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

  Structuring Hind Swaraj Mahatma Gandhi In Action (1932 - 1940) The year 1933 began a new phase in the life of Mahatma Gandhi the implications and lessons of which, perhaps, have yet to be fully appreciated.   While the years 1919 to 1931 may be seen as the years which, by the gathering of the Indian people, made it certain, not only to themselves but to the British, as well as the world at large that the struggles which they had launched against British rule under the leadership and guidance of Mahatma Gandhi were distinctly leading towards political independence; the phase beginning with 1933 and continuing in full vigour till 1940, may be taken as Gandhiji's attempt to provide the content and structure (basically on the premises visualized by him in Hind Swaraj in 1909) of such political independence.   That for various complex reasons this attempt largely got aborted   makes it even more imperative that more is known and understood (through research and stu...

  Speech by Samdhong Rinpoche, Sevagram, 10th October 2004   The following is the content of the speech made by Rev. Samdhong Rinpoche, Tibetan Prime Minister in exile on the 10th October 2004 in front of Bapu Kuti at Sevagram. 10th October happened to be the birthday of Gandhiji according to the Indian calendar and the gathering for evening prayer consisted of delegates from all parts of the country who were there to attend a conference on education based on the Nai Taleem. After the evening prayers were over, Rev. Rinpoche was requested to give a speech on his thoughts on that day.   For more than 2 years now this thought has been in my mind. I have been thinking that I should write a letter regarding the Hind Swaraj and the need to initiate serious debate in the society based on this book. However, some how this could not happen. Finally, this year on the 1st of October I managed to force myself to sit and write this letter and finish it by the 2nd of October. But ...

  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 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...