Long before the Salt Satyagraha was launched by Mahatma Gandhi from Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad on 12 March 1930, there were popular uprisings, hunger-strikes in jails, workers' strikes and public processions denouncing the ruthless colonial rule subjugating the country.
Apath of non-violent struggle can often be the best forward when the cause is deeply rooted in justice and there is widespread recognition of this being so.
On the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, Trinamul Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee took a pledge to carry on with the struggle to protect rights of the deprived.
Even Mahatma Gandhi, who had his own tryst with apartheid in South Africa and who sympathized with the Jews owing to the unprecedented pain and persecution they faced at the hands of Nazis, was able to nuance his views on the Israel-Palestine issue with the comment, Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English, and France to the French
To the British, a non-violent Pathan was unthinkable, a fraud that masked something cunning and darkly treacherous. In the most horrifying case, the British killed about 400 Khudai Khidmatgar members in Peshawar on 23 April 1930. The massacre at the Qissa Khawani Bazaar became a defining moment in the non-violent struggle to drive the British out of India
Rashtriya Swachhata Kendra (RSK) was first announced by the Prime Minister on 10th April 2017, on the occasion of the centenary celebrations of Gandhiji's Champaran Satyagraha.
‘Literacy is not the end of education nor even the beginning. It is only one of the means by which man and woman can be educated. Literacy itself is no education. I would therefore begin the child education by teaching it a useful handicraft and enabling it to produce from the moment it begins its training‘. ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Determining whether something is good or bad is almost second nature to us, but often we fail to the paint the full picture of a situation before passing judgement.
Gandhi's main arguments against medical science are: (1) it attaches undue importance to the body rather than the soul, which is infinitely more real than the body; (2) it is inconsistent with non-violence, partly on account of vivisection and partly because the modern medicines either contain or involve the taking of animal fat, alcohol, meat and other 'forbidden' food; (3) it is expensive and, therefore, inaccessible to the poor; and (4) it is inseparably linked with machinery, industrialization and modern civilization in general which Gandhi rejects in its entirety.
The BJP's strategy provides a good model. There is only one Hindutva party in India. All Hindutva forces are together, from the BJP to the Bajrang Dal. The Congress, by contrast, allowed itself to be splintered again, thus fragmenting secular politics.
