Mahatma Gandhi News Digest, Germany : Issue for September 11 – 17, 2006

Mahatma Gandhi News Digest, Germany : Issue for September 11 – 17, 2006

Mahatma Gandhi: A century of peaceful protest
The Independant – UK – September 16, 2006

He’s a huge box-office hit. He’s at the top of the Indian music charts. He’s on the front cover of magazines. One hundred years after Gandhi first called on his compatriots to resist white colonial rule without violence, he is back in fashion once more. Justin Huggler explains why
Indians this week have been remembering the day which changed the fate of their nation for decades to come. A hundred years ago, on 11 September, 1906, a young British-trained barrister named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi addressed a meeting of 3,000 Indians in the Empire Theatre building in Johannesburg and asked them to take an oath to resist white colonial rule without violence. It was the birth of the modern non-violent resistance movement- and it has not been forgotten.

Suddenly the Mahatma is back in fashion in India. Two years ago, it was unthinkable that the centenary of a speech by Gandhi, seen as a relic of the past by most young Indians, would be so much as noticed in a country that was obsessed not with figures from its past, but with its headlong rush to embrace modernity.
But today Gandhi has caught the Indian imagination all over again. He appears as a character in the biggest Bollywood hit of the summer – a comedy, but one that even his admirers accept does not degrade his message. His writings are bestsellers again. He is at the top of India’s music charts too, with a tape of his Hindu devotional songs, or bhajans. A new Gandhi museum in Delhi is opening its doors to 2,000 visitors a day.
His sayings are visible all over India’s cities. People are openly displaying them. The sunshades across the rear windows of cars proclaim “There is no way to peace; peace is the way”. Young Indians are wandering around in T-shirts that say “Be the change you want to see in the world”, complete with the image of Gandhi’s trademark circular-lensed spectacles.

Outlook magazine, India’s answer to Time and Newsweek, even featured Gandhi on its front cover this week – which is more often adorned with besuited and self-satisfied looking businessmen. The previous week’s cover, by comparison, showed high-flying students at India’s business schools leaping in the air.
Something remarkable is happening in India. Just as the world is beginning to see the country as an emerging economy obsessed with copying all things Western, and ever more hooked on consumerism, India has rediscovered another voice from its past, a voice that spoke of a different vision for his country.

When I arrived in India two-and-a-half years ago, it was very different. I tried to ask Indians at a dinner party about Gandhi. “Oh, we don’t think about him,” I was told. “He’s just someone whose statues are around the country and whose face is on the money.” Not any more. It’s not just on the cinema screens and in the CD shops that Mahatma Gandhi is back. Thousands of young Indians are joining Gandhian youth organisations, or flocking to summer camps at Gandhian ashrams. Teenagers are volunteering to work in slums and poor villages. Not just Gandhi’s image, but his principles and the way of life he taught are catching on in India again.

Some are ascribing the sudden renewal of interest in the Mahatma to the movie Lage Raho Munnabhai, or Carry On Munnabhai (the British Carry On films are bizarrely popular in India). The big Bollywood hit of the year, the film depicts Munnabhai, a small-time Bombay goonda, or gangster, and his attempts to win the heart of a radio announcer. After he crams for a radio quiz on Gandhi’s life to impress her, the spirit of Gandhi appears to Munnabhai and advises him on how to cope with the obstacles in his life without violence.

The film has won universal praise for its success in incorporating a completely uncompromised protrayal of Gandhi and his teachings into a seriously funny comedy. One reviewer described it as “something to watch before you die”.
But other observers say Carry On Munnabhai didn’t start the wave of new interest in Gandhi – it was part of it. They say there have been signs of growing interest in Gandhi for some years. Publishers have been astonished to see translations of his books in some of India’s regional languages sell hundreds of thousands of copies over the past five years. The number of applications to Gandhi’s estate for the rights to publish his works has doubled in the past two years.

The outside world never really lost interest in Gandhi. The British may have mocked him in their cinema newsreels during the early years of his campaign for independence, but they soon learnt to take him seriously. Such is the power of Gandhi’s message that, even from beyond the grave, he was able to demand international respect for his country even during the long years when it was an economic basket-case, mired in hopeless poverty.
He inspired Martin Luther King in the American civil rights movement, and Nelson Mandela in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. But in his own country, Gandhi faded into the background. As the English-language Mumbai daily DNA put it in a leader this week, he became “a largely distant and overawing figure” embedded in our collective consciousness but in a non-relevant, non-immediate way. “Yes, we know he is the father of the nation, we see his photographs on rupee notes and we all remember getting a holiday on his birthday, but what exactly did he say or do?” An “open letter” to Gandhi in the Indian Express put it bluntly: “To be honest we got too absorbed in our progress and technology to miss you. Our children never made any reference to you and we were too caught up in ourselves to notice that they were growing up without an idol.”
But now Gandhi is back. As to why he has suddenly returned to the popular consciousness, observers have many answers. For some, it was about young Indians disinterring the human Gandhi behind the image that had been preserved in aspic by his followers, more monument than man.

“Gandhi was ill-served by everyone, including the Gandhians,” Mushirul Hassan, a historian, told Outlook magazine. “They deified him and buried him in institutions. He was conveniently portrayed as a saint so they wouldn’t be threatened by his ideology.” A Annamalai, of the Gandhi Study Circle, one of more than 150 Gandhi youth organisations in India, said: “Young people may not be able to relate to a dhoti-clad Gandhi. But tell them how he was a millionaire London-returned barrister who threw away everything to fight for justice and equality, and they begin at once to appreciate him.”

Suddenly Gandhi is an alternative voice in an India that has become obsessed with material wealth and advancement. “Corner offices are earned” say the deeply dispiriting billboards above Delhi, next to endless advertisements for mobile phones and cars that 95 per cent of Indians could never dream of affording. For young people in a country that has become so success-driven that sixth-form students who don’t get the right grades commit suicide, Gandhi’s anti-materialist message still has resonance.
The Rashtriya Suva Sanganathan, a national Gandhian youth movement, has even gone so far as to get rid of the traditional symbols of Gandhianism, the homespun dhoti, or loincloth, and the spinning wheel. People who see these as irrelevant are calling themselves new Gandhians. As one, Leeladhar Manik Gada, puts it: “What does it matter if a man wears pants, shirts, uses a motorbike rather than walk, so long as he gets the job done?” Others credit the new interest in Gandhi to the appeal of satyagraha, the philososphy of non-violent resistance he preached into a world that is racked by violence.
Under the headline “Gandhi is not history”, Vinoy Lal wrote in The Hindu: “Many in Gandhi’s own lifetime doubted its efficacy. Many more have since claimed that the unspeakable cruelties of the 20th century render non-violent resistance an effete, if noble, idea. [But] the advocates of non-violent resistance who are dismissed as woolly-headed idealists should, on the contrary, ask the proponents of violence to demonstrate that violence can produce enduring good.” In its leader, DNA asked: “Will those non-violent tactics work today, say with terrorists? We can’t say for sure. But knowing Gandhi, he certainly would have given it a shot.”

These are not just questions of far away places on television screens for Indians. In the past 12 months, India has suffered major bombings in Mumbai, Delhi, and Hinduism’s holiest city, Varanasi, in which scores of people have died.

There is another possible explanation for Gandhi’s appeal: the rise of Hindu nationalism. In a country that has been racked for the past decade and more by communal violence between Hindus and Muslims, often set off by far-right Hindu groups, Gandhi offers a different vision of Hinduism. Only four years ago, in Gandhi’s home state, Gujarat, more than 2,000 people, most of them Muslims, were massacred in Hindu-Muslim riots. This week, the Bombay High Court has been giving its verdict in the trials over the 1993 Bombay bombings, in which more than 250 people died and which were widely believed to be Muslim revenge for Hindu atrocities in religious riots a year earlier.
On the back of this religious chauvinism, Hindu nationalists are still in power in many states, and make up the main opposition nationally.

In contrast to this stands Gandhi, who amid tensions between Hindus and Muslims in his lifetime, told his supporters: “I am a Muslim, I am a Hindu, I am a Christian, I am a Jew – and so are all of you.” It is hard to imagine Tony Blair having the moral courage to stand up and say the same.

It is too early to say whether the renewal of Indian interest in Gandhi will last, or whether it is just this summer’s fad, fuelled by a hit movie. But, judging by the enormous sales of his books across India, whatever big city society moves onto next, out there in the vast hinterland of India that he loved, Gandhi’s message is getting out again.
When Gandhi summoned those 3,000 Indians to the Empire Theatre, he started a movement that changed the world without a shot being fired. Yet what sparked that meeting is often forgotten: it was a move by South Africa’s colonial rulers to have all the Indians fingerprinted, which was seen at the time as tantamount to criminalising them. There is an irony that, amid today’s anti-terror legislation, it would barely raise an eyebrow.

‘Munnabhai’ sends new Gandhians rushing to city bookstores!
Cybernoon.com – India – September 15, 2006

The portrayal of Gandhian principles in Sanjay Dutt’s new film has revived an interest in the Father of The Nation!
There has been an unexpected rise in the sale of Gandhi books in this past week. And taking deserving credit for this rise is our innocent ‘Munnabhai’. The newly released movie, ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’ is based on Gandhian principles and the portrayal of these principles is done so well in the movie, that the audience is rushing into bookstores to learn more about the ‘Father of The Nation’.

Amazed at such a rise, Oxford Bookstore’s all India head of sales, Abhijit Chandra, said, “Usually, there is not much demand for Gandhi books, but in the last one week, the sales have risen 35 per cent. We had to order new stock within this week.”
Chandra also said that it is college students who are inquiring the most. The demand at Oxford is for titles like ‘Samadhi’ written by Bhikhu Parekh, ‘Gandhi on Personal Leadership’ written by Anand Kumar Swami, and ‘M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography’.
The Gandhi Book Centre at Tardeo, which is run by the Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal, not only has experienced a rise in the sale of Gandhi books, but also a rise in audiences at their yearly function that celebrates Satyagraha. “On September 11, we had a function at Bharti Vidya Bhavan. This time, not only was the entire auditorium full, but we had arranged a screening in the hall above the auditorium as well,” said a very surprised Tulsidas Somaiya, who is in charge of the Book Centre.

The sale in books has been tremendous. “We sell books on a wholesale basis too. In this last week, we have already given 9,000 books away and are currently packing another order of 400,” said Somaiya, who has been receiving many calls urging him to watch ‘Lage Raho…’ “I was busy in the function, but now I am planning to see it,” he said.
The most selling books on Gandhi, are ‘M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography’, and ‘My Experiments With Truth’, written by Gandhi. “In this store, currently we just have around 300 copies of Gandhi books,” said Somaiya.

However, Strand Bookstore at Fort is not experiencing any difference in the sales of books. “At an average, there is a sale of two or three books on Gandhi every day. This sale will go up a week before October 2. But currently the sale is average,” said Sanjiv Kamat, a sales executive at Strand.

Gandhi’s 100th Anniversary
AlArab Online – UK – by John Dear – September 15, 2006

Last week, fifty of us walked more than sixty five miles, from Thomas Merton’s hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani to downtown Louisville, Kentucky. There on Monday, September 11th we held a rally at the corner of Fourth Street and Muhammad Ali Boulevard, where nearly fifty years ago, Merton realized he loved everyone and decided to spend the rest of his life engaging the woes and tumult of the world.
So while many commemorated the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, we also celebrated the 100th anniversary of Gandhi’s satyagraha campaign in South Africa. It began with Gandhi’s speech to a crowd, a speech that inspired some 3,000 oppressed Indians to profess a vow of nonviolence to resist racist laws: “The government has taken leave of all sense of decency,” Gandhi said.

“Those who take the pledge [of nonviolent resistance] must be prepared for the worst. Imagine that all of us present here numbering three thousand take the pledge. We might have to go to jail. We might be insulted. We might have to go hungry and suffer extreme heat or cold. Hard labor might be imposed on us. We might be flogged. We might be fined and our property might be help up to auction. We might be reduced to abject poverty. We might be deported. Suffering from starvation and similar hardships in jail, some of us might fall ill and even die.
“But if the entire community humanly stands the tests,” he famously concluded, “the end will be near. I can boldly declare, and with certainty, that so long as there is even a handful of people true to their pledge, there can only be one end to the struggle, and that is victory.”

A turning point in history. To mark it, some five hundred of us gathered in Louisville and professed our own vow of nonviolence.

I myself had professed such a vow when I entered the Jesuits in 1982. I was preparing for the typical vows of Catholic religious life, when I read that Gandhi had professed sixteen vows, including vows of fearlessness, truth-telling, and respect for all religions. A few friends and I decided to prepare a vow of nonviolence, too, and we spent two years experimenting with it in our personal lives.

I still study the life of Mahatma Gandhi, as did Merton, for clues about peacemaking. Last year I traveled to India with Gandhi’s grandson Arun to see where Gandhi lived and died and to witness how his work continues. I spent years reading all 98 volumes of Gandhi’s collected works, as well as 25 biographies, for my book, “Mohandas Gandhi: Essential Writings.” In all his words, one theme persisted. Whatever crisis or catastrophe presented itself, Gandhi offered the same answer: steadfast, persistent, dedicated, committed, relentless, truthful, prayerful, loving, active, creative nonviolence.
For Gandhi, nonviolence surpasses the refusal to hurt or kill: nonviolence is active love, a force for social uplift. Indeed, he insisted, nonviolence is the most active and powerful force in the world. Since he saw it as the force of God, the method of God, the power of God at work for good, he concluded that nonviolence is more powerful than all nuclear weapons combined. If millions of Americans would practice it, would peacefully and actively resist war, disarmament would be assured.
Nonviolence always works, he said, because it uses the method of suffering love to melt the human heart. He taught that if we can harness its power, nonviolence becomes contagious and wars end, injustices cease and nations disarm.
He observed that all religions are rooted in nonviolence and he asserted that God is a God of peace. He taught we should pursue truth passionately; that non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good; and that if we want peace, we must resist war. He taught, as well, that we should have nothing to do with power, that we should renounce the fruit of our action and do good because it’s good and leave the outcome to God. And more, that the struggle for peace requires measure for measure the same risk and sacrifice of war.
But like Jesus, Gandhi went further. He came to the conclusion of the cross–which is to say, social change derives from our willingness to suffer for the sake of justice and peace.
“Nonviolence in its dynamic condition means conscious suffering,” he wrote. “It does not mean meek submission to the evildoer, but means the pitting of one’s whole would against the will of the tyrant. Working under this law of our being, it is possible for a single individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire to save honor, religion, soul and lay the foundation for that empire’s fall or regeneration.”
In his commitment to faith-based nonviolence, Gandhi spent one hour in prayer every morning, usually around three a.m., and another in the afternoon around five p.m.. Over the course of twenty years, so he could maintain his peaceful center, he remained silent every Monday.

“We all have to adopt nonviolence,” Gandhi said after the U.S. dropped the atom bomb in Hiroshima, shortly before his death, “or we are doomed.” Yet he remained hopeful. He also said, “We are constantly being astonished these days at the amazing discoveries in the field of violence, but I maintain that far more undreamt of and seemingly impossible discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence. ”
As the crowds gathered with Gandhi a hundred years ago, our group gathered where Thomas Merton once stood and professed a vow of nonviolence. We were exhausted from the walk, but exhilarated by the spirit of peace. We pledged to be nonviolent in every aspect of our lives, and like Gandhi, pursue new discoveries in the field of nonviolence, including the abolition of war itself. It was one of the greatest moments of our lives.

John Dear is a Jesuit priest and peace activist. His latest book, “You Will Be My Witnesses,“ along with, “Mohandas Gandhi: Essential Writings,” are available from Orbis Books. He writes a weekly column for “The National Catholic Reporter” at: www.ncrcafe.org. For further information, see: www.johndear.org.

March summons Gandhi’s message to embody change
The Olympian – USA – by Keri Brenner – September 11, 2006
“Gandhi” walked again Sunday – carrying the same message he did seven decades ago.
“We must become the change we seek in the world,” said Bernie Meyer of Olympia, a Gandhi look-alike, before a crowd of about 200 at the state Capitol steps. “Truth is our guide, love is our way – we seek to overcome our fears with courage.”
Meyer, bare-chested and carrying a bamboo staff, spoke during a re-enactment of Mahatma Gandhi’s 1930 Salt Walk to protest British oppression in India. The Olympia version of the march, timed to coincide with the eve of today’s fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, stretched 16 blocks of Capitol Way from the Capitol campus to the Olympia Farmers Market and then to the Port Plaza.
Many people dressed in white to re-create Gandhi’s “truthseekers” who followed him out of the ashram in the 1930 walk.
“I’m taking a stand that I’m committed to a peaceful world,” said marcher Jody Tiller of Olympia.
“Our country is trying to get to peace through war – I don’t see that bringing us closer to peace.”
Tiller, a member of Veterans for Peace, was in the Air Force during the Gulf War as a space systems equipment maintenance specialist.
Olympia’s event was to raise awareness about global warming and peak oil use.
“The Earth is threatened,” said Meyer, 68, a former Catholic priest and social service worker. “The tundra is melting, the seas are warming and water is being depleted.”
Don Foran, a former Evergreen State College professor who organized the event along with Meyer, said times call for Gandhi’s message of nonviolence and self-responsibility to be heard again.
“We are the salt of the Earth,” Foran said. “If there is to be a salt of the Earth, it must be us – we don’t get a pass.”
The ceremony at Port Plaza featured six speakers, including college and high school students and retired professor Rudy Martin, an early leader at The Evergreen State College.

“We have a current necessity to speak the truth to those in power,” Martin said. “Those in power seem not to speak the truth nowadays, which is an intolerable state of affairs.”
Jody Kline, 18, a student at Centralia College, said she agreed to speak at the ceremony because of “the complacency of my generation,” she said.
“If something’s not tangible and does not affect us right now, we’re unconcerned,” she said. “If we can be motivated by people like Gandhi, we can be inspired into accountability – we need to feel an urgency about this.”

Gandhi back in style thanks to Bollywood blockbuster
Khaleej Times – India – September 14, 2006

NEW DELHI – One hundred years after Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi launched his non-violence movement, a new runaway hit comedy film is helping to bring his teachings to a whole new audience.

“Lage Raho Munnabhai” (Carry on Munnabhai)” has played to packed houses since it opened two weeks ago and is on its way to becoming one of Bollywood’s biggest moneymakers of the year, according to industry watchers.
The film, which has earned rave reviews, features Bollywood superstar Sanjay Dutt as a gangster named Munnabhai with a heart of gold.
But Gandhi, portrayed by veteran stage actor Dilip Prabhavalkar, steals the show as he steers the gangster onto the path of honesty while dispensing old-fashioned lessons about truth and honesty.

“If Bapu (Gandhi) were to see the film today, he would have applauded the role,” said Gandhi’s great-grandson Tushar. “Already, I hear people are buying more books on Gandhi after watching the film.”
In the film — currently number one at the box office according to Bollywood website indiafm.com — Munnabhai falls in love with a female radio host who has no clue about his wicked past.

Bapu, or father — as Gandhi is known in India — appears to Munnabhai as a ghost when the gangster starts researching the life of the loincloth-clad Indian leader in a bid to impress the radio presenter with his knowledge.
Gandhi, famed as the torchbearer of India’s fight against British rule, urges the gangster to give up his life of crime to woo the woman.
The gangster ends up co-hosting the advice chat show, and he ends up winning over both the woman and listeners with the folksy advice relayed to him in the studio by Gandhi himself — who is invisible to everyone else.
Gandhi’s principles of austere living and passive resistance, which he followed in his everyday life and with which he fought British colonial rule, are a running theme in the comedy.

An elderly man tired of paying bribes is told to shame the offender by offering all he has — his clothes, hearing aid and glasses — until the government official finally does what he asks without payment.
“Gandhi is the real hero of the film. The film is really funny, and sends a message without being too heavy,” said student Aastha Singh.
Gandhi’s portrayal has found favour in unusual quarters.
The Delhi state government approved so much of the Hindi-language film’s message that it made the movie tickets tax-free so more people might see it.
“The storytelling is swift, saucy and knife-sharp in critiquing the loss of Gandhian ideals” in everyday Indian life, wrote film critic Khalid Mohamed in Mumbai’s Daily News and Analysis newspaper.

The release of the film coincided with centenary celebrations on September 11 to mark the start of Gandhi’s resistance movement against racial discrimination in British-ruled South Africa, where he practised as a lawyer.
Ten years later in 1916, Gandhi came back to India and started leading India’s fight against British rule.

Movie critics said young people could relate to Prabhavalkar’s portrayal of Gandhi, thanks to his use of slang spoken in Mumbai — where the film is set — and his friendly interaction with the underworld.

“Hardcore moral preaching doesn’t sell, but if you package it with entertainment, it works,” said indiafm.com editor Taran Adarsh.
“Bapu himself considered humour to be essential. He wasn’t a dour man at all. He used to say “If it wasn’t for my sense of humour, I would have committed suicide long ago’,” said his great-grandson Tushar

Milestones from the Mahatma’s life
The Hindu – India – September 14, 2006

Cultural troupe from South Africa portrays Gandhiji’s life
CHENNAI : The performance of the cultural troupe from South Africa was mostly about India – their choice of dance, Bharatanatyam, is as Indian as it gets. The programme was organised by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations.
The first part of the programme was `Satyagraha,’ which presented the story of Gandhi in a nutshell — a build up to Gandhi Jayanti celebrated on October 2.
Bharatanatyam dancers enacted milestones in his life. For example, one sequence was `He went to jail and fasted to get dignity.’ They also made use of an African tribal dance to signify anger and chaos.

One of the dance sequences was the gumboot dance, done by miners at the end of a long day. The dancers kept the beat by slapping their gumboots and stomping their feet.
The programme was by Ryan’s International and Kanthsruby Dance Academy as part of their India tour.

Jo’burg marks Gandhi’s ‘truth force’ movement
Mail & Guardian – South Africa – September 12, 2006

A handful of people in South Africa quietly marked the centennial of the birth of Mohandas Gandhi’s Satyagraha or “truth force” movement, which made the young Indian lawyer a global icon of peace.
Monday was the 100th anniversary of the beginning of a movement that would have profound influence on the struggle against apartheid, the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the American civil rights movements and on other campaigns to support civil liberty.

At a historic meeting chaired by Gandhi on September 11 1906, more than 3 000 Indians gathered at the Empire Theatre in Johannesburg, a dusty new mining town, and resolved to risk imprisonment rather than comply with a law requiring them to carry much-hated identity documents or passes.

“The image of Gandhi as an icon of peace looms large in the world today. It poses an alternative for us to ponder on. It provides answers to many problems such as the kinds of terrorism we saw five years ago,” said Eric Itzkin, a city official and author of the book Gandhi’s Johannesburg.

A series of events are planned to celebrate the centenary in Johannesburg. South African Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Nckuka was in India on Monday and placed a wreath at Gandhi’s main New Delhi memorial during a commemoration there.
The India-based MK Gandhi Institute for Non-Violence also organised commemorative events in New York on Monday — the same day of the five-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

Gandhi arrived in South Africa in 1893 and spent 21 years developing his philosophies in various homes and farms across the country, before returning to India at the age of 46 to help fight for independence from Britain.
On his arrival, he soon came face to face with growing race discrimination in South Africa when he was thrown off a train for refusing to leave the “whites only” compartment.

The moment became a defining one in his life — and in history — resulting in him throwing himself into fight for human rights in this country.
“He opened the door for freedom for South Africa. For some people the settlement of the South African conflict was in harmony with the dialogue and negotiation that Gandhi advocated,” Itzkin said.

Today, many of the buildings once occupied by Gandhi in Johannesburg are rundown and derelict. The site of the theatre, which burnt down the same night as the historic meeting, is in a quiet downtown back street. The building is an empty office block surrounded by to-let signs, fast-food outlets and a mattress wholesale shop.
Few people were aware of the history of the area but instantly recognise the name Gandhi — thanks to the renaming of the central bus depot.
“He was a very wise and peaceful man,” said Colin Janit, owner of a men’s store that has been in the area for 40 years.

“There is no-one who can be compared with him. There is much we can learn from him. He must not be forgotten,” said Devu Vassan, who worked at another nearby store.
Much has been done to promote the connection between Johannesburg and the Indian leader including erecting a bronze statue of Gandhi at the bus depot — the site of the city’s first law courts where he practiced and was also put on trial for his protest actions.
“Part of the city’s Gandhi project has been to reclaim neglected history. Gandhi’s ideas are enriching. The fact that Satyagraha was born here is an important part of the city’s history. It is part of its cosmopolitan identity that makes it so unique,” Itzkin said.
Gandhi, who shunned materialism and earned himself the name “Mahatma” or “Great Soul,” returned to India in 1916 where he stressed unity among Indians and relieving poverty.
As his fame grew, he took a greater role in leading the campaign to force Britain to leave India, famously leading a 400km march to the sea to protest salt taxes.
Kirti Menon, Gandhi’s great-granddaughter who lives in Johannesburg, said Gandhi’s legacy was of significance today.

“Gandhi’s Satyagraha campaign was very linked to social injustice and the fight for human rights. Given the level of violence that we have today, the conflicts and the clashes, his message is incredibly important,” she said.

Einstein’s theory of satyagraha
Indian Express – India – by B.R. Nanda – September 12, 2006

September 11, 1906, was a momentous date in the life of Gandhiji — and in human history. It was on this day, while engaged in an unequal struggle against racial discrimination in South Africa, he discovered or rather stumbled upon an alternative to armed resistance for fighting against injustice and oppression.
For more than ten years he had been fighting for the elementary civic rights of Indian immigrants in Natal and Transvaal, sending well-worded petitions and leading deputations to high officials in South Africa and England, but without tangible results. Matters came to a head in Transvaal on the question of registration of Indians. He was stunned when he read the clauses of a bill in the Transvaal Gazette (August 22, 1906), which had been prepared for the Transvaal legislature. It required every Indian, including children above eight, to register. In courts, in revenue offices, indeed almost at any time or place an Indian could be challenged to produce his registration certificate; police officers could enter any house to examine permits. ‘Dog’s collar’ was an apt description of this measure.

Gandhi’s hopes of securing amelioration of the condition of Indians by educating public opinion in South Africa, India and Britain were frustrated. In India there was plenty of sympathy for Indians in South Africa, reflected in the resolutions passed by the Indian National Congress (INC). However, Indian politicians were conscious of their limitations. As Sir Pherozeshah Mehta bluntly remarked to Gandhi when they travelled to Calcutta for the 1901 session of the INC: “But what rights have we in our own country? I believe that so long as we have no power in our own land, you cannot fare better in the colonies.”

The object of the new registration measure in Transvaal was apparently to demoralise the better educated and prosperous Indian. The Indians had no representation in the legislature. Gandhi was convinced that if this measure became law and the Indians accepted it, it would ‘spell absolute ruin to them’. It was better, he felt, for Indians to die rather than submit to such a law. But how were they to die? What should they dare and do, so that there would be nothing before them except the choice between victory and death? An impenetrable wall was before him; he could not see his way through it.
On September 11, the Indians met at the Empire Theatre hall at Johannesburg — 3,000 of the 13,000 Indians in Transvaal were present. The main resolution, drafted by Gandhi, proclaimed that the determination of the community not to submit to the proposed measure. When one of the speakers declared in the name of God that he would never submit to that law, Gandhi was, as he wrote later, “startled and put on his guard”. The suggestion of a solemn oath helped him to think out “the possible consequences in a single moment,” and his “perplexity gave way to enthusiasm”. A solemn oath meant much to him. His life had been moulded by the vows he had taken. The idea of a pledge of resistance to an unjust law, with God as witness, and with no fear of consequences, demolished the wall which had been obscuring his vision.

The meeting ended with a solemn oath by “all present standing with raised hands, with God as witness not to submit to the (Asiatic Registration) Ordinance if it became law”. Gandhi did not explain the mode of resistance; perhaps he was himself not clear about it. Of one thing, however, there was no doubt; it was to be free from violence. He was vaguely aware that a new principle of fighting political and social evils had come into being. Indian Opinion, the voice of Gandhi’s movement in South Africa, invited suggestions for an appropriate name for this principle. The word ‘sadagraha’ (which means firmness in good conduct) appealed to Gandhi; he amended it to ‘satyagraha’ (firmness in truth). The methodology of the new movement, however, was to evolve gradually in the ensuing months and years; its author was a man for whom theory was the handmaid of action.

How significant September 11 was for humankind comes through in a conversation between Albert Einstein and Jawaharlal Nehru in the United States in 1949. Soon after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing in 1945, the Mahatma had questioned Nehru on the atom bomb. In Nehru’s words, “with deep human compassion loading his gentle eyes,” he remarked that this wanton destruction had confirmed his faith in God and non-violence, and that “now he realised the full significance of the holy mission for which God had created him and armed him with the mantra of non-violence”. Nehru recalled later that, as Gandhi uttered these words, he had resolved then and there to make it his mission to fight and outlaw the bomb.

Gandhi was not destined to launch that crusade. He was assassinated in January 1948. The following year, when Nehru visited the US he related his conversation with Gandhi to Albert Einstein. With a twinkle in his eyes, Einstein wrote down a number of dates on one side, and events on the other, to show the parallel evolution of the nuclear bomb and Gandhi’s satyagraha respectively — almost from decade to decade since the beginning of the 20th century. It turned out that by a strange coincidence that while Einstein and his fellow scientists were engaged in work which made the fission of the atom possible, Gandhi was embarking on his experiments in peaceful, non-violent satyagraha in South Africa; indeed the Quit India struggle almost coincided with the American project for the manufacture of the atom bomb.

The choice between these two opposite and parallel strategies, which Einstein noted in 1949, has become once again a critical and difficult one today. Will the instinctive death-wish of our species (which Freud perceived) triumph over the soul force which Gandhi sought to evoke in the human breast? Gandhi himself had no doubt that peace “will not come out of a clash of arms, but out of justice lived and done by unarmed nations in the face of odds”.

Satyagraha Centenary – A Mangalorean Angle
DaijiWorld – India – by John B. Monteiro- September 11, 2006
One hundred years ago, on September 11, 1906, an impassioned young barrister gathered 3000 Indians in the Empire Theatre Building in Johannesburg, South Africa, and asked them to take an oath to resist their white colonial oppressors without striking a single blow. The young Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi called it “The art of living and dying”. This unique tool of resistance got its name, Satyagraha, through a contest in his Indian Opinion. It is India’s contribution to the world and has made its way to the English Dictionary where it is described as “the policy of passive resistance inaugurated by Mahatma Gandhi…as a method of gaining political and social reforms”
It is interesting to note how Mangalorean Catholics, well educated and well endowed, viewed Satyagraha’s progress leading up to Independence in 1947. It is particularly notable that some articulate leaders of the community could not reconcile themselves to the non-cooperation movement of early 1940s when the British were fighting the evil axis of Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and Japan which had overrun Singapore, Burma and was knocking at the eastern borders of India. Among the moderates or conservatives were Dr. L. P. Fernandes, the pioneer doctor at Fr. Muller Hospital, Kankanady, and Cajetan L.Lobo, prominent lawyer, with fifteen panthers shot to his credit, besides domesticating a pair at home.

But, there were others who ardently embraced the Satyagraha ideal and its application. One of them was Helen Alvares, wife of Thomas Alvares. This couple had settled down in Colombo where Thomas had opened a branch of the family’s tile business. According to Dr. Michael Lobo, who tracks the history of Mangalorean Catholics, in his book, The Mangalorean Catholic Community – A Professional History / Directory, the Alvares couple is said to have been converted to the cause of freedom by the Mahatma himself, whom they once entertained to tea. So impressed were they that they gave their children Indian first names and Helen herself assumed a new name – Alva Devi. She served a short jail term for her participation in the freedom struggle in 1932, thus earning the distinction of being the first Mangalorean Catholic lady to be jailed as freedom fighter. She has been described as Ceylon’s first woman Satyagrahi. On her release from prison on December 26, 1932, Helen Alvares, alias Alva Devi, made a public speech articulating her views on Satyagraha.

” There seems to be such a misunderstanding of what Satyagraha is. Satyagraha is not a particular act. Satyagraha is not fasting, is not going to jail, is not breaking an iniquitous custom or an unjust law. It is none of these things. These things are an expression of Satyagraha only. Satyagraha is a state in which an individual sees clearly an aspect of truth, comes into harmony with it, and the self becomes identified and one with the truth. The acts by which Satyagraha becomes manifested, the expressions of Satyagraha, are as varied and manifold as the expression of God himself. God is truth and truth is God – to the Satyagrahi. One has to be true to the truth which one sees clearly, and be as perfectly true to one’s self which has to become identified with one and the truth, and be unconscious of everything else, of results, to be a true Satyagrahi. There seems to have been such a lot of whimpering and whining about police assaults and lot of other things by those who call themselves Satyagrahis. Frankly I cannot understand this. I cannot see how a Satyagrahi, inevitably impelled by self-expression of a living truth within him, can be conscious of these things, can complain about this or that or that or of this person or that person. Everything that the Satyagrahi meets on the path that he or she pursues cannot be matters for complaint or for crying over or making a fuss about. I want you all to think about what I have said and decide each for yourself what is your self-expression as a Satyagrahi —
” …for God’s sake remember that you can imitate more or less successfully most things, but you can never be an imitation Satyagrahi. You must each of you light the lamp within you. You are not a Satyagrahi when you follow the light of the lamp that burns within another”.

Alva Devi’s warning about imitation for Satyagraha seems to have come true in post-Independence India. Often non-violence has gone out of Satyagraha which is sometimes being used as a blackmail tool. Even the related hartal has now degenerated into the ubiquitous bandh – often marked by violently enforced closures. Such deviations from the straight path of Satyagraha were also occurring during the Mahatma’s lifetime and marred the acceptance of Satyagraha in many quarters—and pained the Mahatma no end.

Special Issue of Peacework Magazine: 100 Years of Gandhian Nonviolent Action
Peacework Magazine – USA – by Sam Diener – September 11, 2006
On September 11, 1906, in South Africa, Mohandas Gandhi launched his first campaign of nonviolent direct action. A hundred years later, it’s time to reflect: what is the legacy of Gandhian nonviolent action today?

Many people around the US and around the world will commemorate the fifth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001 (and the 33rd anniversary of the US and Chilean military’s coup in Chile). In this special issue (September 2006) of Peacework Magazine: Global Thought and Local Action for Nonviolent Social Change, highlights the importance of responding to violence through transformative nonviolent action with articles and essays critically exploring Gandhi’s legacies today.
You can see the content of the issue on our new website: www.peaceworkmagazine.org.
Order Bulk Copies For Only 30¢ per Issue
This issue of Peacework is designed for distribution at peace and justice activities and college classrooms.

Special Offer! We’ll send you bulk copies of this special issue for $.30 a piece (a 90% discount!). You can get 100 copies for just $30, 20 copies for only $6. We hope and believe that people will read the free sample issue and subscribe to Peacework.
Call or email Sam Diener, Peacework co-editor, Peacework Magazine, American Friends Service Committee – New England Regional Office, 2161 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, MA 02140, 617.661.6130, pwork@igc.org, www.peaceworkmagazine.org.

The articles of the Mahatma Gandhi News Digest originate from external sources.
They do not represent the views of GandhiServe Foundation.

Email – mail@gandhimail.org