ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

GandhiSubscribe to Gandhi

Deconstructing the Dalai Lama on Tibet

This article explores the changing roles of the Dalai Lama against the backdrop of the radical voices who want to wage an armed struggle for a politically independent Tibet. It also studies how the Dalai Lama has been influenced by Gandhi's doctrine of non-violence.

Death of Indian Pluralism?

Gujarat was a watershed. What we are witnessing is the death of Indian pluralism.

Mahatma Gandhi's Dialogues with Americans

Gandhi never visited America, but he met and corresponded with many Americans. Showing that satyagraha had a great potentiality, he helped to awaken some of the best in American traditions, and by his explicit connection to Christ and Thoreau, he made some Americans feel that these teachings were not so foreign. Gandhi helped to invigorate the idea of non-violent resistance in the west and to politicise it as he had done in India. His connection to America called forth many courageous non-violent activists and some powerful and sensitive American writing too.

Towards an Understanding of Gandhi's Views on Science

Gandhi, it is argued in this paper, was not anti-science as is commonly misunderstood. Through a look at his various experiments, many unrealised in his time, it is shown that Gandhi's life defined a space for an alternative science for civil society that would operate with different methods. Gandhi's focus on the non-physical resources in organising for science, the satyagrahi scientist, for instance, is a radical departure from science policy as expressed by Nehru in his famous Scientific Policy Resolution of 1956 and followed in India since independence. He also had a universal message by providing a new cosmology of man-nature and fact-value relations that he articulated and put in place through his various experiments. With this outline of a theoretical framework for Gandhian science, the case of the khadi movement is taken up for detailed explication.

In the Lap of the Himalaya

This paper looks at Mahatma Gandhi's epoch-making visit to Uttarakhand in 1929 as a crucial link between the nation's struggle for swaraj and the ongoing people's movement in the region. Gandhi's visit kindled the process of giving the freedom movement in Uttarakhand a mass base. Just so, the numerous social activists of the Chipko movement and the anti-liquor protests of today owe their inspiration of Gandhi. In many ways, Gandhi's understanding and analysis of the issues, including untouchability, the flesh trade and the education system, and the prescriptions he suggested for their remedy form a useful basis for a blueprint to solve the region's problems even today.

Autonomy as 'Moksha'

Gandhi: Struggle for Autonomy by Ronald J Terchek; Vistar Publication, New Delhi, 2000; pp xiv+265, Rs 245 (paper)

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