Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Gandhi Journal Article-III ( October 2016 ) - Relevance of Mahatma Gandhi in Canada

Gandhi Journal Article-III ( October 2016 ) 

Relevance of Mahatma Gandhi in Canada

By Dr. Neeta Khandpekar 
Gandhi's legacy is significant for both of them owing to have faced problems of separatism and secession in specific areas. Canada's accord of 1992 (though failed) was an act of political courage, an experiment at once educative and conciliatory which is perhaps the only way of fusing a multicultural society into a nation. Even today we read news headlines like "IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE MAHATMA, GLOBAL MAHATMA". And in fact Martin Luther King Jr, Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Adolfo Perez Esquivel were inspired by Gandhiji's philosophy and practice and have been awarded the Nobel Prize across the world. Gandhi is now a global icon and a mystical figure rolled into one. In the twentieth century Non-violence has achieved many successes. The American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's led by Martin Luther King Jr. culminated in political rights for African-Americans. Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe when confronted with non-violent resistance, led by forces like Solidarity in Poland and Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia. In 1986, a massive show of people's power toppled Ferdinand Marcos's dictatorship in the Philippines. The armies refused to fire on the people after being convinced by them-Photographs of girls offering roses to men manning the tanks are still etched in memory - to support the pro-democracy movement. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu played a major role in South Africa's relatively peaceful transition from apartheid to a democracy that granted blacks political rights. Esquivel an Argentinean was the founder of Peace and Justice, a pan-Latin American civil rights movement in the 1970s that adopted non-violence as its credo at a time when the continent was gripped by violent conflict. This paper will focus on twenty first century issues especially in Canada and its solutions in Gandhian thought.
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Thought For The Day ( MIND )

Mahatma Gandhi Quotes on Mind

Monday, October 10, 2016

Gandhi Journal Article-II ( October 2016 ) - Skill Development in India - The Gandhian Perspective

Gandhi Journal Article-II ( October 2016 ) 

Skill Development in India - The Gandhian Perspective

By Dr. Y.P. Anand 
One of the primary ‘missions’ for taking India forward being pursued at present on a national scale is ‘Skill India’ or making Indians, especially its upcoming youth, much more skilled in the various crafts, trades, industries and professions.

It would act as an ideal inspiration for both the propagators and the students of ‘Skill India’ mission to know that Mahatma Gandhi, all through his long public life (1893 till 30 January, 1948) invariably insisted on use of better and higher skills for working in whichever task or field he happened to be concerned with at any time. He believed in a constant and continuous learning process including experimentation, keeping the ideal as the goal but also knowing that human beings must always keep improving and rising in their skills but can never attain absolute perfection. Hence, he also called himself a ‘practical idealist’, going from ‘truth to truth’. He himself practiced the pursuit of skill in whatever he did even more than he told others to do.

In this paper an attempt has been made to give a summarized presentation of the multi-faceted Gandhian perspective on the critical role, application and development of varied skills in the numerous fields with which he was involved. Though his interest in the promotion of skills related to nearly any major activity he came across was sustained throughout, his longest and deepest engagement remained with the promotion of the skills required in the propagation of khadi (particularly that of hand-spinning) and other village industries. The promotion of khadi and other village industries was an essential part of his lifelong struggle for India’s freedom from foreign rule as well as for removal of poverty and economic morass into which India had sunk.

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