MAHATMA GANDHI COMMUNITY FORUM

Traveling to India 'In Search of Gandhi'

http://www.pioneerlocal.com/norridge/news/1164777,dp-india-091808-s1.article

Norridge Harwood Heights News - Park Ridge, IL, USA

By Madhuri Deshmukh and Katherine Schuster, September 18, 2008


The travelers listen to T.S. Ananthu at a lecture at Navadarshanam in Tamil Nadu.
(Photo courtesy of Paul Jay)


A woman from a small village in the state of Maharashtra made lunch in her home for part of the group.
(Photo courtesy of Paul Jay)


People wash at a bathing pool outside a mosque in Old Delhi before entering.
(Photo courtesy of Paul Jay)


Elephants walk in traffic in the city of Ahmedabad.
(Photo courtesy of Paul Jay)

In most U.S. classrooms, about the only place a student might find Mohandas K. Gandhi is in an encyclopedia or a textbook entry. Yet Gandhi holds an important place in the mind and heart of our world. Leaders including Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and the Dalai Lama turned to Gandhi's lessons in their search for a politics of peace.

Given the growing concern about violence in the U.S., it is no surprise that many are now returning to Gandhi's message. Known primarily for his commitment to non-violence and to India's long struggle for independence from British colonialism, Gandhi is unique among the world's leaders as a spiritual teacher with deep insight into the problems of the modern world. As a group of educators interested in bringing non-violence and peace into our classrooms, we recently undertook our own "search for Gandhi's India" through an intensive five-week seminar organized through Oakton Community College. This opportunity was made possible by a grant from prestigious Fulbright-Hays Group Studies Abroad program of the U.S. Department of Education.

The seminar brought together 14 professors and teachers from Loyola University Chicago, the College of DuPage, College of Lake County, McHenry County College, Waubonsee Community College, Southwestern Illinois College, Rend Lake College, and Evanston Township High School. While each of us expected the experience to enhance our classroom teaching and professional efforts, we also were searching for non-violent solutions for ourselves, our families and our communities.

Traveling across India, we discovered a highly complex portrait of Mahatma Gandhi. While celebrated and marginalized at the same time by India's political establishment and government institutions, we found Gandhi's vision and ideas alive and vibrant in India's many movements to protect the environment, in efforts to nurture India's unique and diverse cultures and languages, and in numerous programs to address the problems of the rural poor.

Our schedule on this journey was arduous, and our visits with those who both study Gandhi and apply Gandhi to their social work and activism took us from the northern state of Uttaranchal to the southern state of Tamil Nadu. We had the privilege of meeting with many inspiring individuals in whom the spirit of Gandhi endures. They included renowned academics at universities, teachers in rural schools, spiritual followers living in ashrams, environmental activists working in small farming villages, and social activists trying to make a difference in India's overcrowded urban centers.

Throughout our trip, speakers emphasized that even though Gandhi started his work more than 90 years ago, he already understood and offered solutions for India's most contemporary problems: unsustainable urbanization, the agricultural crisis, environmental degradation, and rural poverty. We found many connections between our lives at home and the lives of people in India. Paul Jay, a professor of English at Loyola University Chicago who maintained a detailed Web log during the trip said, "I'm struck by how the world I live in and enjoy is inextricably tied to the problems I've been exposed to in India. That's pretty sobering." Paul Jay's blog can be found at http://www.profpjayindia.blogspot.com.

During our first week we heard from notable intellectuals who are thinking about Gandhi for modern times, such as Ashis Nandy and Madhu Kishwar, senior honorary fellows at the prestigious Center for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, and Vinay Lal, a historian working as the director of UCLA's India studies program. These speakers brought out many creative ways of interpreting and reading Gandhi in our times, and they emphasized the need for new scholarship on Gandhi.

Our second week was spent in Gandhi's home state of Gujarat. In Tejgadh, a small village, we spoke with Ganesh Devy, a renowned literary critic who has dedicated his life to the study and preservation of India's indigenous cultures and tribal languages under threat of extinction in India's drive to industrialize. Tribal groups in India are often left behind in the new modern India. Founded and directed by Devy, the Tribal Academy attempts to learn what tribal groups believe they need to survive, then works to help them address those needs, from building fresh water wells, schools, and medical clinics; to promoting techniques of organic and sustainable farming; to preserving their oral and cultural traditions.

"I was struck by how people in institutions like the Tribal Academy in Gujarat and the Center for the Science and the Environment in Delhi actually listened to the people they served, then collaborated with these people to create model institutions," said Lynn Woodbury, chair of Oakton's English department. "This is different from the usual top-down approach."

We studied and lived on an organic farm and native seed bank called Navdanya, near the city of Dehra Dun, during our third week. Navdanya was founded by another of our lecturers, Vandana Shiva, a physicist who, like Devy, left her professional career to work exclusively to protect India's rich biodiversity and promote the sustainable development of rural areas. Shiva also works tirelessly for organic and non-GMO (genetically modified organism) farming, and against the corporate ownership of life forms, including trees and seeds. Her work is especially significant in light of the unprecedented and alarming suicides of India's farmers -- 100,000 in the last 15 years -- who fall into misery and debt trying to keep up with the high-tech farming practices continually being introduced into India by global agribusinesses.

At Navdanya we also had the honor of meeting with Sunderlal and Vimla Bahuguna, known around the world for their involvement in the Chipko Movement of the 1970s, a woman-led movement to save old-growth trees of the Himalayan region from logging companies. In this movement, village women and activists hugged and stuck themselves (the meaning of the Hindi word chipko) to trees to thwart the loggers.

Traveling to central India we stayed at Sevagram Ashram, which was established by Gandhi, and where we saw the very modest and inspiring hut where Gandhi lived during much of India's independence movement. Our group found inspiration talking with the current residents of the ashram and visiting their elementary school run according to Gandhian educational principles. After a few days in the countryside, we returned to a large city, Pune, which is regarded as "the Silicon Valley of India." The contrast between the rural areas and this new, fast-paced, high-tech India was striking.

Our final week was again split between the country and a large city. After arriving in Bangalore, the location of India's call center industry, we traveled by car to a remote village where Gandhians have established an intentional community called Navadarshanam, or "New Vision." Navadarshanam's founders share Gandhi's critique of modern life; they believe that industrial society is responsible for producing citizens whose increasing preoccupation with material possessions causes them to disengage from their spiritual lives.

Our Fulbright Hays-sponsored visit concluded in the southern city of Chennai, where we met an engaging group of young IT professionals and engineers focused on inventing small machines and labor-saving devices for the people in the villages, as well as supporting the growth of micro-loans for rural Indians to establish their own business ventures. They also explore the concept of "Indian science," as distinct from the Western science to which they were all exposed in their years of formal schooling.

While the seminar offered an unparalleled example of how colleges and universities can effectively address social challenges, we found that the complexities of this amazingly diverse nation could not be fully understood in a month, or possibly a lifetime. From the majesty of the Taj Mahal, to the natural beauty of the hills surrounding Dehra Dun and the beach at Chennai, India flooded our senses -- and left us hungry for more.

Madhuri Deshmukh is a professor of English, and Katherine Schuster is a professor of education and coordinator of the education and global studies programs at Oakton Community College.