Gandhian Thought

What is my interest in recording my thoughts on political and social systems?

I studied Sociology in 1983 in context of writing a competitive examination. Recently, I once again studied some books on Sociology. Hence, I am interested to notice the issues related to social and political systems and link them to Sociology concepts if possible.

Yesterday, I collected the book 'Mahatma Gandhi: A Biography' by B.R. Nanda (Oxford Paperbacks,1958) from my daughter for return to the library. I just flipped over for a casual glance and the chapter 40 on Rural Economics, caught my attention.

The Bombay session of INC in October 1934, authorised the formation under the guidance of Mahatma, All-India Village Industries Association. Earlier to this, All-India Spinners Association was established, and it extended its activities to 5,300 villages, provided employment to 220,000 spinners, 20,000 weavers, and 20,000 carders.

Gandhiji gave a call to volunteers from the towns to spread themselves in the country side to help revive dead or dying rural industries and to improve standards of nutrition, education and sanitation. Gandhiji expected these public spirited lmen and women to support themselves on 'a village scale; if they put on their work a price whihc villages could not sustain, village economy would face banruptcy. voluntary work alone could overcome the financial hurdle which made official programmes of rural uplift a snail-pace affair. Can students of NITIE Industrial Engineering program take some up projects in the area of village industries now? I already mentioned about such opportunities in my proposal for a new curriculum. Students can approach Corporate Social Responsibility departments of leading companies for sponsorship in this regard.

The other issues that attracted my attention is effort put in by Gandhi in fighting untouchability. He made it a part of his constructive political program. Was RSS inspired by Gandhi's appeal? May be or many not be. But RSS is carrying on work in this field even today.Jyotirmay Sharma, a political commentator, acknowledges it in the Edit page article of his in Hindustan Times, Mumbai, 15th May 2007. He quotes from the annual report presented at the RSS Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha held on March 9, 2007. "It speaks of the evils of casteism and untouchability being prevalent "even now', and then moves onto delineate the issues connected with this problem. ... resoultion No. 3 of the same conference speaks of the inspiration for the message of social harmony (samajik samarasata) coming from the establishment by 'saints of various religious denominations" of the VHP in 1964....Following this tradition, the VHP meeting in Allahabad in February 2007 had passed a resolution "to open the doors of temples to all Hindus for entry and darshan". It does speak of securing securing social justice and economic empowerment for the deprived sections, but advocates the way "providing equality of opportunities and social dignity on the basis of social harmony and goodwill". While, the ascent of Bahujan Samaj Party to power in UP does indicate a transformation in Indian society, a lot is to be still done to remove the idea of untouchability from the minds of masses and one wants many more social organizations to come forward and spread the message and remove untouchability totally from Indian Society.

KVSSNRao