by Siddharaj Dhadda Way back in 1951, the Telangana region, of what is now the Indian State of Andhra Pradesh, was seething with agrarian discontent. Vinoba [Bhave] started a walking tour of the area. Every day he went from one village to another, meeting people, talking to them and trying to understand their problems. On [...]
by Manmohan Choudhuri The quantitative achievements of the Gramdan Movement have been impressive in the last three years. At the moment we have nearly eighty thousand Gramdans, eleven districts (with populations ranging from four hundred thousand to four million) in which at least eighty-five per cent of the villages have opted for Gramdan, and six [...]
by Narayan Desai If the ultimate objective of Gramdan is to replace the present centralised state with decentralised village republics, the objective of the Shanti Sena is to replace the police and the army with a nonviolent volunteer force. Therefore, Gramdan and Shanti Sena are very closely interrelated. [See the Glossary at the end of [...]
by Terry Messman “Governments have the power to throw us in jail and shoot at us and intimidate us, but they don’t have the power to kill our spirits.” David Hartsough Spirit: David, when were you hired as staff organizer for the American Friends Service Committee in San Francisco? Hartsough: I was hired in 1973 [...]
by Orient BlackSwan Editor’s Preface: Narayan Desai (b. 1924) was the son of Gandhi’s personal secretary and closest advisor, Mahadev Desai. Raised and educated at Gandhi’s ashrams, Sabarmati and Sevagram, he has remained committed to the Gandhian movement and to Gandhian principles his entire life. After marrying he joined Vinoba Bhave’s community and later became [...]
by Thomas Weber The important philosopher of deep ecology and Gandhian philosophy, Arne Naess, died in January 2009. (1) Not one Australian newspaper or media outlet referred to this event. The news did not even make it into the obituary columns of such global weeklies as Time magazine (although, as usual, many sporting and film [...]
by Thomas Weber I first went to India in 1975 as a young person with a strong interest in the country and its most famous son. I returned in 1979 specifically to find Gandhi and have been back on Gandhi quests about a dozen times since. I have now spent something over three years of [...]
by Thomas Weber Satyagraha, as used in interpersonal conflicts, often depends on the degree to which its values have been internalised rather than on a conscious adoption of tactics. Gandhi claimed that “there is no royal road” to achieve this. It will only be possible “through living the creed in your life which must be a [...]
by Mark Shepard We are constantly being astonished 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. M. K. Gandhi The first time I heard of Shanti Sena” was in 1978, at an international gathering of [...]
by M. K. Gandhi Editor’s Preface: Several of our articles, most recently “Mahila Shanti Sena”, have made reference to Gandhi’s economic theory. The following compilation of quotes will give a flavor of his thinking. Please consult the note at the end for links regarding this aspect of Gandhi’s thought. JG Economics & Ethics I must [...]
