Dilip Simeon's blog

Against The Dying of The Light : Bharat Ratna Frontier Gandhi, Badshah Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988)   This note is being circulated for the attention of the Presidential candidates in the forthcoming elections for the offices of President and Vice President of India and the electoral college in this election. Recently, taking advantage of Covid lockdowns, the Haryana Government renamed Badshah Khan Hospital in Haryana after Atal Behari Vajpayee. This was done although the Frontier Gandhi, Badshah Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988), was, apart from other things, a recipient of the Bharat Ratna. He was the only non-citizen apart from Nelson Mandela, to receive the Bharat Ratna. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan went to prison in 1919 in the agitation against the Rowlatt Act in 1919 as did his 90-year old father Behram Khan in the same agitation. This was at a time when Atal Behari Vajpayee had not even been born. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was not merely an NWFP figure; he was, ...

Like most things in Mahatma Gandhi’s life, his ashram in the Indian city of Ahmedabad was simple and austere. Yet between 1917 and 1930, these modest white bungalows, set on the bank of the Sabarmati river in the state of Gujarat, were the beating heart of Gandhi’s non-violent freedom struggle against British rule and his experiments in upending India’s oppressive caste system. Gandhi – who would eventually lead India to independence and remains a global icon for peace – left the Sabarmati ashram in 1930, never to return, and in the years since, it has become one of India’s most sacrosanct sites. It is where Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, Xi Jinping, Benjamin Netanyahu and most recently Donald Trump all paid a visit to during their trips to India. But recently, it has been at the centre of an outcry over a grandiose plan by the government to redevelop the site into a “world class tourist destination” at a staggering cost of 12bn rupees (£117m). Descendants of Gandhi, historians, scholar...

Remembering Mahatma Gandhi: उड जायेगा हंस अकेला / जग दर्शन का मेला ।। The Christian hymn has been played by the Massed Bands of the security forces every year since 1950 to mark the end of the Republic Day celebrations. Listen to some versions: https://scroll.in/video/1015930/abide-with-me-tm-krishna-artists-around-india-sing-the-hymn-dropped-from-beating-retreat-parade ‘Abide With Me’: Listen to the hymn that has been dropped from the Beating Retreat ceremony Two AV talks: The Compass We Lost   Love at Work: Mahatma Gandhi's Last Struggle Some articles Soutik Biswas: Rare pictures of the last 10 years of Gandhi's life Martin Luther King on Mahatma Gandhi: "My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence", September 1958 1948: Assassination of Gandhi 1948: Supreme Court, RSS and Gandhi The Abolition of truth Satyagraha - An answer to modern nihilism The search for new time - Ahimsa in an age of permanent war Dennis Dalton - Gandhi During Partition: A ...

जनवरी 16, नफ़रत  और हिंसा के खिलाफ उपवास का चौथा दिन  13 जनवरी 1948 के दिन महात्मा गांधी ने अपने जीवन का  अंतिम उपवास किया जो उस वक़्त की हिंसा और नफरत के माहौल के खिलाफ शांति बहाल करने की पुकार थी. उनके उपवास के दौरान सर्वधर्म प्रार्थना सभा में गीता, कुरान और गुरु ग्रन्थ साहिब पढ़े जाते, वैष्णव जन और ईश्वर अल्लाह तेरो नाम के साथ जैसे भजन गए गए, लोग बिरला भवन में इकट्ठे होते लोगो ने हिंसा में सहभागी न होने का वचन दिया और शांति स्थापित हुई । गांधी जी का दृढ़ विश्वास था कि नफरत और हिंसा ने धर्म की आत्मा को नष्ट कर दिया है और प्यार और अहिंसा ही धर्म की आत्मा हैं और यही एकमात्र तरीका है जिससे इस दुनिया में शांति फैला सकता है।  गांधी जी के अंतिम उपवास को याद करते हुए , नफरत और हिंसा के खिलाफ खुदाई खिदमतगार लीडर फैसल खान और कृपाल सिंह मंडलोई 13 जनवरी से 18  तक उपवास कर  रहे है। 13 जनवरी  को राजघाट और मज़ार मौलाना अबुल कलम जाकर श्रद्धांजिली के बाद उपवास की शुरू हुए उपवास के चौथे  दिन  हरिद्वार के मातृ सदन के महंत  स्वामी शिवानंद जी महाराज ने समर्...

  Third Ankit-Junaid Social Harmony Award ceremony followed with discussion on "Yuva aur Sampradayikta ki chunautiya" on  28th November- Sunday @5:30 P:M Venue -Gandhi Peace Foundation- DDU Marg, New Delhi Dear Friends! In the year of September 2018, Khudai Khidmatgar launched the Social Harmony Award and fellowship in memory of Hafiz Junaid and Ankit Saxena. Junaid was Killed brutally in a train two days before Eid & Ankit, Killed in Delhi for loving a girl from different faith. The object of this award and scholarship is to nurture the seeds of communal harmony amongst the youths who will become a part of the mainstream in the future. As we all know, it's the youth who are the torch bearers of the society, so it's very important to promote brotherhood /sisterhood and communal harmony for a better society.  Moreover, we need to develop creative and innovative methods of peace building in the society which will help in cementing the gaps between the c...

To G.S. Arundale; August 4 1919:   Let there be no mistake. Civil resistance has come to stay. It is an eternal doctrine of life which we follow consciously or unconsciously in many walks of life. It is the new and extended application of it which has caused misgivings and excitement. Its suspension is designed to demonstrate its true nature, and to throw the responsibility for the removal of the Rowlatt legislation on the Government as also the leaders (you among them) who have advised me to suspend it.  But if within a reasonable time the legislation is not removed, civil resistance will follow as surely as day follows night. No weapon in the Government armoury can either overcome or destroy that eternal force. Indeed a time must come when civil resistance will be recognized as the most efficacious, if also the most harmless, remedy for securing redress of grievances. You suggest the desirability of unity. I think unity of goal we have. But parties we shall always have ...

The members of the RSS who control the Union government have subjugated the press, allegedly tamed the judiciary and used bribery and coercion to undermine or overthrow state governments run by other parties. The new laws aimed at curbing NGOs are animated by the desire to reduce to insignificance all voluntary organisations that do not owe allegiance to the Hindutva ideology...  The RSS and the BJP seek to achieve dominance over the political process, over the institutions of the State, over civil society, even over what people eat, how they dress, and whom they can or cannot marry. This desire to control every aspect of life in the country, whether political, social, institutional or ideological, perfectly fits the textbook definition of “totalitarian”. Meanwhile, their continuing efforts to stigmatise and demonise Muslims clearly demonstrate their communal mindset…   NB : A forthright assessment by an outstanding historian. I would add the observation that the last few...

After E.S. Reddy died on November 1, I wrote an  obituary  in the  Financial Times , covering the major aspects of his life and work. In this column I offer a more personal tribute, of what he meant to me and to other scholars of Gandhi like myself..    I first met Enuga Sreenivasulu Reddy in New York in 1994. I was carrying an introduction from Gopalkrishna Gandhi, who had described him to me as a “great Gandhi-reservoir”. For the next 25 years I was witness to the truth of that appellation, some of the evidence contained in my desktop computer in Bengaluru, which has three large folders entitled: “ES Reddy Material, Instalment I, II and III”. These house hundreds of files, gifted to me over the years by Gopal Gandhi’s friend (now also mine), sometimes as attachments to emails, at other times through CDs sent by courier. The material my benefactor so generously shared includes newspaper and magazine articles in half-a-dozen languages, profiles of Gandhi’s ass...

Githa Hariharan (GH): I thought we would begin by recalling the idea of India that you were witness to through your own family—your parents, and in particular, your uncle Nehru–and, of course, Gandhi. You actually describe it as the ‘glittering aspiration called India’. Would you like to start with that so that we have a context for our talk today? Nayantara Sahgal (NS): Yes, I think what I meant by that was the struggle for freedom under Mahatma Gandhi in which my parents were involved. In fact, my father died of his fourth imprisonment under British rule. It was an amazing period in Indian history—it was the first time that class and mass fought together under the same banner. It had never happened before in any country. Gandhi brought together people in a way that cut across religion, region, class, gender—all the divisions. That’s how he created what became the foundation of independent India. Bringing together this rich diversity into a strong political unity that overthrew the ...