The Gandhi Foundation, in collaboration with West London Synagogue, held a Multifaith Celebration in honour of Gandhi (60 years since his assassination) on 30th January 2008.

  The Theme was “Peace Studies & Gandhi”and an abridged version of the following talk was given by David Maxwell of The Gandhi Foundation:

Sixty years ago today Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated. Nehru announced the sad news on the radio: "The light has gone out of our lives," then added, "I was wrong. The light that has illumined the country for these many years will illumine this country for many more years, and, 1,000 years later, that light will still be seen, and the world will see it. For that light represented the living truth."  Wonderful words! The living truth is more far-reaching than national, cultural, even faith boundaries.

Throughout his life Gandhi the Hindu attracted people of other faiths to his causes. Moslems accepted this unusual lawyer who encouraged them to settle disputes out of court in South Africa, Christians warmed to his message of peace and love,  the Jew Kallenbach supported his South African experiment in communal living, and found him another Jew Sonya, who fearlessly kept Gandhi’s office going while he was in prison. Back in India Buddhists came from as far away as Japan to learn from him.  All four faiths are represented in this memorial service. The Gandhi Foundation is especially grateful to the West London Synagogue for hosting this service today, attended by Hindus, Moslems, Christians, Jews, Buddhists and well wishers of other faiths or no faith.

Turn to the internet and google Mahatma Gandhi, and you will be amazed at how far his ideas have spread. After 60 years there are already a couple of hundred books on his life and message. At the popular level one book published last year pictured  statues of Gandhi, and murals and banners with Gandhian sayings drawn from every inhabited continent.    

Because his message was, as Nehru said, “the living truth” some people have shown remarkable persistence in spreading his message. For example,  Richard Attenborough after reading  Fischer’s Life of Gandhi, immediately wanted to film it, and despite the fact that it took 20 years to raise the necessary funding, persisted in the idea and proved wrong the sceptics who doubted  that people would pay to see the story of so unusual a man. One byproduct of that persistence was the formation of The Gandhi Foundation after the film caught the public imagination. Richard Attenborough is our President.

Last  June the United Nations General Assembly voted by over 140 votes to mark Gandhi’s birthday, October 2, annually as UN Day of Nonviolence. The Secretary General of the UN, in an eloquent address supporting the proposal, spoke of how he kept as a reminder on his desk, the list of Gandhi’s Seven Social Sins to Avoid. The social sins, I hasten to add were not about etiquette, but  corrupt moral choices.

The title of  my talk is Gandhi and Peace Studies.  What are Peace Studies? They describe a new academic discipline first introduced in the second half of the 20^th C. Peace Studies draw on subjects like anthropology, psychology, political science and ethics, but differ from them in stating a required outcome, Peace. In 1985 the idea of such a discipline drew flak from commentators like Roger Scruton who wrote in the Times newspaper; “When the tide of drivel has swollen to such proportions that the University of Bradford can offer a first degree in a subject, peace studies, that does not even exist, it is surely time to ask whether there might be a better use of taxpayer’s money”. Bradford replied, “For the record there are university departments and research centres in the USA, W Germany, Canada, Holland, Finland, Sweden and many other countries.”  

The first thirty years of Bradford’s Department of Peace Studies was a time of remarkable growth. When it opened in 1974 there were 5 staff and 20 students. Who believed that peace could be studied, violent conflict prevented or resolved, and, in the long run, war as an institution abolished. The first Professsor, Adam Curle, successfully mediated to end the war in Biafra  during the Nigerian Civil War. His last work before he died was helping the war-traumatised in  former Yugoslavia. By 2002 AD, 20 Peace Studies students had grown to 200  a year. Many were post-graduates. The number of PhD students is currently about 100. The external examiners recently gave the Department top grades in everything they assessed.

Students come from all over the world. They go on to jobs as NGOs, diplomats, journalists, and consultants. Others move to other universities and teach similar courses, sometime with different names eg Conflict Resolution or  Transforming Conflict. Andrew Rigby teaches Reconciliation and Forgiveness at Coventry University. Gandhi would have approved of that!  There are frequent attempts to get new courses going, as the number of books on peace studies listed on Google demonstrates the potential  - 4,000 books, with 3,500 of them best sellers. However, finding the funding for academics to set up and students to attend new courses requires more money and effort than buying a few popular books . Those tempted to give up, can find inspiration in Gandhi’s lifestory. Note the decades of  strenuous preparation preceded each major breakthrough.

Why the current explosion of interest in Peace Studies?  Consider this change. When Gandhi was born, wars were fought with footsoldiers and cavalry and no weapon more destructive than a cannon. Remember Tennyson’s Poem of that period? The Charge of the Light Brigade.  By the end of Gandhi’s life one atom bomb dropped from one plane could wipe out a whole city. Gandhi, horrified by the atom bomb, wrote that it convinced him even more strongly that the way forward had to be a non-violent one, not a military one. Gandhi’s greatness lay in a lifetime of actual experiments in nonviolence. He challenged us all in his dictum: “Be the change you want to see.”

It is no accident that  PEACE STUDIES was first introduced  as an academic discipline in its own right in the 1950s, in the Universities of Michigan and Oslo.   Both Kenneth Boulding  in Michigan and Johann Galtung  in Oslo were admirers of Gandhi. After 2 atom bombs had abruptly ended World War II,  far-sighted people could see the danger later so narrowly averted in the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Studying International Relations as if war and peace were equally valid ways of conducting diplomacy  had begun to seem questionable when large scale nuclear war could destroy life on earth. The new discipline of Peace Studies was about conducting international relations without resorting to war.

In the 50s the Rev. Martin Luther King Junior studied Gandhi and took his non-violent experiment further. His success showed that Gandhi’s method did not depend solely on the charisma of Gandhi himself or the Indian context of nationalism versus imperialism.  Successful resistance to segregation by the black churches in the Southern States of the USA still had in common with Gandhi’s satyagrahas three major factors, disciplined non-violence, religious conviction by those who made major personal sacrifices and sympathetic support from wider public opinion fed by media reporting.  The effect of the Civil Rights Movement was to add an ethnic relations dimension to Peace Studies. And to inspire Mandel to nonviolent opposition to apartheid in South Africa.

At the end of this service we will hear an extract from Satyagraha the opera by Philip Glass which captures the mood of the Bhagadvad Gita, the sacred Hindu test which inspired Gandhi. Students of Peace Studies take time to study Gandhi’s interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita and his 18 rules for Satyagrahi to boost their courage, calm and disciplined action.

I would like to talk briefly about the current job of one graduate who wrote his PhD at Bradford on Gandhi, Timmon Wallis. After working abroad as a peaceworker he currently trains and assesses peaceworkers for International Alert, an organization about which we will hear more later on in this service.  Gandhi would have been delighted at the concept of training peace workers. His name for what he called a “peace army” was “shanti sena.” Gandhi insisted that peace requires the same courage and trained discipline as war.   Peaceworkers needs training in courage and discipline. Gandhi tried in his Ashrams and through his Constructive Work to provide some training so that people could go into non-violent action fully prepared and supported. Peaceworkers UK currently provides five levels of competence in peace work and assesses responses of students by simulations of real situations.

Finally, I would like to talk about a current development in the Peace Studies course at Tuft University, USA. Students are being asked to commit themselves to the equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath which doctors make. They are required to promise to follow their studies by going into an ethical job and to make ethical choices in their future lives. Gandhi who made solemn vows at key moments in his life, including the vow to resist Indian Registration in Africa, would have approved of that. But reading of Tufts requirements does raise the question of how few ethical demands are made by academia generally of students. Gandhi vowed vegetarianism when he studied in London. He persuaded 3,000 to vow non-violence in 1906. When he read Ruskin’s Unto This Last on a train journey in South Africa, it led to a dramatic personal change in lifestyle.  It would be interesting to know whether some military sponsored students currently at Bradford University will complete the course able to feel that peace studies and military strategies can be mixed or tried in turn, or whether there is a whole religious or moral ethic behind peace studies, dependent on trust, dependent  on consistency over time. The concept of mixing peace studies and war studies seem as dubious as trying to mix oil and water. Peace Studies ultimately respects life, whereas the bottom line in War Studies would appear to be the death of the less powerful.    

*******

Multifaith Service 2007

The Gandhi Foundation Multi-Faith Service this year, on the anniversary of Gandhi's death, was at St Ethelburga's Church near Liverpool St London. This church, bombed by the IRA a decade ago, was renovated and for the past four years has worked for reconciliation between faiths. The Gandhi Foundation was represented there last year when they celebrated the 100th anniversary of Gandhi's understanding that a significant new movement, satyagraha (truth-firmness) had started.

The theme on Jan 30th was Averting Climate Change.  Speakers included the Bishop of London's representative; the Muslim chaplain for Cambridge University; the Buddhist Reverend Nagase from the Battersea Park Peace Pagoda, and Aubrey Meyer who has been promoting the ideals of Global Commons and setting objective targets for Contraction and Convergence for the last decade with growing support.

Denise Moll (Secretary of the Gandhi Foundation), Simon Keyes (director of St Ethelburga's), 
Kala Gunness, Chandra Misir and David Maxwell (members of the Gandhi Foundation)

Jennifer Kavanah; Faith Kenrick (who made the new GF banner); Isabel and Cecil Evans

Bikkhu Nagase, and friends

*********


The Gandhi Foundation's 2006 MultiFaith Service was held on the anniversary of Gandhi's assassination 
at St John's Wood Church, London.

The theme was "Understanding between Faiths".

On January 30th 2006 we broke new ground.   Not only were we in a new
venue, St John's Wood Anglican Church, but we allowed for some scruples
different faiths have in worshipping together. Why St John's Wood Church?  
The St John's Wood Jewish Liberal Synagogue after the 7/7 London bombing 
had hosted the Central London Mosque and local Anglicans in a moving event of inter-faith solidarity.  
The return visit to the Mosque was to be the day before January 30th. 
(Several Gandhi Foundation Friends attended.)  To complete the triangle, 
what more fitting than to hold our Gandhi memorial event at St John's Wood Church ?

The scruples?  To put at ease people unhappy with or at least unused to
the symbol of the Christian cross, we held the event in the round in the
more neutral round Church Hall free of any symbols beyond a lit central
candle.

The format started with a welcome by Rev Gregory Platten and five-minute
statements by each of seven faiths with brief reflective silences after
each.  Questions and debate were kept to individual follow-up over
refreshments at the end.  The effect was a respectful hearing of each other
in more neutral ground than a service.  This arrangement took into account
the Moslem doctrine of shirk.  Moslems welcome inter-faith dialogue, but the
doctrine of shirk causes Moslems great unease at any deviation from Islamic
worship.  So the first part of the evening was not a service but Respectful
Listening.  Sister Regina spoke for Brahma Kumaris; Bryan Appleyard for the
Buddhist Society; Bruce Kent for Roman Catholics; Ramesh Kallidai for the
Hindu Forum UK (see below); Rabbi Alexandra Wright for the Jewish Liberal Synagogue (see below); 
and Imam Shahid Hussain for the Central London Mosque.  

What a variety of temperaments and views were heard in forty minutes!  There were interesting
similarities and differences.  Some appreciatively mentioned Gandhi, but not
all;  there was no requirement to do so.  There was then a short break and
the immediate animated discussion boded well for later.

The second part went into service mode.  Speakers were written to
beforehand assuring them that there was no obligation to take part.  They
could, if they wished, just observe.  We began hearing devotional singing by
the Sufi School from South East London, including Gandhi's favourite song.
Then David Maxwell reminded us of the momentous last weeks of Gandhi's life
ending with extracts from Nehru's lament on the radio after his death about
a light having gone out and yet not having gone out.  Ruth Rosen followed
with the reading given here in full:

The number of different books around the world written about M K Gandhi
is already in the hundreds. One book published last year was "Gandhi's Hope:
Learning from Other religions as a Path to Peace", written by J McDaniel.
McDaniel draws attention to Five Challenges Faced by the World's Religions.

The first is to live compassionately ­ to identify resources within our
traditions that are conducive to respect and care for the community of life,
and to live from them, thus helping to build multi-religious communities
that are just, sustainable, participatory and nonviolent.

The Second is to live self-critically ­ to acknowledge tendencies within
our traditions that lend themselves to arrogance, prejudice, violence, and
ignorance, to repent from them and to add new chapters to our religion's
history.

The third is to live simply ­ that is to present a viable and joyful
alternative to the dominant religion of our age, namely consumerism, by
living simply and frugally, thereby avoiding the tragedies of poverty and
the arrogance of affluence.

The fourth is to live ecologically ­ to recognise that we humans are
creatures among creatures in a small but magnificent planet who have ethical
responsibilities to other living beings and to the whole of life.

The fifth is to welcome religious diversity ­ to promote peace between
religions by befriending people of other religions, trustful that the truths
of the world religions are manifold, all making the whole richer.

To the degree that religiously affiliated people respond to these
challenges, there will be hope for the world, and religion will be part of
the solution. And to the degree that they do not, there will be tragedy in
the world, and religion will be part of the problem.

We are called to live compassionately, even if compassion makes us feel
vulnerable; to live self-critically, even if we are afraid of change and
find it easier to criticise others than to criticise ourselves; to live
simply ­ to reject a lifestyle based on appearance, affluence, and
marketable achievement, to live ecologically - to recognise that we are kin
to other creatures, even if we prefer to think of ourselves as set apart and
special; and to welcome religious diversity even if we are initially fearful
of strangers and what they might teach us.

Gandhi didn't develop a systematic theology of world religions. He
offered sayings in various speeches during his lifetime. Here are three
which McDaniel quotes from Margaret Chatterjee's landmark study: "Gandhi's
Religious Thought", published in the 80s.

1. "Personally I think the world as a whole will never have, or need have, a
single religion."
2. "For me the principal religions are all supplying a felt want in the
spiritual progress of humanity."
3. "I can see clearly the time coming when people belonging to different
faiths will have the same regard for other faiths that they have for their
own."

Gandhi knew, however, that if religions are to be sources of
goodness in the world they must be capable of growing. He said: "Every
living faith must have within itself the power of rejuvenation if it is to
live. If we are imperfect ourselves, religion as conceived by us must also
be imperfect. Religion being thus imperfect is always subject to a process
of evolution and reinterpretation."

There are times amid dialogue when religious people cannot agree with one
another. We must learn the arts of creative disagreement. Are humans
capable of agreeing to disagree? Yes. Most of us already have some taste
of this in family life where families are committed to continued relationship.
Are we, or are we not, all one family?

Then we all lit candles in memory of Gandhi. The harsh electric lights
were turned off. 50 candles suffused the room in mellow light transforming
the atmosphere, and we each worshipped God in our own way during a deep
communal silence broken by a Zoroastrian prayer spontaneously offered from
Mozart's Magic Flute.

The third part of the event was time for dialogue over tasty Indian
refreshments provided by Chandra and Kala, chatting, a chance to see the
beautiful church itself (with choir practice in full swing), browsing at the
literature table, and looking at the 12 panel peace exhibition by Norman
Kember, who was at that time a hostage in Iraq. The success of the event was such that
people were more than usually reluctant to pack up and go home! Thanks to
all who turned out on a cold Monday night in January!

PS The Kember exhibition is available to anyone, free on request (tel: 01234 352273).

Rabbi Alexandra Wright, Jewish Liberal Synagogue

I am honoured to speak on behalf of the Jewish community at this Multi-Faith Event in memory of Mahatma Gandhi who died on January 30, 1948. May his memory endure always for a blessing and a continual influence for good.

Some of my best friends are Jews - those are not exactly the words that Gandhi used when he spoke about the Jewish community - but he knew us. He knew us because he encountered us during the years he worked in South Africa, he was deeply aware of the rise of Nazism and the oppression of Germany's Jews - the 'untouchables' of Nazi Europe, and he addressed himself, not always to the liking of the Jewish community, to the question of a Jewish homeland and whether the Jews could ever be entitled to return to Palestine.

To Mohamas Gandhi then, let me address these words on the subject of my faith and my people.

Gandhi, like you whose faith transcends the boundaries of time and space, I bind myself indissolubly to One God, Creator of heaven and earth, Ineffable, without form or voice, God to all peoples, mysterious and compassionate.

This is my God, to whom all prayers are made, there is no other.

You, O God, create all things; you bestow upon us the choice of good and evil,

Freewill to choose the paths before us.

And when in our affliction, we are afflicted,

And suffering beats upon our heads, then - it is not on account of God's evil that we are oppressed and mourn,

For God remains with us, weeping silently besides us, like Rachel weeping for her children, as we mourn out dead, or look behind to view the suffering of the past.

And though, we are commanded to 'Choose Life', as Scripture teaches, and to sanctify each moment of the day,

Yet still, when we shake off this mortal coil of life, my faith will teach this hope:

That beyond the grave there lies a greater hope, the world to come, for this world is but

A corridor to the world to come, and these days but preparation for what lies ahead.

Yet while we live, how can we know God, how can we live according the
highest principles of what God requires of us?

For God compels us to regard all humanity as created in the image of God,

In the likeness of the Living God, male and female we were created,

And from this single principle, emerges one law for all people:

Love your neighbour as yourself. Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

For how we are with the widow and orphan, the stranger and homeless,

How we treat the vulnerable in our society, is a measure of the goodness of our world.

All peoples are our neighbours, all races, nations, faiths, created in the image of that One God are our sisters and our brothers.

And so the myths of our tradition teach: that God created but one single human being, Adam, the first, so that one person could not say to another,'My father is greater than your father'.

Gandhi, you taught: There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

And at our festivals and feast days, our Sabbaths and holy meals, we Jews stretch our hands

And call: Let all who are hungry come and eat, let all who are in need come and share our food.

Each Sabbath, each festival and fast connects us with our history, as slaves in Egypt, as exiles in a foreign land,

But propels us forward too.

To ask, how can we work in partnership with God to build a peaceful world, a world of justice, truth and hope?

For as the prophet taught: "Why should you fast and not see the violence and hopelessness of this world?

Why pursue your labours on the day of rest, when strife and contention remain?

Is such the fast that I have chosen, asks our God?

The day for a person to afflict their soul?

To bow down their head as a bulrush and to spread sackcloth and ashes?

Is not this the fast that I have chosen?

To loose the fetters of wickedness,

To undo the bands of the yoke,

And to let the oppressed go free?

Is it not to give your bread to the hungry,

And to bring the poor that are cast out into your home,

When you see the naked, that you cover them,

And that you hide not yourself from your own flesh?"

Gandhi, you taught that religions are different roads converging to the same point.

We are part of one human family, and yet as Jews, distinctive.

Not better than our neighbours, nor more holy.

But with our own symbols and traditions, with a story that tells the tale of

A people, oppressed and bound in slavery, but freed

To accept the commandments at Sinai from a universal and all-pervading God.

We Jews must choose the pathways of our lives.

Death has depleted us, assimilation thinned us, secularism diluted us,

But we cling fast to the tree of life that has sustained our people,

The teachings of the Torah, not only the minutiae of law and observance,

But the moral inspiration that comes from faith in God:

Love

Truth

Justice

Mercy

The beauty of this created world

And peace.

May the One who makes peace in the highest, bring peace upon us, upon Israel and upon all humanity and let us say: Amen.

Gandhi's faith was a personal faith - and a universal one

Ramesh Kallidai, Secretary General, Hindu Forum of Britain

Mahatma Gandhi is known popularly as a man of peace and an apostle of
non-violence. Personally though, I consider him to be one of the most
creative persons who walked the planet in the last century.

Before Gandhi came on the scene, no one had even heard of satyagraha -
non-violent struggle. No one had even thought that non-violence, which by
its very nature sounds so pacifist can actually become a tool for activism
of the highest kind that the 20th century had ever witnessed.

This was one of the greatest creations of the twentieth century by a man who
had often been a source of nightmare to stalwart statesmen like Churchill.

Gandhi had only to wave his finger and India would come to a standstill.
This was the sheer power of the weapon of non-violence that this frail man
who had unleashed on an unsuspecting British Empire.

Hinduism by nature is very liberal in its outlook. It is inclusive,
universal and non-prescriptive. Gandhi was one of the most liberal Hindus
the world has ever seen. He often taught the New Testament at the Gujarat
Vidyapeeth - such was his liberal attitude towards other faith traditions.

But Hinduism had often been misunderstood and misinterpreted even during
Gandhi's times.

I have encountered people who refer to the 'monotheistic faiths' and think
that only the Abrahamic faiths are monotheistic in nature. Nothing can be
further from the truth. Hinduism and Sikhism are monotheistic religions too.

There are two broad branches of Hinduism that are most widely practised
today - impersonalism or Advaita taught by the great master Adi Shankara
and personalism or Vaishnavism taught by the great teachers Ramanuja,
Madhava, Vallabha and Chaitanya.

The impersonal school believes that there is one God who creates this world
of duality, but Himself exists without material attributes, qualities of
form. The sincere seeker in his preliminary stage of spiritual development
can however worship different Deities who ultimately lead to the worship of
the one impersonal Brahman. This is pluralistic monotheism at its very best.

The personal school believes in a Supreme God, Krishna or Vishnu, who is the
Supreme Personality of Godhead, living in His spiritual kingdom, from where
he expands as the Parmatman or super-soul in everyone's heart. The goal of
life is to awaken one's dormant love for Godhead and be engaged in eternal
and reciprocal loving service of God in a state of complete submission and
surrender to His divine will. Love for God is awakened by different
spiritual practices of purification which include hearing, chanting and
singing the holy names of God, remembering Him, serving Him, praying to Him,
developing our eternal relationship with Him, and ultimately offering
oneself in complete submission to Him - a stage known as atmanivedana. In
this sense, Hinduism is as monotheistic as other traditions.

Gandhi's practise of his Hindu faith was deeply personal. He lived a life of
personal austerity and worldly service. At the Sabarmati ashram, Gandhi
would often perform menial tasks for other people. He would clean, dust,
glean wheat grains, grind them into flour on a stone mortar, spin, wash and
cook.

Once when he was arrested, the Magistrate asked Gandhi what his occupation
was. Gandhi replied that his occupation was "spinning, weaving and farming".
And these were the words of a modest person of many talents and occupations.
Gandhi was not just a mere spinner and weaver. During his lifetime, Gandhi
has been played a variety of roles as a barrister, tailor, washerman,
barber, cobbler, cook, doctor, nurse, teacher, auctioneer, author,
journalist, publisher, fashion-setter and even a snake-charmer.

Gandhi's conviction in rendering service to the needy was absolute. His
favourite devotional song was written by the saint Nrsinh Mehta and begins
with the words 'vaishnava jana to tene kahiye re peer parayi jane re'. The
song categorically affirms that a person can only be called a Vaishnava or a
devotee of God if he actually understands and feels the suffering and grief
of others.

So deep was his conviction in serving others that Gandhi, during his final
days, gave us a talisman, and I quote from his words:

"I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self
becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the
poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask
yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him
[her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a
control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to
swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?
Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away."
On behalf of the Hindu Forum of Britain, we would like to pay homage to this
wonderful personality by remembering the Hindu world view that Gandhi
himself felt so inspired by. This world view is enjoined in the Rigveda, one
of the oldest scriptures known to humankind, which declares: udara
charitanam tu vasudhaiva kutumbakam. The verse means:
"Those who are narrow minded divide the world by saying, 'This is mine and
that is yours'. However, those who are broad hearted and full of compassion
see the whole world as one big family."
This is a wonderful world view that is all-encompassing and universal. And
never before has there been greater need for such a universal world view
than our modern times fraught with strife and disharmony. This is indeed
the greatest offering the Hindu faith has made to the world.

For more information on the Hindu Forum of Britain visit: www.hinduforum.org
or ring 020 8965 0671