Moments from the Hind Swaraj Conference at Bodhigram

These are photos shot at the Hind Swaraj Conference at Bodhigram, SIDH, Mussoorie. Rev. Samdhong Rimponche. Sri. Ravindra Sharma, Sri. Pawan Gupta, Smt. Radha Behn, Sri. Ransingh Arya, Sri. Shiv Dutt Mishra, Prof. Sharma, Prof. Navjyoti, Prof. Rajiv Sangal, Sri. Udayan Vajpayee, Sri. Chitaranjan and many others spoke.

My report on the event and a note on Hind Swaraj follows.

Samanvaya proposes to organize a Hind Swaraj Conference in Tamilnadu in the month of August. Look out for announecement on this shortly.

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Help To Those Who Need It Most

Help To Those Who Need It Most – E F Schumacher Published in AVARD (Association of Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development) Newsletter, January-February 1961 I can, frankly, see no value in discussing such questions – very interesting from a purely academic point of view – as the ideal size of towns, the ideal location of industry, or the ideal transport system, because even the most brilliant answers to them will do nothing to mobilize the creative power of the people. Instead, I think, we should ask the much simpler and much more profound question: Why is it that the people are not helping themselves? What has come over them? On the whole, throughout history, all healthy societies have managed to solve their problem or existence, and always with something to spare for culture. Grinding poverty with malnutrition and degradation, with apathy and despair, as a permanent condition of millions of people, not as a result of war or natural catastrophe – this is a mos...

Ordinary Life

Ordinary life integrates within itself functionally and meaningfully everything there is but depends upon nothing in particular. Thus ordinary life is both rich and essential at the same time. It is not just the life of ordinary men and women – both its infinite richness and essentialness make it all pervasive. Life pre-supposes ordinary life. This means that wherever there is life, there is ordinary life, and the absence of the latter amounts not only to merely the absence of any other forms of life but to situations or conditions in which it makes no sense to talk of human life. Changes unleashed by information technology and bioengineering are leading to the imagining of such forms of life in future as are devoid of ordinary life. This involves a contradiction, for no life is imaginable without ordinary life. Just as you can have formal or technical languages for specific and well-defined tasks but not as a substitute for ordinary language, and just as you necessarily require o...

Talk on Swaraj...07/01/2012

Ma Foi Foundation organizes monthly talks on different subjects for college youth under the title, "மெய்பொருள் காண்பது அறிவு" ("to comprehend the truth behind is knowledge", the second half of a famous thirukkural of poet Tiruvalluvar that has "regardless of whatever you hear from whomsoever", as the first half ). These meetings are aimed to create a serious dialogue of ethical nature amongst the youth in the city, particularly in the industrial belt in northern Chennai where the youth are exposed more to the economic, social and political conflicts of a unsustainable metropolis life. This Saturday (07/01/2012), I will be taking them through the fundamentals of "Hind Swaraj" as an introduction to a dialogue on the bases of development. Ram, Chief Consultant, Samanvaya

Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule, 1909 by M.K. Gandhi

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