Yes, I have committed these sins. Please award me whatever punishment I deserve.”
Q: So you just told them they can live a better life, and they were willing to give up their freedom?
A: Well, freedom. You see, what happens in someone’s life when he kills a policeman, when he kills his enemy, he has all kind of pride: “Oh, yes, I have achieved something.” Then life becomes miserable. He can’t come back to the society. He has to go into the jungles, running from place to place. It’s a long train of regrets.
Q: I’ve heard that you still work with people and their families after they leave prison and have a very successful rehabilitation program. What makes your program different?
A: We ask the government to give them some facility for their lives, some way to support their families. They were earning through the gun, and now they have surrendered those guns to the government. So, on the one hand, they give them land, and on the other they educate their children. I feel very happy when I meet the children of those bandits, who are now well placed in society. One of them, for instance, is a policeman. Another one works for the government.
Q: People have said that you have made a habit of achieving the apparently impossible. Do you have any advice for people who are also trying to achieve seemingly impossible goals?
A: It may be difficult for a tiger to change its habits, but for a human being it is not so hard to do. I see how many human beings, in this land, are turning vegetarian. They were meat eaters, and now they will not even drink milk.
I like the statement, “Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” So a sinner need not be a sinner all his life. There is hope for correcting any wrongs in one’s life and becoming a noble person.
Q: I know you are a devotee of Mahatma Ghandi. Did you actually meet him?
A: I just saw him when I was a small child. That’s all.
Q: What were the most important things that you learned from Gandhi?
A: There are many things. I like the saying that you often see on T-shirts: “One man can make a change.” And: “When you are on the right course, you are not in the minority.” That’s what he believed, and he kept persisting through adversity.
Gandhi came from nothing. He was not a bright student. And as a lawyer he failed in India. Such a man, to become what we call mahatma, it’s a really significant change in a human being.
Q: Your teacher is Vinoba Bhave, who has been called Gandhi’s spiritual successor. Can you tell me about Vinoba’s work and teachings — the ones that have had the most influence on your life?
A: His achievement was that he walked 50,000 miles across India. What he did on his walk was collect land from the landed people and redistribute it among the landless. It’s interesting because he was a very inward, [with]drawn person. He would rarely go anywhere, but when he was traveling through one part of south India he came across a lot of fighting and ill will. He realized that the fighting was over land. At that time, the Communist Party of India was supporting this fighting. They wanted free distribution of land.
So while talking to some people, he said, “I hope that God will show me a new way of solving this problem.” Right in that meeting a person just stood up and said, “Sir, I can donate you 100 acres of land. We can distribute it among the poor people.” So he said, “God is sending me a message.” That is how he started walking, and he did that for 12 years. It became a movement, the Land Gift Movement. It’s still going on today.
Q: Did he ever take another pilgrimage?
A: One of my friends once asked him, “You walked 50,000 miles, and you distributed land. If you walk again, what will be your mission?” And he said: “H2O in science is water. And in spiritual life there is another formula: M2A.” So the friend asked, “What is M2A?” And he responded: “‘M’ is for meditation, and ‘A’ is for action. My 50,000 miles were for action, and now I must do double the meditation. So that’s what I’m doing.”
Q: Do you still believe in the same fundamental things that you did as a child and young man, or have your beliefs changed?
A: My home was such that they would not allow a non-Hindu into our house. This is the worst part of Hinduism, treating some people as untouchables, so that they were not supposed to come in. As I grew up, I thought: “I must expand. I must grow.”
There is a beautiful saying from maybe 5,000 years ago: “People with small hearts have small homes with four walls. But people with large hearts have the whole world for their family.” I think all human beings must cultivate large hearts and consider the whole world as their family.
Q: Have you yourself ever felt like you had to battle with your own prejudice and intolerance of other beliefs?
A: Yes. Growing takes time. Luckily, I got into this line of thinking at a very early age. I was only nine or 10 years old when I came in contact with the very kind of thinking taught by Swami Vivekananda. And that thinking was that all religions come from the same source. Just as waters fall from the skies and take different names in the rivers, ultimately they all go into the same ocean. Ultimately, there is only one ocean, or one God. So there should be no fighting at all in the name of religion.
Q: But do you ever look at the world in its struggles over religion and feel frustrated or hopeless — that people will never learn?
A: We have to grow. We grow physically. We grow intellectually. We grow mentally. We must grow socially and spiritually, also. According to my definition, spiritual growth is peace within myself, peace with other people and peace with nature.
Q: And how do we grow in these ways? How do we make peace with ourselves and with others?
A: By clearing one’s own mind so that all restrictions, all limitations have been broken. That’s what I mean by expansion. Having a heart that can accept the whole world as our home.
Pushbutton Gandhi: The Mahatma Goes Multimedia
Washington Post – USA – by Rama Lakshmi – August 21, 2006
NEW DELHI — Gandhi is now available at the push of a button. The frail, half-naked ascetic who fought British colonial oppression with nonviolence and austerity is the focus of a multimedia museum here, his life, values and words popping out from computer screens, laser beams, musical bamboo poles and other hands-on electronic gadgets.
The Eternal Gandhi museum seeks to bring the nation’s founding father to people growing up in an India the world-famous ascetic never envisioned, one filled with foreign cars, cellphones, fast-food chains, malls and multiplex theaters.
“Gandhian values of nonviolence and truth are relevant for all times. But the challenge was to get this message across to the younger generation. So we used the medium of technology that they are so fascinated with,” says Savita Singh, director of the Eternal Gandhi museum and memorial.
The $2.15 million exhibition, which opened last year, is an expansion of an older, more solemn memorial, the sprawling colonial-style house where Gandhi spent the last 144 days of his life. It was on its grounds in 1948 that Gandhi, walking to a daily prayer meeting, was shot dead by a Hindu radical.
For many years, the house has been a pilgrimage destination for millions of Indian and foreign visitors. At the entrance, a large statue of Gandhi with two children holding a dove greeted the visitor with a sign saying “My Life Is My Message.” Visitors reverently took off their shoes to enter the grassy grounds. The things in his room — his glasses, walking stick, sandals, spinning wheel and wood cot — were preserved as they were when he was alive.
Now the house also has what claims be India’s first hands-on, multimedia museum. But in a society where officials young and old closely guard their authority, it is largely hands-off for visitors. Instead, about 18 young docents, picked from underprivileged families and clad in Gandhi’s trademark handspun clothes, control the buttons and the visitor’s experience.
“We don’t encourage the visitors to touch, because these are sensitive and expensive machines,” says Singh. “Our visitors are not as disciplined and sophisticated like those visiting the Smithsonian or the New York museums. A number of our visitors are villagers and are unfamiliar with computers.”
The museum uses archival film footage extensively in several exhibits. In the first gallery, a small touch-screen computer slides along a mud wall that, in a blend of tradition and the modern, is coated with cow dung that in Indian villages is traditionally viewed as a purifying agent.
Moved along the wall by a docent, the screen presents a tableau of events from Gandhi’s life in film and photographs — his childhood, sepia-toned family portraits, the scene from Richard Attenborough’s 1982 film “Gandhi” when he is thrown out of a first-class train coach in South Africa, and many others.
In a section about Gandhi’s tireless campaign against India’s caste system, a docent encouraged visitors to form a human chain around a carved pillar. When the visitors held hands, the pillar lit up. The mere act of people touching strangers whose caste was unknown to them was meant to remove biases at this exhibit, called the “Pillar of Castelessness,” the docent explains.
“The light comes on, and the caste prejudice vanishes,” he says.
The museum is full of beautifully designed displays — high-gloss Brio-like trains and cows, ornate xylophones that play Gandhi’s favorite prayer songs, laser beams that illuminate his prison journal, quilts that light up and mud huts with murals. But some visitors commented on the divergence between Gandhi’s life and the medium.
“As you walk through the video-arcade-meets-spiritual-mall, you cannot make up your mind what should you respond to,” says Kavita Singh, who teaches art history at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “The sophisticated technology? The beautifully handcrafted objects in which it is embedded? The series of bad ideas that they serve? Or the fact that it is, of all people, Gandhi who is the unfortunate victim of this project?”
“I came expecting a spiritual, reflective experience about Gandhi in a serene and quiet museum,” says American tourist Zahava Doering. “But where is Gandhi in all this?”
The exhibit that perhaps most illustrates this incongruity is one dealing with the humble Indian spinning wheel, or charkha . Gandhi often sat at one, producing handspun cloth — and also a revolution. The cloth became a potent metaphor urging Indians to rise up against the British and throw their Manchester textiles into bonfires across the country. The charkha also represents Gandhi’s belief in the power of manual work that gave employment to millions in Indian villages.
At the museum, the charkha is renamed “e-Charkha” and “laser Charkha.” As the docent spins the wooden wheel, a computer screen on the wall shows how the fibers come together to make the fabric, while another weaves together the words of Gandhi’s message. The “Laser Charkha” senses the visitor’s moving hand to produce music.
Museum director Singh says the new museum caters to a wide range of visitors, including thousands of young visitors from schools across India. But she acknowledges it may not be for everyone. “People who don’t want to see the multimedia exhibition on Gandhi can skip it and go straight to the prayer grounds, or his room,” she says. “Or watch the documentaries or even visit the center where the museum imparts income-generating skills to poor women and youth.”
“Gandhi can be discovered in many ways, this is just one,” she says. “What makes his message eternal are not these computers anyway.”
The articles of the Mahatma Gandhi News Digest originate from external sources.
They do not represent the views of GandhiServe Foundation.
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