Mahatma Gandhi News Digest, Germany : Issue for May 14 – 20, 2007

Mahatma Gandhi News Digest, Germany : Issue for May 14 – 20, 2007

Gandhian Satyagraha Brigade Formed
Gandhian Satyagraha Brigade – India – by N. Vasudevan – May 20, 2007

A convention of civil society activists, representatives of social groups, Gandhian constructive workers, freedom fighters, retired civil and defence personnel, doctors, lawyers, who met at Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi, decided to launch Gandhian Satyagraha Brigade.

Among the chief focus of the new initiative launched on the occasion of the centenary of the Satyagraha movement and as a sequel to the national dialogue on “An India without hunger and violence” organized at IGNOU on 27-28 January 2007, is to fight the growing menace of corruption and ensure good governance and social justice, and to mobilize various categories of people along Gandhian lines.

150 citizens representing a wide spectrum of Indian society have already enrolled in the Brigade as active Satyagrahis and among them and their moral suppoers are former governors, a former chief election commissioner, army generals and an admiral, retired air marshall and vice-marshalls, retired High Court chief Justice and Judges, advocates, senior retired bureaucrats including three former chief secretary, vice-chancellors, sarvodaya and human rights activists. In addition to this, over 100 senior citizens have also pledged their moral support to fight corruption and criminality in Indian politics.
The convention was chaired by Mr S.D. Sharma, prominent freedom fighter and working chairman of Lok Sevak Sangh of Servants of People Society. The convention approved the principles and guidelines for the Satyagraha Brigade.

Dr. N. Radhakrishnan has been appointed Interim Chairman, Mr S.D. Sharma General Secretary and Mr. N. Vasudevan and Mr. Avadhesh Kumar as Joint Secretaries.
It was decided, as initial activity, to organize Satyagraha during the next monsoon session of Parliament urging the Prime Minister and UPA Chairperson to quickly enact the Lok Pal Bill, forfeiture of illegally acquired property by our rulers, and disqualification of candidates with corrupt or criminal antecedents for election to Central and state legislatures. Batches of Satyagrahis will offer satyagraha at the state capitals as well.

 

The contemplative tradition
Catholic News – USA – by Fr Henry Charles – May 20, 2007

Thomas Merton was not only one of the most influential Catholic authors of the late twentieth century but also perhaps the best known religious figure of the period.
It is ironic that Merton, who was a Trappist, a member of one of the more reclusive religious orders in the Church, who also felt drawn to the life of a hermit, should have been so public and publicly recognised a figure.

Some of his critics thought this a contradiction, but Merton saw it as flowing from his humanism, which was a fundamental part of his vocation as a monk. To be a monk, he once said in the latter part of his life, is to be a human being, that is, it is to replicate what Jesus was, what God became when God decided to be other than Himself. No nobler vocation could be imagined.

Merton has several claims on our indebtedness, but his wide and deep humanism was one of the reasons for his popularity while he lived, and why he continues to attract admirers almost 40 years after his death. Christianity is a humanism, Pope Paul VI declared in Populorum Progressio.

And his namesake in the letter to the Philippians outlined its basic features: “[W]hatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is good and pure…whatever can be thought virtuous or worthy of praise – think of these things (Phil 4:8).

Merton wrote some 40 books, encompassing theology, spirituality, poetry, literary criticism, and social activism, not to mention a voluminous correspondence. He was not a systematic thinker – there is no Merton “system” – but all that he wrote was informed by a passion to show dimensions of human life and activity in the light of God, though a consciousness refined by contemplation.

The true aim of humanism, Merton thought, was a full humanity. This was the ultimate reason for his social activism. In his time, it was not yet a truism, as it has become for us, that the God of love is also necessarily a God of justice.

Catholics – Christians generally – could not claim to love their neighbour when their neighbours, the black disenfranchised people of the Southern USA, were denied their fundamental rights.

Merton was an early prophet in the forefront of the movement for social justice in pre-civil rights USA, and the source of his involvement was the vision of humanity that stemmed from faith.

For the individual, on the other hand, the true aim of humanism was a genuine self-identity. “[I]f you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I’m living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. Between these two answers you can determine the identity of any person. The better answer he has, the more of a person he is.”

For Merton as for the desert Fathers and other writers we have looked at, the true self was not the self-revealed by introspection. Nor was it the individualism that culture today inclines us to settle for, and which we take so much unreflective pride in.
The true self was the self “hidden with Christ in God.” Made in the image of God was our truest self-description is, and awareness of the self that was this image was the fruit of poverty of spirit, prayer, and selfless love.

The soil in which these habits were cultivated was silence and solitude. It’s not too difficult for people today, however abstractly, to appreciate the value of silence. Solitude, on the other hand, conjures up the idea of estrangement, from oneself and others. It seems the antithesis of community and solidarity. How could it generate any positive value?
The difficulty rests on a misperception. Solitude is not loneliness. As the late Henri Nouwen emphasised, an important dimension of our vocation as Christians is to convert our loneliness into solitude. Solitude is awareness of our participation in Being. “True solitude is a participation in the Being of God…whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere…”

It’s the reason why the contemplative tradition had always understood solitude as availability for God, with silence as its gateway. Merton once observed of his own longing: “What I need is the solitude to expand in breadth and depth and to be simplified out under the gaze of God more or less the way a plant spreads out its leaves in the sun.”
Of such experience a broad and expansive freedom is born. You can be at the centre of things wherever you are. Travel is not necessary. This experience was the source of the “no-whereness” and “no-mindedness” of the Desert Fathers, captured again, according to Merton, in the spiritual freedom of St Francis and the Franciscans: “You could be a pilgrim, you could be a hermit, and you could be a pilgrim for a while and a hermit for a while and then a scholar for a while. Then you could go to the Muslims in North Africa and get yourself martyred if you had the grace! And so forth.”

Contemplation also progressively refined Merton’s reflection on Christ. It may seem sometimes that the authors we have looked at have forgotten about the Incarnation in their preoccupation with the impossibility of imaging God. That too is a misperception.
St. Paul reminds us that “[I]f once we knew Christ in the flesh, that is not how we know him now” (2 Cor 5:16). The only Christ we know is the risen Lord, accessible to us in faith. We grow in knowledge of this Christ to the extent that we are configured to him, and this comes not only from keeping his word, but from putting on his mind, and making our home in him.

By definition this is not an undertaking in isolation. If we have the mind of Christ, we also share his fellowship with others. “Whatever I have written,” Merton once noted, “I think all can be reduced in the end to this one root truth: that God calls human persons to union with Himself and with one another in Christ.”

In a famous and often quoted passage, Merton recollected how this sense of union once flashed upon him suddenly in an unlikely place:“In Louisville (Kentucky), at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the centre of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realisation that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.”
Contemplative practice also influenced Merton’s approach to ecumenism. In his early monastic days before the Second Vatican Council, Merton’s Catholicism had a priggish superiority, which made him embarrassed to recall it in later years.

The later Merton had a different awareness, a breadth of view that incorporated the outlook of Gaudium et Spes and the mission formula of St Paul. “To be truly Catholic is not merely to be correct according to an abstractly universal standard of truth, but also and above all to enter into the problems and joys of all, to understand all, to be all things to all men.”

For obvious reasons, Merton felt the closest affinity with the monastic and contemplative traditions of other faiths. What he sought to do was clarify his own living tradition, “the tradition of wisdom and spirit that is found not only in western Christendom but in (Eastern) Orthodoxy, and also, at last analogously, in Asia and in Islam.”
Merton took more easily to the Buddhist tradition, to Zen Buddhism in particular, than to Hinduism. On the other hand, he had great admiration for Mahatma Gandhi and for his devotion to satyagraha or soul-force.

Like many others, he though Gandhi grasped the ethic of the Gospel better than many Christians, applying “Gospel principles to the problems of a political and social existence in such a way that his approach to the problems was inseparably religious and political at the same time.”

Merton’s ecumenism also had cultural side. He was eager to correspond, and wherever possible, to have direct contact with all persons who strove for greater humanisation. They too, whether they knew it or not, were “in Christ.” The point was interestingly confirmed in a letter Merton wrote to the black American novelist, James Baldwin.
Merton said he thought Baldwin was right on target in his analysis of the racial crisis in America. He disagreed with him only in Baldwin’s insistence that he did what he did as a non-Christian or anti-Christian. To the contrary, Merton insisted, what Baldwin did was “fundamentally religious, genuinely religious, and therefore has to be against conventional religiosity.”

In a later piece, “The Power and Meaning of Love”, Merton clarified the basis for his insistence and the foundation underlying his perspective: “I must learn that my fellow man, just as he is, whether he is my friend or my enemy, my brother or a stranger from the other side of the world, whether he be wise or foolish, no matter what may be his limitations, is Christ.”

Merton’s many-sided vision continues to captivate and instruct readers of different faiths and cultures across the world. The briefest review of websites devoted to him today is witness enough not just to the power of a contemplative life but to the wisdom and creative energies that contemplation can unleash.

 

India, Mauritius seek worldwide honours for Mahatma Gandhi
Africa-Interactive.net – Netherlands – May 19, 2007

Mauritius and India said they would submit a joint resolution to the United Nations seeking for 2 October, Mahatma Gandhi’s birth date to be decreed International Non- violence Day worldwide.

A Mauritian government source said this decision was taken during the weekly meeting of the council of ministers here late Friday.

“This decision was in conformity with the one taken during the international conference: “Peace, Non-Violence and empowerment–Gandhian Philosophy in the 21st Century”, attended by Mauritius Prime minister, Navin Ramgoolam, in Delhi last January, he said.

 

Buddha and the World (Part 1)
The Huffington Post – USA – by Deepak Chopra – May 18, 2007

Since 9/11 there has been a pervasive sense of anxiety in the world, and at the same time a search for spiritual answers. Is violence an aspect of human nature that can be cured, or are we caught in an endless cycle of violence that will never end? One of the most optimistic answers to that dilemma came from Buddha more than two thousand years ago.

In the light of what he taught, I wanted to post my thoughts about the Buddhist solution and what it means for you and me as we seek to live in a troubling world.
Anyone coming to spirituality from the outside asks the same question: “What can it do for me?” There’s no universal key that unlocks the truth. However great the teaching, unless it can be made personal, it is sleeping. There’s no cut-and-dried case, especially today. You and I seek spirituality one by one, on our own terms. We have our own specific suffering that we want to heal. As old traditions no longer bind us together, isolation, ironically enough, has become the new tradition for millions of modern people. Feeling alone, unwanted, unloved, weak, lost, and empty is how the human disease feels today.

At no time in history have there been more stateless persons, refugees, overpopulation, and restless migration. Globalism makes the individual feel lost in the world, overwhelmed by its chaos, which always seems to be teetering between madness and catastrophe. Yet when people came to Buddha, they brought the same complaints. They felt helpless in the face of natural disasters, war, and poverty. They couldn’t comprehend a world on the edge of madness.

This dilemma has brought me closer to Buddha in recent years. I carry with me a few seminal ideas that have guided my life so far. One of them was expressed by Mahatma Gandhi when he said, “Be the change that you want to see in the world.” Because the world is so huge, it came as a revelation to me –and also a mystery– that by changing myself I can affect the world. This idea was not original to Gandhi. It’s an offshoot of a much older idea, traceable to ancient India, which says, “As you are, so is the world.”
That, too, is a revelation and a mystery.

Most of us survive by pretending that the world is “out there,” at arm’s length, which gives us breathing space. We can pursue our comfortable lives without merging into the poverty, injustice, and violence that surrounds us. However, our comfort zone disappears if the world is as we are. The individual is suddenly thrust center stage, holding responsibility for troubles that begin “in here” before they appear “out there.”
This is the same as saying that the world begins in consciousness. Buddha was famously practical. He told people to stop analyzing the world and its troubles. He also told them to stop relying on religious rituals and sacrifices, which are external. Buddha was the avatar of the situation we find ourselves in today, because he refused to rely on the traditional gods or God. He didn’t use the social safety net of the priestly caste with its automatic connection to spiritual privilege. Above all, he accepted the inescapable fact that each person is ultimately alone in the world. This aloneness is the very disease Buddha set out to cure.

His cure was a waking-up process, in which suffering came to be seen as rooted in false consciousness, and specifically in the dulled awareness that causes us to accept illusion for reality. The reason that people resort to violence, for example, is not that violence is inherent in human nature. Rather, violence is the result of a wrong diagnosis. That diagnosis puts the limited ego-self first in the world, and regards the demands of “I, me, mine” as the most important things to attain. The reason that people react with fear in the face of violence is that the ego goes into a panic trying to defend itself and its attachment to the physical body. The answer to violence for both the aggressor and the victim is to see through the false claims of the ego and thus to come to a true understanding of who we are and why we are here. Buddha’s answer remains radical, but its truth offers a way out that may be our best hope for the future. Let’s examine his solution in detail.
(To be continued)
Deepak Chopra’s most recent book is a novel, Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment

 

The Tibetan Olympics, 2008
Phayul.com – India – by Pema CG – May 18, 2007

Dharamsala: With the 2008 Beijing Olympics drawing near, we see all kinds of campaigns being put into effect by Tibetans and their supporters worldwide to counteract the systematic and extensive propaganda of the Chinese government.
Earlier on May 15, Lobsang Wangyal productions issued a press release announcing a ten-day “Tibetan Olympics 2008,” which is to be “a sporting event for Tibetans to showcase their love and enthusiasm for sports”.

Scheduled to be held from 15 to 25 May 2008 in Dharamsala, the event has been formulated to include Tibetans in the spirit of the global sporting event to be hosted by Beijing next year.

The Tibetan Olympics torch will be lit on 30 January, Mahatma Gandhi’s death anniversary, and will be brought up from Gandhi Samadhi in Delhi to McLeod Ganj by a series of Tibetan, Indian, and international runners. In covering the total distance of 600 kms, each runner will carry the torch for a distance of 25 kms before passing it on to the next athlete.
The Tibetan Olympics will comprise of two championships; Male and Female, with 15 participants each, between the ages 15 to 30 and 15 to 25 respectively. All participating sportspersons are to compete in 10 different sports, including long distance running, swimming, shooting, archery, and other track and field events.

The winners in both the categories will win Rs.100000 each while the first runners-up will win Rs.50000 and the second runners-up will win Rs.25000 each.
The budget of the whole event is approximated at Rs. 30 to 40 lakhs (approx. 100, 000 USD). According to Lobsang Wangyal, the fund is yet to be raised.
There would also be a week-long warm-up and training session for the participants before the event.

According to the statement, the event is also planning to include an international category depending on the interest and response from the international community.

Photo exhibition pays tribute to timeless message championed by Gandhi
The Daily Star – Lebanon – by Nicole Hamwi – May 18, 2007

BEIRUT: “The message of Gandhi has something for everyone, for those in power and those who are excluded from it,” Indian Ambassador Nengcha Lhouvum said at the opening reception earlier this week for an exhibition of photographs at Unesco Palace. “While he fascinates and enchants, it is difficult to follow his example. It is easy to make him an icon, but it is difficult to make him our beacon.”

“Gandhi: His Life and His Message” features more than 50 black-and-white images, all looped together to narrate the remarkable story of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi from his birth in Gujarat in 1869 to his assassination in Delhi in 1948.

In between, he married Kasturba Makanji when he was just 13 years old, studied law in London and traveled to South Africa to assist in a court case there. A week after arriving, he was thrown off a train for refusing to decamp to the third-class car because of his skin color. From that point on, Gandhi devoted his life to dismantling racism, poverty and injustice through acts of civil disobedience and an unshakable faith in nonviolence.
In South Africa, Gandhi established a newspaper and an ashram – the first of many such experiments in close-to-nature community living. In September 1906, he combined the Sanskrit words satya (“truth”) and agraha (“firmness”) and coined the term “satyagraha” to describe his philosophy of nonviolent resistance. The current exhibition at Unesco Palace is being held to commemorate the centenary of Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement.
Gandhi returned to India in 1915 and immediately set out to campaign on behalf of the poor and the disenfranchised. He was arrested numerous times for his actions, and he embarked on countless hunger strikes to affect political change. He became more and more involved in Indian politics – reorganizing the Congress Party and reinvigorating the struggle for independence from British rule.

With the outbreak of World War II, Gandhi launched the “Quit India” campaign. After a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs, India won freedom from colonial rule in 1947 – though Gandhi wasn’t able to reverse the escalation of inter-communal violence, nor could he prevent partition into the separate states of India and Pakistan.
“The whole effort,” said Lhouvum in reference to the current exhibition, “is about getting people to realize what Gandhi is all about, not just for Indians but for the world.”
The succession of photographs, which have been culled from the archives of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs among other organizations, gives viewers a glimpse of the many roles Gandhi played in his life – from lawyer, nurse and football player to national leader and political prisoner.

The exhibition includes photographs of some of Gandhi’s most iconic moments – stooping on a beach to pick up a lump of salt in defiance of a new salt tax imposed by the British, sitting cross-legged before a spinning wheel to make hand-woven cloth and create an instant emblem for the revival of cottage industries across rural India, and walking, always walking, for days and days and from village to village, so Gandhi could hear directly from the people their hopes, dreams, desires and anxieties.
Gandhi’s legacy is still relevant, said Lhouvum, “because people are looking for solutions … It’s good to look at Gandhi and his efforts to [foster] dialogue … His impact, even today, appeals to all people. We would really like to draw attention to the message of nonviolence, accommodation and tolerance of various points of view.”
“Gandhi: His Life and His Message” is on view at Unesco Palace through May 18. For more information please call +961 1 373 539

 

Invitation To Study Peace And Conflict Resolution
European University Center for Peace Studies – Austria – May 15, 2007

We wish to invite you to join a select group of 44 students from around the world in an intensive course in peace and conflict studies at the European University Center for Peace Studies (EPU) in Stadtschlaining, Austria. All the courses are taught in English, by leading specialists in their field from around the world, including Johan Galtung, one of the founders of the academic discipline of peace research and frequent mediator in international conflicts. Studying with the founder of a new academic discipline is a rare opportunity, like studying philosophy with Socrates. EPU offers students a well-rounded program covering Peace with Security, Development, Nature and Culture.

In addition to attending courses, students get to know each other closely and conclude friendships for a lifetime. Many former students said that studying at EPU was the best time of their life.

Peace Studies are a highly interdisciplinary and growing academic field. Students who have successfully completed our program are well grounded in both theory and practice to face the challenges of global conflict transformation. We are happy and proud that many of our former students now have thriving careers in international organizations,NGOs, business, universities, or work with their governments.
TOPICS INCLUDE: Introduction to Peace Studies, Cross-Cultural Communication, Peaceful Conflict Transformation, Human Rights, International Law, Governance, Participation, the Global Economy, Peacebuilding and Development, Safeguarding a Livable Environment, Demilitarization, Nonviolence, Security, United Nations Reform, Mediation, Peace Education, Peace and the Media, Reconciliation after Violence, Peace and Deep Culture. In addition, there are several academic excursions. For a more detailed explanation of the program, a course calendar and a catalogue with course descriptions, see http://www.epu.ac.at/

NEXT POSSIBILITY TO JOIN: Spring term 2008: 3 February – 26 April (Apply by 15 Sep. 2007)
LOCATION: Stadtschlaining is a beautiful, small and quiet medieval town with a 766-year old castle hosting a peace museum, in the foothills of the Alps, between Vienna and Graz, surrounded by hiking trails, with a hot spring and spa nearby. Classrooms and 44 single rooms with private bath are located in a new building.
PEACE LIBRARY: Next to the castle there is a famous peace library with 25,000 books and many films, most of them in English.

WHO SHOULD APPLY: Students from any discipline interested in peace and conflict resolution, young diplomats, government officials, NGO members, teachers, journalists, lawyers, social workers, officers, psychologists, and anyone interested in solving conflicts by peaceful means. A first university degree (bachelors or equivalent) is required, and preferably some professional experience.

DEGREES: Those who successfully complete one trimester obtain a Certificate in Peace and Conflict Studies. Those who complete three trimesters (Fall, Spring and Summer) and write a thesis obtain a Master of Arts in Peace and Conflict Studies, approved by the Austrian Ministry of Education. Students can begin in any of the three trimesters. The three trimesters need not be taken in succession, they can be spread over several years if preferred.

COSTS: Euro 2500 tuition + Euro 1400 room rent per trimester, plus a Euro 700 fee for two thesis advisers for the Master of Arts program, or 12’400 Euro for the entire MA program. A few highly competitive full scholarships are available for applicants from focal countries of Austria’s development cooperation (for one trimester only). Some partial scholarships are also available. You can indicate with a checkmark on the application form if you wish to apply for one of those scholarships.
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO APPLY: see www.epu.ac.at, and click on “European University Center for Peace Studies”, second on the left. If you have further questions, please contact Anita Flasch, EPU Administrative Assistant epu@epu.ac.at, Tel +43-3355-2498-515 (mornings). We will be happy to answer your questions and help you.

EPU does not discriminate on the basis of (among others) gender, race, class, age or national origin.

 

Debbie Robins Appointed Peace Czar
Yahoo.com – USA – May 17, 2007

In addition to working with numerous peace groups, Robins also teaches peace classes and discusses the Three Keys to Peace in the media with people like Deepak Chopra on his Sirius Satellite Radio show. Robins’ life purpose is to make the world a more peaceful place, and it is out of this work that she wrote the new bestseller, “Where Peace Lives” (Cambridge House Press, May 1, 2007: ISBN: 0-9787213-7-3; Price: $19.95 hardcover). “I wrote this book to help children and grown-ups alike strengthen their peace muscle. Peace is a choice, at every age, and it’s time to kick around some major peace dust! If more people are choosing peace, we will have less war because hate makes more hate and kindness makes more kindness. I am humbled to be the Peace Czar and engage people to remember that we can… no… we ARE making a difference,” says Robins.
Robins gave preview copies of “Where Peace Lives” to hundreds of schoolchildren in Los Angeles and adults throughout the country. She was beset with letters from them stating that the book changed their lives and inspired them to make more peaceful choices at school, home, and in their communities. Robins intended the book to be a call to action, so she included a “Peace Exercise” to log details of the readers’ “Peace Journey.” “Where Peace Lives” has already received endorsements from Gore Vidal, Penny Marshall, Deepak Chopra, Arianna Huffington and others. Maria Shriver wrote in a letter to Robins, “I think the story is destined to become a classic and an inspiration for so many. Your story makes a world of peace seem possible…”

“Where Peace Lives” takes the reader on a magical journey to change the world. By finding the Three Keys to Peace you are able to free the angel named Peace who has been locked in a box and can’t get out. Robins’ main characters are inspired by some of the world’s great peacemakers; Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Buddha, Jesus Christ, Moses and the Prophet Muhammad. The book appeals to all ages because the wisdom of these great people is shared through the mouths of the child-friendly characters, Luther the Bear, Mahma the Feret, Mister Buddha and others.
As Peace Czar, Robins is donating a portion of the sales of “Where Peace Lives” to two organizations: City Hearts, a non-profit, arts-based program of prevention and critical intervention providing the most at-risk kids in the poorest neighborhoods with vital, quality arts education that enhances literacy, social and academic skills while building a sense of community (www.cityhearts.org); and Earth Rights Institute, a non-profit organization that is dedicated to creating a global culture of peace and justice (http://www.earthrights.net/).

“Where Peace Lives” is available at major booksellers or online at www.amazon.com. For more information on the book or Debbie Robins, visit www.WherePeaceLives.com.

Men In Exile Feed On Dreams
HartfordAvocate.com – USA – by Jennifer Abel – May 16, 2007

“I knew if I wanted to make it, I had to get to Detroit.”
That’s not something you hear every day, but speaker Ramin Ahmadi isn’t one for saying everyday things. Ahmadi’s the Connecticut physician and Yale professor who founded the Derby-based Griffin Center for Health and Human Rights, which has worked toward humanitarian causes all over the world. More subversively, he teaches rebellious Iranians about thinkers like Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, in hopes of fomenting a non-violent revolution in that country.

But 20-some years ago, before racking up this list of accomplishments, Ahmadi was merely a teenager in deep trouble with the law. And before he could work toward his current success, he had to get to Detroit.
Born in Iran, Ahmadi was 15 when the Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini swept the country.

“I left Iran when I was 17 … it was two years after the Islamic revolution,” Ahmadi said. “I left at the end of ’81, beginning of ’82 … the year the Islamic Republic regime was particularly brutal with political activists.”

Ahmadi was an activist, but his family was not. So they stayed behind when he left Iran.
“I came across the border to Pakistan … illegally sneaked across at night with a group of friends who regularly smuggled things across the border.” He wandered for two years, first as an illegal immigrant in Pakistan and then as a refugee in Barcelona, Spain, all the while hoping to reach the United States.

“The only family I had outside of Iran, my mother’s sister … was a citizen living in the United States with her husband. She sponsored me. … That’s how I ended up in the U.S., in Michigan.” Detroit, to be exact, where he soon learned English well enough to enroll in a local community college.

From there he went on to a four-year college, medical school and then a residency at Yale, but even while carving out a successful life in America his mind still wandered toward Iran.

“I’m active in human rights,” he said. “And of course for Iran I was emotionally involved.” His work with the Griffin Center brought him to troubled spots all over the world: East Timor, Guyana, Nicaragua, and Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami. But he dared not go to Iran, though he wrote extensively about it.
“For the past decade or so I have been writing a lot of articles in Persian.” These were written for the Iranian expatriate community, since in Iran itself “my books were banned. They cannot be published in Iran. But once they had the Internet I noticed we had readers in Iran.”

He talked with young Iranians in online chat rooms, discussing the lives and philosophies of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and the value of non-violence in bringing about governmental change. And after awhile, he started making regular trips to Dubai, the Arab city which Ahmadi calls “the Las Vegas of the Middle East.” Wealthy young people from all over the region use Dubai as a playground and a temporary reprieve from the watchful eye of their oppressive theocratic governments.
“Every week, 10, 15 thousand young Iranians come to Dubai to have fun,” he says. “They come to party, drink, go to discos, spend time with women. That’s what it’s all about.”

All of that is illegal in Iran. Officially the Iranian government disapproves of such pleasure jaunts, but unofficially finds them a useful valve for letting off pressure. Thus, it’s unlikely the government will crack down on this weekly exodus.

And here’s what brings Ahmadi to Dubai: among those tens of thousands of Iranians each week, a few come to hear him give lessons on the principles of non-violence.
“They go to a loft [with Ahmadi] for five, six, seven days of workshops, then they go home to Iran and disseminate this information to their friends,” Ahmadi said. “It’s difficult for the Iranian government, among the 15,000 who came out, to find the seven or eight who came not for discos, but for Martin Luther King and Gandhi.”
Back in Iran, there’s already an underground system set up to accept and distribute this subversive information.

“Iran is a very complex society,” Ahmadi said. “It resembles Poland of the 1980s, meaning a lively — I won’t say civil society, but … there’s a woman’s rights movement, a student movement, a labor movement … a lot of activists looking for strategies to advance their cause.”

But is non-violence truly the right strategy for Iran? In 1938, Gandhi paused in his protests against the British in India long enough to advise the Jews of Germany to try non-violent resistance against the Nazis. But what worked against Winston Churchill might not be so effective against the likes of Adolf Hitler. Wouldn’t Ahmadi’s faith in non-violence imply a certain faith in the current Iranian government, too?
No. “We expect violence from the government,” Ahmadi said. “There’s no pure non-violent movement, because the state will commit acts of violence.” But Ahmadi says it’s inaccurate to assume Gandhi’s techniques wouldn’t have worked against the Nazis.
“Germany had a successful non-violence movement,” he says. “They didn’t go far enough … some German women married to Jewish husbands started an underground network. A phone tree … when the Gestapo came, less than 24 hours after the arrest of their husbands the women had a non-violent protest known as the Rosenstrasse.”
Faced with thousands of women openly protesting in the streets of Berlin, the Gestapo quietly released the protestors’ Jewish husbands, rather than cause more dissent by shooting German women in the streets. “It was the only act of non-violence that we know of in [Nazi] Germany, and it was a success,” Ahmadi said. “The problem was the Germans didn’t do enough of it.”

But he thinks his countrymen back home someday will. “Non-violence will win. We have faith in it.” He quickly corrected himself. “Not just faith: logic and reason. With Hitler [non-violence] really wasn’t used.”

But it already has a proven track record in Iran. “Do not forget the 1979 [Islamic] revolution was a velvet revolution. [Khomeini] didn’t use weapons to take down the state apparatus … he used violence later. The overthrow of the Shah happened with mass demonstrations.” And if Ahmadi succeeds in his efforts, future historians will say the same about the overthrow of the Iranian theocracy, too. ?

 

Discovering ethics in materialistic society
Clarion – USA – by Daliah Singer – May 15, 2007

Arun Gandhi, fifth grandson of celebrated Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, spoke on the role of materialism in capitalist society, particularly in business, at a roundtable discussion last week

Addressing an audience of over 100 people at the Cable Center, Gandhi used his grandfather’s theory of nonviolence to explain how society could decrease its materialistic tendencies and return to basic values.
Nonviolence is “not just about not using violence,” said Gandhi. “It’s a philosophy about life. It’s about how we live our lives and how we relate to each other.”
Business, too, is “about people,” but today we have a tendency to find people “irrelevant,” said Gandhi.

He added that there is an “inverse relationship between materialism and morality” because the more materialistic we become, the less moral we become.
Every individual needs to find a “balance,” said Gandhi. This balance can be found by returning to the simple values taught by his grandfather. These values include “love, respect, understanding, appreciation and acceptance,” according to Gandhi.
In the “culture of violence” we are experiencing today, these values have disappeared and “we have allowed the negative values [discrimination, oppression] to dominate us,” causing us to “sink morally,” said Gandhi.

Gandhi’s solution is to cease creating relationships based on self-interest. Instead, communities need to be built through a return to those values.
Connecting his ideas with business, Gandhi said, “People who do business should make profit, but that shouldn’t be the only purpose.” They need to be cognizant of the people and the societies they are affecting.

We need to use our talents “for others as much as for ourselves,” he said.
Gandhi’s keynote address was followed by a roundtable discussion featuring four panelists representing different religious groups, David Trickett, president of the Iliff School of Theology, Rabbi Selwyn Franklin, Rev. Cynthia James and Imam Ibrahim Kazerooni.

The panelists spoke about whether ethics and basic moral values can be infused into today’s business environment.
There is a “mistaken assumption that we own ourselves,” that we are not part of a social environment, said Trickett.
James mirrored this, saying that people need to recognize that what one person does affects the whole.

“As long as the bottom line shows profit,” we forget all else, said Kazerooni, echoing James. Kazerooni believes that this is where our worldview needs to change because “we really don’t appreciate human life.”

Employees need to be regarded as human beings, with “dignity,” said Franklin.
This idea of respect also applies to the treatment of the environment.
Society’s tendency to over-consume deprives both nature and other people. This, according to Gandhi, is violence against humanity.

The violence caused by materialism can be redefined, however. “It’s all a social construction,” said Trickett. The “system” is a human creation.
He added, “What has been built can be rebuilt.”

Kazerooni paralleled the idea that positive change is possible: “We are the agents to deconstruct [the current system] and reconstruct something else.”
This change must start with individuals. Trickett quoted Mahatma Gandhi, stating, “If you want to change the world, change yourself.”
The panel was part of the Voice of Experience lecture series hosted by the Daniels’ College of Business. The program resumes next fall. To find out more, visit http://daniels.du.edu/about/VOE.cfm.

 

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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