Reclaim Gandhi 2005

international | miscellaneous | news report

Thursday April 07, 2005 22:00

by Tord Björk - Friends of the Earth Sweden

tord.bjork at mjv dot se

The 75th anniversary of the Saltmarch in India was celebrated on most continents. The march that became the beginning of the end of the British empire. Under the banner Reclaim Gandhi neoliberalism and xenofobia was challenged in more than ten towns in Denmark, Finland and Sweden

Reclaim Gandhi!
Saltmarch Jubilee in the Nordic Countries with popular education and politics.

6 April 1930 Gandhi and his followers reached the sea at Dandi to make salt disobeying the British laws and their empire. The Saltmarch showed to the world the strength of "confrontative nonviolence".

6 april 2005 the 75 year anniversary is celebrated internationally. In Copenhagen and Stockholm "Saltmarch 2005" arrives to hand over a baggage of salt and a political message to parliamentarians reclaiming Gandhi against neoliberalism, privatisation and war. In Stockholm the action is organised by Friends of the Earth Sweden and Alternativ Stad, in Copenhagen by a number of national branches of international organisations including Attac, Womens´s International League for Peace and Freedom, Emmaus movement, Friends of the Earth, Artists for Peace and Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam as well as organisations like the Association Revolt protesting against Danish participation in the war against terror. Present at the Christiansborg parliamentary building will be representatives from the organisations including Marko Ulvila from Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam - Democracy Forum Finland and Vijay Pratap from India who on behalf of Lokayan recieved the Alternative Nobel prize and today is active in the World Social Forum process and coordinator of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam in India.

At more than 20 places on four continents different actions has taken place while hundreds of people have marched the same way and same dates from Ahmedabad to Dandi in India as Gandhi did three quarters of a century ago. Half of the international activities take place in Nordic countries, five in Sweden, four in Finland and two in Denmark.

A joint Danish-Swedish committee has initiated activities in the Oeresund region focusing on opposing neoliberalism, xenofobia and supporting confrontative nonviolence to oppose the war on terrorism. Nordic activities include addressing the need to confront the occupation of Palestine and supporting the International Solidarity Movement, translating Gandhi´s most influencial political book Hind Swaraj into Finnish by 100 volunteers, organising seminars, making posters and exhbitions to further popular education.

In a manifesto The Oeresund Committe of the Salt March Jubilee states that the struggle the Indians started in 1930 also is of current interest: "Privatisation and social cuts of common goods and resources is something that has increased the last decades both in rich and poor countries. The movement opposing these trends is directed against the international economic structures. But it is also on each place a local movement of three huggers and "welfare huggers" in many countries":

The brochure made by the committe states the ambition to confront "a view on Gandhi as a 'spiritual superman' who demands from us impossible tasks to refrain from violence under all circumstances we want to put him into his social and historical context."

Below you will find a list of the Jubilee activities in the Nordic countries. More information including a poster and a brochure you will find att www.folkorelser.nu/english/saltmarch.html. In Swedish and some Finnish and Danish you will find information at www.folkrorelser.nu/saltmarschen, in Finnish at www.demokratiafoorumi.fi/suolamarssi.html.

On the Indian Jubilee Saltmarch and other international activities you will information att www.saltmarch.org.in Gandhi Today follows the jubilee march and has a intro in english on its first page http://www.gandhitoday.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=1, The Transnational Fund for Future and Peace Research , TFF has many articles on the Saltmarch, Gandhi and nonviolence http://www.transnational.org/forum/Nonviolence/Nonviolence.html

Nordic Activities

5-19 March Photo exhibition Blågården Bibliotek i Copenhagen in Denmark on Lakshmi Ashram, the Salt March and Gandhi.

11 March the exhibition Celebrate courage! Salt March 75 years is presented in Malmö at the AGM of Network on Progressive Popular Education, Sweden.

11 March Swedish Radio P1 broadcasted an interview with Tord Bjoerk, one of theinitiators of the Nordic Saltr March Jubilee and Indian organisers of the International March for Peace, Justice and Freedom Between Ahmedabad och Dandi in India.

12 March - 5 April 100 persons translated Gandhis book Hind Swaraj to Finnish.

19 March the picture Gandhi is shown together with a discussion on nonviolence today with Manne Gersell from International Solidarity Movement Malmö in Kristianstad, Sweden.

20 March - A handfull of Salt, a meeting in Östhammar library with Jan Wiklund, editor of Gandhi Today

5 April a meeting on Gandi and the Salt March in Tampere, Finland.

9 April Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam - Democracy Forum makes a seminar at Finland Social Forum on Gandhi and the Salt March in Helsinki, Finland.

19 May the Network on movements organises a seminar in Gothenburg Sweden on Gandhi with social movement (academic and lay) researchers.

6 April - At the same day as the Salt March reached the sea in 1930, parliamentarians in Copenhagen and Stockholm will be given a bag of salt and a political message.

To the Jubilee Folkrörelsestudiegruppen - The Popular Movement Study Group, have contributed by an article on Gandhian and Indian popular movement influence in the Nordic countries 1917-2004. Together with other material it is available at www.folkrorelser.nu/english/saltmarch.html.

Salt March Jubilee in the Nordic Countries have been intiated by Tord Björk, EU-parlamentarian Satu Hassi, peace researcher Jørgen Johansen and the troubadour Per Warming. it is supported in Denmark by The Swallows, v/ Lars Rau, Peace Guard v/ Bo Richardt, Rune Lund, MF,Red Green Alliance, in Sweden by Friends of the Earth and in Finaldn by Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam - Democracy Forum and the organising Committe of World Social Forum in Finland.

The Oeresund Committe of the Salt March Jubilee was established in Malmoe, Sweden 13th of February 2005 by Erik Stinus, writer, København, Jan Øberg, Transnationella stiftelsen för freds- och framtidsforskning, Lund, Louise Pettersson, Folkrörelsestudiegruppen, Kristiansstad, Manne Gerell, människorättsaktivist, International Solidarity Movement Malmö, Patrick Mac Manus, Foreningen Oprør, København, Per Warming, trubadur, København, Ruth Sillemann, Lakshmi Ashrams Venner, København, Sara Mathai Stinus, Kunstnere for Fred, København, Stig Broqvist, miljöaktivist och välfärdskramare, Hälsingborg, Tord Björk, Miljöförbundet Jordens Vänner, Kristiansstad

The Oeresund Committe of the Salt March Jubilee

Contact person in Denmark

Per Warming, Köpenhamn
[email protected]
tel +45 32 96 10 17

Contact persons in Sweden:

Göran Folin, Stockholm
[email protected]
tel +46 8 601 94 14

Tord Björk, Kristianstad
[email protected]
tel +46 44 12 32 94

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Comments (2 of 2)

Can't Do NonVIolence - Do violence

by Gandi Anti-Pacifist! - Economic VIolence the WOrst Form

Fri Apr 08, 2005 03:47

When ever people bring up gandhi - it is important to present the key things about him - 1. he recognixzed that many situation scould arise when non-violence could not work - as with Hitler or any non-moral entity (like the US) - second he hated apssivists and would violently condemn almost all activists today for being fullt consumed by this disease -

2. He hated technology and the modern world - even typewriters - his economics was low-tech from the villages and a type of localist socilism --

any more quwstions about the real gandhi - or why he is so ignored in India and lied about in the west????

AGents of Accion - COrrelations of Force

by Tanya - those w / toungues

Fri Apr 08, 2005 22:21

http://italy.indymedia.org/news/2005/04/768695.php
http://web.utk.edu/~nolt/radio/Nonviolence.htm

What Gandhi hoped to achieve by nonviolence was what he called Truth. Just as scientific truth is unattainable so long as the observer remains biased, so Gandhi believed that spiritual truth is unattainable so long as we remain attached to selfish interests and desires. Only devotion to the ideal of absolute nonviolence ¾ absolute selflessness ¾ enables us to see the world without the binders and filters of the self ¾ to see things in their Truth.
Gandhi regarded his life as a series of "experiments with truth," which took the form of limiting desires and living as simply as possible. So, for example, he was a vegetarian, subsisting largely on fruit and nuts, a diet not harmful to animals or even to living plants.
In economics, Gandhi advocated stability, as opposed to growth. The Earth, he said, produces enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed. But he was no lover of poverty, except for the voluntary poverty of the exceptional truth-seeker. On the contrary, much of his work in India was devoted to the alleviation of involuntary poverty and its attendant sense of futility, through programs of economic self-reliance. But he warned of the dangers of unchecked acquisitiveness, both to the individual spirit and to the environment. "I hold," said Gandhi in 1916,

"that economic progress ... is antagonistic to real progress. Hence the ancient ideal has been the limitation of activities promoting wealth. ... That you cannot serve both God and Mammon is an economic truth of the highest value. We have to make our choice. Western nations today are groaning under the heel of the monster-god of materialism. Their moral growth has become stunted. ...
This land of ours was once, we are told, the abode of the gods. It is not possible to conceive gods inhabiting a land which is made hideous by the smoke and the din of mill chimneys and factories and whose roadways are traveled by rushing engines dragging numerous cars crowded by men mostly who know not what they are after."

Nonviolence, for Gandhi, was incompatible not only with excessive wealth but with waste. One day toward the end of his life, his grandson Arun asked him for a new pencil to do his lessons. "Where is the pencil you had this morning?" Gandhi asked, "It still seemed usable to me." Arun admitted he had thrown it away.
Though it had grown dark in the meantime, Gandhi gave the Arun a flashlight and told him to find the pencil and bring it back. After much searching, he succeeded and returned triumphantly, hoping to prove to his grandfather that it was indeed too small. But Gandhi was unimpressed. "There are at least ten days use left in this pencil," he said. Then he explained to Arun that pencils are produced by the destruction of trees (a form of violence) and that many people are too poor even to have pencils even of this length. Arun kept the pencil stub, which he used for more than ten days.
Gandhian morality is endlessly demanding, therefore unpopular. But what if it were widely practiced?

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Comments (2 of 2)