Challenging Violence Is Our Task

Surajkund, Haryana | November 19, 2009
Far, in the outskirts of Delhi Tibetan exile Prime Minster has landed this morning from his return flight from Italy and at 9am he has arrived half an hour before time to attend a conference on Gandhi here at Surajkund, Haryana.

Prof Samdhong Rinpoche was speaking this morning at the glittering ceremony of the Hind Swaraj Centenary Commemoration International Conference organised by the Swarajpeeth Trust. The organisation is run by Gandhian husband and wife Rajiv Vora and Niru Vora. The four-day Conference was inaugurated this morning by noted social activist Ela Bhatt and it will go on till November 22, 2009.

At the glittering ceremony here at the Surajkund it’s a convergence of more than hundred luminaries: scholars, Gandhians - young and old, academicians, social-political activists like Prof Ashish Nandy, Ajarn Sulak Sivaraksa, Prof Anthony Parel, Prof UR Ananthamurty, besides activists from conflict zones like Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, Kashmir, Burma and Tibet.

The conference will discuss challenges for Nonviolence based on day-to-today lives of people, in the conflicts zones and how they face them practicing Gandhi. On the fourth day His Holiness the Dalai Lama would come and spend on whole day. The conference plans to draw an action plan and request His Holiness to lead the global nonviolent movement.

“Practitioners of nonviolence from different communities and countries are here to share experience and learn from each other in the growing challenging times of globalization and violence” said one of the participants from south India.

Prof Ashish Nandy was in his passionate best while speaking on "untamed language of rebellion in our time" said he encourages what he called "militant nonviolence".

What Prof Samdhong Rinpoche described as a treatise, a manual guide for modern world is Hind Swaraj a thin book sold in India for five Rupees was written by Gandhi in ten days on a ship, while returning from England after the round table conference. He finished writing it on the November 22, 1909.