A Form of Contemporary Gandhiism

The December 2010 issue of the Ekta Parishad Newsletter has arrived(by email). Ekta Parishad means a council for unity. According to its website, 'Ekta Parishad is the only non-violent social movement in India working on land and forest rights at a national level'. http://www.ektaparishad.com/ By trying to be 'non-violent' it shows itself to be Gandhian. But the stress on 'land and forest rights' shows that it is going beyond Gandhi. True, Gandhi himself was not indifferent to these problems. But he was far too busy to pay enough attention to them, and, more importantly, he tended to restrain the demands of the people for these rights lest such a movement should get violent. The land problem thus remained unsolved before independence, and has remained so even afterwards in India.
There is another reason why this writer wants to call it beyond Gandhi, and it is the participation of a large number of tribals or Adivasis. This was an area where we may hardly able to trace the shadow of Gandhi, except through some of his distinguished lieutenants like Thakkar Bapa. Since independence there has been deterioration in the position of these groups of people, and perhaps more so with the outset of rapid economic growth, as, for example, large mining companies are having an eye on their resource-rich homelands. By the way Gandhi tried to deny the substance of a separate group of 'untouchables'. He might also have denied the substance of separate 'tribals'. In this sense it is noteworthy that some anthropologists have pointed out that 'At no stage, however, did we have a set of clear indicators of tribal-ness' (S.C.Dube, "Introduction", in Dube, ed.,Tribal Heritage of India, vol.1, 1977).
This writer was fortunate that when he visited the Gandhi Bhavan at Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh in central India, during his research on contemporary Gandhiism, he found Ekta Parishad office attached to the main building, just walked into it without knowing what it was, and was warmly welcomed. It was in October 2008. He is reading the monthly newsletter since then. The December issue reports that on 10 December, the International Human Rights Day, the Parishad organized mass action for land rights in 69 Districts in the country.
Jai Jagat, Victory to the World, is the slogan of the Parishad, and there is a song by that title. It says in part, 'Let Land Belong to All, Even as the Sky Belongs to All'. Jai Jagat!