The Shanti Sena: Philosophy, History and Action

The recent large-scale communal disturbances in India have prompted some older Gandhians to voice the opinion that the time may have come to reactivate the Shanti Sena, Mahatma Gandhi’s Peace Army, that did impressive work in promoting communal harmony between the late 1950’s and the mid-1970s.

Although the idea of a Shanti Sena was considered to be of fundamental importance by Gandhi, he had little success in setting it up in his lifetime. It took the foresight and efforts of Vinoba Bhave and Jayaprakash Narayan, and the organising ability of Narayan Desai. The history of this peace army that they brought into life and directed is not only an inspiring one, it is also important, given the rise in sectarian violence in India and the recent growth of international peace teams that looks to the Sena for motivation and guidance.

Sena members worked in conflict resolution at the grassroots level and undertook peace missions during riots, convinced dacoits to turn themselves into authorities , carried out relief work following wars, experimented with nonviolent defence, conducted nonviolence training camps and even played a role in unarmed peacekeeping work in the international sphere.

Relying on interviews with key participants and archival material, this thought-provoking work contributes greatly to the study of a unique experiment in practical nonviolence. This is the first study of its kind that has chronicled in such detail the activities and history of the Shanti Sena during its most active years, and discussed the prospects for its reinvigoration.

Rethinking Gandhi and Nonviolent Relationality: Global Perspectives

Conceived, debated and written in the shadow of our new wartorn millennium, this work brings together an impressive and varied group of scholars across the disciplinary divide to rethink Gandhi’s legacy and nonviolent ethics.

What traction do peace and Gandhi have in these violent times when religious fundamentalisms of various kinds are competing with the arrogance and unilateralism of imperial capital? In what possible registers can Gandhian moral vernaculars-ahimsa, stayagraha, sarvodaya-address the ravages of our contemporary world?

In rethinking Gandhi’s relevance in the new world order, the contributors approach Gandhi, not purely as an ‘Indian’ figure, but as an activist-thinker whose transcultural nonviolent ethics of the everyday eminently translates across a range of political sites. The volume also gives us vignettes of Gandhi’s more eccentric aspects-his vegetarianism, his fasts and medical practice, and his experiments in communal living. Without deifying Gandhi, the volume sensitively explores the sheer worldliness and embodied nature of Gandhi’s thought, practice and legacy.

Notes from Gandhigram: Challenges to Gandhian Praxis

In a critical departure from books that concentrate on Gandhi the person, Gandhian thought and Gandhism, Notes from Gandhigram focuses instead on the institutions and individuals that have adopted the Gandhian approach as a means of social transformation. It looks beyond the conceptual and symbolic into the concrete to determine whether Gandhi is passé, redundant or insightful.

The relevance of Gandhian thought is examined through a critical analysis of the experience of the Gandhigram Trust, a sixty-year old organisation based in the Dindigul district of Tamil Nadu. Retaining objectivity, but without being judgmental, the study validates the enduring relevance of Gandhi in converting a vision into a social engagement, creating a vibrant community with a culture of concern, humility and care. While Gandhigram has been buffeted by the conflicting relationships between individuals and the institutions, the people and the volunteer, economics and politics, tradition and modernity, self-interest and social interest, the Trust has endured.

Harilal Gandhi: A Life

Harilal Gandhi, the eldest son of Mohandas and Kasturba Gandhi, is a mysterious, fascinating figure. Paradoxically, Harilal has also been the subject of much speculation in recent times. Chandulal Bhagubhai Dalal’s life of Harilal Gandhi is the only full-length biography available on him. It reconstructs a life from letters, family records and archives of the Sabarmati Ashram, and old files of newspapers.

Apart from the life of Harilal Gandhi as chronicled by Chandulal Dalal, Tridip Suhrud has included twelve appendices constituting of hitherto unpublished letters and related material. Chandulal Dalal’s biography, combined with the Translator’s Appendices, contains the complete published, un-published and archival material available on Harilal Gandhi.

In the Tracks of the Mahatma: The Making of a Documentary

In 1937, a 26-year-old Indian aboard a ship sailing from New York to Dublin, decided to make a documentary on the life of Mahatma Gandhi. Over the next few years he travelled some 100,000 miles collecting 50,000 feet of film footage, with the expectation and then the outbreak of the Second World War jeopardising his search. The footage had been shot by about a hundred different cameramen over three decades across four continents. In 1940, he edited this into a 12,000 feet documentary. It was released with Tamil commentary, and shortly after, with a Telugu voice-over. Fearing government repression, the film then went into hiding. On 15 August 1947, the film was screened in New Delhi as celebrations rent the air. A few years later, in 1953, he re-edited the film with English commentary in Hollywood and screened in the USA. In the Tracks of the Mahatma is the story of the making of this documentary in the words of the man who achieved this stupendous task: A.K. Chettiar.