This is a copy of the mail sent by one of my acquaintances. His quotes from Thoreau and Kundera were really fascinating. I thought you should all have a chance to read it. Also, if you dare, join FYRE BIKERS of Kalamassery - I too am a member! Biking Miles with Smile!
By the way, Jojo happens to be an MSW, my junior from TISS.
Hi!
Trust this finds you in the very best of health and spirits. I have been doing quite well, btw. Some three years since I have been in this place, Chintamani. So kind of that nomadic feeling is bugging me once again. For this is the maximum period I have stayed in any place throughout my life. Also the urge to just see places and that too on cycle, wandering around without any burdensome thought…reared its head few months back. Now it’s like almost, delivery time…..
Henry Thoreau once said, while he had gone and stayed in Walden for around two years, all alone, some two centuries back “…because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I had not lived”. Take some inspiration from that….do whatever you really really want to do and come out of it, a little bit more enlightened.
Plan to take off from my work for around two months or so starting this month end and spend cycling, meeting up with people during the time. Though I have not read much of Milan Kundra I found this quote of his quite motivating which was incidentally forwarded to me be one of my cousins with whom I shared the plan initially. This time very consciously trying to get away from the route bit. See, if it makes any sense to you, eh!
“A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.”
Currently thinking of covering Karnataka & Goa, very extensively, but there is no “fixed route”. Don't know, if time is there, then probably cross over to Tamil Nadu, move around to reach the southern end and then enter Kerala and ride up to reach home @ Kottayam somewhere around year end. The plan is to be mostly on the state highways and other smaller roads, avoiding the National Highways as much as possible. The NH has become a soulless road, of late, I feel and it’s a torturous stretch for cyclists and others who travel exposed to the elements.
This time, unlike last time way back in Oct-Dec 2001(when I did Udaipur-Kottayam strech), I'm going to take it much much easy. The focus would not be towards covering so many kilometers in a day but rather on other aspects such as
· Interacting with children and others. Talk to them about the environment and the way currently things are moving forward and how we all can stem the tide. Some kind of message, eh! Also kind of promote cycling because it has solutions to so many of the problems confronting us today. (Seriously, u don’t believe)
· see the kind of impact NREGS is making in people’s lives across the state. Now this is something again quite close to heart and large amount of my work, currently, is related to that only. Just wanted to see the kind of impact it is making on people’s life.
· There are many people who are working on Nature, Natural farming and Alternative Education related aspects across the state. So kind of stay with them and learn a bit or two, eh! For that is something I would like to try my hand at in the near future. Though think time is going to be a constraint. But I will give it a hard try.
· See all the places which I have been wanting to for a very long time, particularly the entire Western Ghats stretch; all those forests and mountains which I love so much. It’s going to be tough riding up and down but I think it would be worth the effort, eh! Any in any case I would be doing that stretch after I would have been on road for few weeks, so hopefully would have built up the required strength and endurance.
· Try & stay with people only in villages and other places unlike last time when I mostly put up in dhabas, hotels et al. This time I just want to stay with people in the villages and accept whatever they would offer me. And wherever they don’t, just move ahead….Hopefully by the end of the trip I would have built up few more relationships….
· Finally, hopefully discover and re-discover myself. And being alone on the trip is going to be helpful, guess. For I think one can have a communion with oneself, eh!
Preparation wise nothing much has happened till date but that is not making me lose my sleep also. Already have got permission for a sabbatical from my workplace. The one from amma….well almost!!! The mind is quite ready and so is the body and everything else should fall in place !! It's all there in the mind. Have jotted down as to what all I should be taking along with me. Again possessions are going to be limited, for otherwise your whole attention, would be on that only. This is a really low cost tour…don’t want to splurge on myself,eh!! Physically I, think, am quite fit and on weekends it's not a problem to cover 40 odd kms in 2 hours flat. But in any case don't think want to keep on eating the kilometers, while on the tour. Think in a day just want to do somewhere between 50-75 kms per day. Also I have to get a new bike also. Currently I have a BSA Mach but don't think she would be able to take the rigour of such a long tour…
Thanks for reading till here. And, if you are interested, why not join in…..
Wud luv to hear back from you…anything. Once again hope all is really well at your end.
Take care
jojo
currently @ Chintamani, some 80 kms NE of Bengaluru
-- "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."...Henry David Thoreau
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
Sunday, 11 October 2009
Gandhiji's Influence on Social Work in India
http://sfr-21.org/gandhi-nonviolence.html
In his leadership of the great national liberation struggle of India against British imperialism, Gandhi established the methodology of nonviolence, which is essential to a culture of peace. To Gandhi, there must be no enemy - only an adversary or opponent who has not yet been convinced of the truth.
Fundamental to his philosophy was the distinction between man and his deed. As he says in under Ahimsa and Search for Truth, page 86 in his autobiography, "Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation and a wicked deed disapprobation, the doer of the deed, whether good or wicked, always deserves respect or pity as the case may be. 'Hate the sin and not the sinner' ... It is quite proper to resist and attack a system, but to resist and attack its author is tantamount to resisting and attacking oneself. For we are all tarred with the same brush, and are children of one and the same Creator."
As he described in 1920 before a court of law in India, he called his methodology Satyagraha: "The term 'Satyagraha' was coined by me in South Africa ... Its root meaning is holding on to truth, hence truth-force. I have also called it love-force or soul-force. In the application of Satyagraha, I discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one's opponent but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on one's own self.
"But in the political field, the struggle on behalf of the people mostly consists in opposing error in the shape of unjust laws. When you have failed to bring the error home to the lawgiver by way of petitions and the like, the only remedy open to you, if you do not wish to submit to error, is to compel him by physical force to yield to you or by suffering in your own person by inviting the penalty for the breach of the law ... In my opinion, the beauty and efficacy of Satyagraha are so great and the doctrine so simple that it can be preached even to children.
Speaking later that year to the Congress considering Non-Cooperation, Gandhi explained that passing a resolution was not enough but each individual must put make it work by harnessing the power of anger into the practice of nonviolence: "For non-co-operation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice and it demands patience and respect for opposite views. And unless we are able to evolve a spirit of mutual toleration for diametrically opposite views, non-co-operation is an impossibility. I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so, our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world."
Nonviolence is difficult and requires great discipline. Gandhi warned that there is no easy way. "It takes a fairly strenuous course of training to attain to a mental state of non-violence ... unless there is a hearty co-operation of the mind, the mere outward observance will be simply a mask, harmful both to the man himself and to others. The perfect state is reached only when mind and body and speech are in proper co-ordination. But it is always a case of intense mental struggle ... Such a struggle leaves one stronger for it ... Non-violence is a weapon of the strong. With the weak, it might easily be hypocrisy ... Love wrestles with the world as with itself, and ultimately gains a mastery over all other feelings (quotations from The Law of Love).
He compares the discipline that is needed to that of a soldier: "In daily life, it has to be a course of discipline though one may not like it, like, for instance, the life of a soldier."
Gandhi often said that while nonviolence was superior to violence, violence, in turn, was superior to passivity in the face of injustice. For example, writing in Young India in August 1920 (see Chapter 28), he said "I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence....I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour. But I believe that non-violence is infinitely superior to violence..."
Nonviolence, according to Gandhi, must be founded on love. As he describes in The Law of Love "Wherever there are jars [conflicts], wherever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love. In a crude manner, I have worked it out in my life. That does not mean that all my difficulties are solved. I have found, however, that this Law of Love has answered as the Law of Destruction has never done."
Gandhi was profoundly influenced by the teachings of Jesus, as he explained in a speech in 1925: "Non-violence ... requires greater heroism than of brave soldiers ... The world does not accept today the idea of loving the enemy. Even in Christian Europe the principle of non-violence is ridiculed ... Christians do not understand the message of Jesus. It is necessary to deliver it over again in the way we can understand ... But I must say that so long as we do not accept the principle of loving the enemy, all talk of world brotherhood is an airy nothing. "
Gandhi's message, like that of Martin Luther King, is essential for revolution in the 21st Century. New methods must be developed to defend the revolution against the violence of the inevitable attacks by the capitalist culture of war without falling into the trap of the socialist culture of war. Gandhi and King have shown that this is possible through nonviolent means.
In his leadership of the great national liberation struggle of India against British imperialism, Gandhi established the methodology of nonviolence, which is essential to a culture of peace. To Gandhi, there must be no enemy - only an adversary or opponent who has not yet been convinced of the truth.
Fundamental to his philosophy was the distinction between man and his deed. As he says in under Ahimsa and Search for Truth, page 86 in his autobiography, "Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation and a wicked deed disapprobation, the doer of the deed, whether good or wicked, always deserves respect or pity as the case may be. 'Hate the sin and not the sinner' ... It is quite proper to resist and attack a system, but to resist and attack its author is tantamount to resisting and attacking oneself. For we are all tarred with the same brush, and are children of one and the same Creator."
As he described in 1920 before a court of law in India, he called his methodology Satyagraha: "The term 'Satyagraha' was coined by me in South Africa ... Its root meaning is holding on to truth, hence truth-force. I have also called it love-force or soul-force. In the application of Satyagraha, I discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one's opponent but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on one's own self.
"But in the political field, the struggle on behalf of the people mostly consists in opposing error in the shape of unjust laws. When you have failed to bring the error home to the lawgiver by way of petitions and the like, the only remedy open to you, if you do not wish to submit to error, is to compel him by physical force to yield to you or by suffering in your own person by inviting the penalty for the breach of the law ... In my opinion, the beauty and efficacy of Satyagraha are so great and the doctrine so simple that it can be preached even to children.
Speaking later that year to the Congress considering Non-Cooperation, Gandhi explained that passing a resolution was not enough but each individual must put make it work by harnessing the power of anger into the practice of nonviolence: "For non-co-operation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice and it demands patience and respect for opposite views. And unless we are able to evolve a spirit of mutual toleration for diametrically opposite views, non-co-operation is an impossibility. I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so, our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world."
Nonviolence is difficult and requires great discipline. Gandhi warned that there is no easy way. "It takes a fairly strenuous course of training to attain to a mental state of non-violence ... unless there is a hearty co-operation of the mind, the mere outward observance will be simply a mask, harmful both to the man himself and to others. The perfect state is reached only when mind and body and speech are in proper co-ordination. But it is always a case of intense mental struggle ... Such a struggle leaves one stronger for it ... Non-violence is a weapon of the strong. With the weak, it might easily be hypocrisy ... Love wrestles with the world as with itself, and ultimately gains a mastery over all other feelings (quotations from The Law of Love).
He compares the discipline that is needed to that of a soldier: "In daily life, it has to be a course of discipline though one may not like it, like, for instance, the life of a soldier."
Gandhi often said that while nonviolence was superior to violence, violence, in turn, was superior to passivity in the face of injustice. For example, writing in Young India in August 1920 (see Chapter 28), he said "I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence....I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour. But I believe that non-violence is infinitely superior to violence..."
Nonviolence, according to Gandhi, must be founded on love. As he describes in The Law of Love "Wherever there are jars [conflicts], wherever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love. In a crude manner, I have worked it out in my life. That does not mean that all my difficulties are solved. I have found, however, that this Law of Love has answered as the Law of Destruction has never done."
Gandhi was profoundly influenced by the teachings of Jesus, as he explained in a speech in 1925: "Non-violence ... requires greater heroism than of brave soldiers ... The world does not accept today the idea of loving the enemy. Even in Christian Europe the principle of non-violence is ridiculed ... Christians do not understand the message of Jesus. It is necessary to deliver it over again in the way we can understand ... But I must say that so long as we do not accept the principle of loving the enemy, all talk of world brotherhood is an airy nothing. "
Gandhi's message, like that of Martin Luther King, is essential for revolution in the 21st Century. New methods must be developed to defend the revolution against the violence of the inevitable attacks by the capitalist culture of war without falling into the trap of the socialist culture of war. Gandhi and King have shown that this is possible through nonviolent means.
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