Ela then echoed not only Gandhi but King, saying that the crux of non-violence is not the absence of violence, it is the presence of love. King often riffed on this theme in his sermons and speeches, saying that “hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” A spate of comments followed Ela’s, she has always made people think, and the sense of the room was that the roots of violence were structural, this went beyond bombs and guns to the very structure of our societies.
Next up was Anamik Shah, the Vice Chancellor of Gujarat Vidyapith, known as “Gandhi University” after he founded the institution in 1920. The university attempts to inject Gandhian values in all the coursework, students are required to learn to spin thread and perform manual labor as a regular part of their schooling.
Professor Shah spoke of the violence of health care, of people dying because they could not pay for the drugs they needed. He spoke about how this had its roots in an economic violence in which human needs were sacrificed in a world of every-widening economic disparity.
Anamik-ji gave an example of how a government had addressed the violence of health by redesigning a fundamental aspect of how a people govern themselves, in this case by redefining property. In Japan, the patent system has been modified so patents are no longer effective for noncommercial uses related to health. This means if a government, or a foundation, manufactures a drug to give away to people, they can do so.
I had never heard of this compulsory availability of knowledge despite my longstanding study of patents in the U.S., and I found this concept very exciting. All day, these kinds of insights kept coming at me. One after another, people stepped up with carefully considered historical stories, insights into Gandhi’s philosophy, and an application of those lesson to our modern world.
Professor Sudhir Chandra, one of the foremost historians of Gandhi, summed up our challenge succinctly, giving the example of how the City of Delhi was embarking on a trend of taking streets named after historical events and people and renaming them after current events. Professor Chandra called this trend “the society for the preservation of the present.” He said we must not treat history like a primary school student would treat a slate, wiping it clean after the day’s exercises. We must live our history and learn from it.
23
