NEW DELHI, India — There are two Delhis: the Old and the New. Old Delhi was built by the Mughal sultan in 1638, Shah Jahan, famous for building the memorial Taj Mahal for his beloved deceased queen in Agra. Ten years later he built the Red Fort, Jami Masjud, the grand mosque and Chandni Chowk, once a processional thoroughfare leading to the red Fort but now a busy commercial district. New Delhi, now a noisy and chaotic metropolis of 12 million people, was built by the British in 1930. Early last August, the first consultative meeting of the new UNESCO Category 1 Institute of Mahatma Gandhi was held at Old Delhi near the ancient centre of the Sultanate of Delhi Qutb Minar.
The Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development
I felt very much honored to be invited by the new Unesco Category 1 Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development. It links perfectly with the Official UNESCO approval of the Philippines as a Category 2 Southeast Asian Center of Lifelong Learning for Sustainable Development.
Together with Bangkok Regional Director Gwang-Jo Kim, the organizers were from the Ministry of India’s Human Resource Development Dr. Karan Singh and Prof. R. Govinda of the National University of Educational Planning and Administration and Prof. Pranati Panda of the Department of Comparative Educational Planning and Administration.
Mahatma Gandhi’s India of My Dreams
I extended my stay beyond the August 2 to 3 conference seeking to know more about how Mahatma Gandhi inspired this Asia Pacific institute that is promoting education for peace and sustainable development.
The major book store at Khan Market had several Gandhi books, foremost of which and written by Gandhi himself is reference, India of My Dreams, a rhapsody of how he sees India. He said, “Everything in India attracts me. It has everything that a human being with the highest aspirations can want. India is essentially karmabhumi (land of duty) in contradistinction to bhogabhumi (land of enjoyment).
“Mohandas, a True Story of a Man, a People and an Empire” is a 745-page biography written by Gandhi’s grandson Rajmohan. It answers the questions long asked about the timid youth from India’s west coast who became a century’s conscience and led his nation to liberty.
Another reference is the video film Gandhi, the masterful epic, directed by Richard Attenborough. Twenty years in the making it garnered nine 1982 Academy Awards for Best Director, Actor and Original Screenplay. In stirring detail Gandhi’s life, principles and power explode on the screen with vivid details of the horrific massacre at Amritsar where the British opened fire on 15,000 unarmed men, women and children and the dramatic march to the sea where Gandhi led thousands of his fellow Indians to prove that the sea salt belonged to all and was not just a British monopoly.
Not well known in the Philippines but highly acclaimed is the heart-wrenching film “Gandhi My Father.” The message stated that “while Gandhi was hailed as father of the nation, his son Harelal always resented the fact that for him, he was like a father who never was. Although his father apologized to him he failed to forgive him and chose to tread the path that is completely against his idealistic father’s principles.
India’s soul force challenges the brute force of the West
Gandhi states: “I feel that India’s mission is different from that of others. India is fitted for the religious supremacy of the world. There is no parallel in the world for the process of purification that this country has voluntary undergone. India is less in need of steel weapons. It has fought with divine weapons. Other nations have been votaries of brute force. The terrible war going on in Europe furnishes a forcible illustration of truth. India can win all by soul force.”
“I am wedded to India because I owe my all to her. I believe absolutely that she has a mission for all the world. She is not to copy Europe blindly. India’s acceptance of the sword will be the hour of my trial.” (This is exactly what happened when independence was granted to India due to Gandhi’s freedom movement. Yet, religious zealots and intolerance between Muslims and Hindus split India into two states: Pakistan and India. Bloody war decimated men, women and children from both sides and the animosity still lingers today. Ultimately, this led to Gandhi’s assassination.)
“My life is dedicated to the service of India through the religion of non- violence. If India makes violence her creed, I would not care to live in India. She will cease to evoke pride in me. I cling to India like a child to its mother’s sweet breast, because I feel she gives me the nourishment I need. She has the environment that responds to my aspirations. When that faith is gone, I shall feel like an orphan without hope of ever finding a guardian.”
The doctrine of Swaraj
“The word ‘Swaraj’ is a sacred word, a Vedic word, meaning self-rule and self-restraint. By Swaraj, I mean the government of India by the consensus of the people and ascertained by the largest number of the adult population, male or female, native born or domiciled, who have contributed by manual labor to the service of the State and who have taken the trouble of having registered their names as voters. Real Swaraj will come not by acquisition of authority by a few but the acquisition of the capacity by all to resist authority when it is abused. Swaraj is to be obtained by educating the masses to a sense of their capacity to regulate and control authority. Self-government depends entirely upon our internal strength, upon our ability to fight against the heaviest odds.
“The Swaraj of my dream recognizes no race or religious distinctions. Nor is it to be a monopoly of lettered persons nor yet of moneyed men. Swaraj is for all, including the farmer, including the maimed, the blind, the starving toiling millions.
“Under Swaraj based on non-violence (Ahimsa) nobody is anybody’s enemy, all can read and write and their knowledge keeps growing from day to day. Sickness and disease are reduced to a minimum. No one is a pauper and labor can always find employment. There is no place under such government for gambling, drinking or immorality or for class hatred. The rich will use their riches wisely and usefully and not squander them in increasing their pomp and worldly pleasures.”
The problem of unemployment, labor and strikes
“I suggest that we are thieves in a way. If I take anything that I do not need for my own immediate use and keep it, I thieve it from somebody else. Nature produces enough for our wants, from day to day without exception. If only everybody took enough for himself and nothing more, there would be no pauperism in this world. There would be no man dying of starvation. In India we have got many millions of people who have to be satisfied with one meal a day.” (This reminds me of a four-year old boy, the youngest of five children of a tricycle driver telling me that he eats rice with a bit of water and salt. There must be a million others like him in our country.)
“Sparsely populated America may have need of machinery. India may not need it at all. Where there are millions and millions of idle labor, it is no use of thinking of labor saving devices. The reason of our poverty is the extinction of our local cottage industries and our consequent unemployment.”
Economics and ethics
“The masters care only for the service they get. What becomes of the laborer does not concern them. All their endeavors are generally confined to obtaining maximum service with minimum payment. The laborer on the other hand tries to hit upon all tricks whereby he can get maximum pay with minimum work. The result is that although the laborers get an increment there is no improvement in the work turned out.”
“A satisfactory solution of the condition of labor must include the following: the hours of labor must leave the workmen some hours of leisure; they must get facilities for their own education; provision should be made for an adequate supple of food, clothing and necessary education for their children; there should be sanitary dwellings for the workmen; and they should be in a position to save enough to maintain themselves during their old age.
“If instead of insisting on rights everyone does his duty, there will immediately be the rule of order established among mankind.”