Today would have been Indira Gandhi's 92nd birthday, had she not been assassinated by members of her own guard in her own backyard on October 31st, 1984 (I was there in New Delhi in a cab when the driver suggested it might be safer if he turned around and took me straight home). Often confused as a relative of the more famous Gandhi, fashionable, stylish and well groomed Indira was actually the daughter of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru and used her married name, although divorced from her Parsi exhusband. Daughter and mother of Prime Ministers of India, she herself held office with an iron fist, remembered for the "Emergency", a brief period of martial law often overlooked in the democratic vibrancy of Indian politics. Will Mrs Gandhi's legacy of dynasty be continued by her half Italian grandson?
posted by infini on Nov 19, 2009 - 27 comments

India’s New Face. "Meet Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat and the brightest star in the Hindu-chauvinist Bharatiya Janata Party. Under Modi, Gujarat has become an economic dynamo. But he also presided over India’s worst communal riots in decades, a 2002 slaughter that left almost 2,000 Muslims dead. Exploiting the insecurities and tensions stoked by India’s opening to the world, Modi has turned his state into a stronghold of Hindu extremism, shredding Gandhi’s vision of secular coexistence in the process. One day, he could be governing the world’s largest democracy." [Via]
posted by homunculus on Mar 11, 2009 - 12 comments

Saying His Peace: Rare Recording of Speech by Gandhi Landed in Safe, if Unknowing, Hands. [Via Linkfilter]
posted by homunculus on Jul 1, 2008 - 6 comments

On June 15th, 2007, the UN unanimously adopted a resolution declaring October 2 to be the "International Day of Non-Violence." October 2 is also Gandhi Jayanti, the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi,a national holiday in India in honor of the man called the "Father of the Nation". Previously on Mefi, Gandhi's heirs - five champions of non violence and Everything you wanted to know about Gandhi. [more inside]
posted by infini on Oct 2, 2007 - 24 comments

Today's post of tenuously related audio brings you ten historic radio broadcasts, 529 eternal questions in popular music, and one mildly amusing black metal band prank call.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Aug 29, 2007 - 11 comments

George Orwell né Eric Arthur Blair is probably best known to readers for his eerily prescient novels 1984 and Animal Farm. This comprehensive Orwell site betrays an erudite, complex, fascinating personality who wrote about a variety of subjects, from an exposition on British class relations affecting the art and practice of murder, to the complex moral compromises of Gandhi's practice of non-violent resistance, to the doublespeak-laden corruption of the English language as a telling reflection of a corrupt, brutal, post-WWII culture — and much, much more. This site also includes Russian translations of much of Orwell's work.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Aug 21, 2006 - 21 comments

Mahatma Gandhi. Everything you ever wanted to know about Mahatma Gandhi including image galleries and his complete collected works.
posted by Roger Dodger on May 3, 2006 - 25 comments

Dear Leo, Dear Mohandas "The longer I live -- especially now when I clearly feel the approach of death -- the more I feel moved to express what I feel more strongly than anything else... the doctrine of the law of love unperverted by sophistries. Love... the highest and indeed the only law of life". The Kingdom of God Is Within You (full text available) is Leo Tolstoy's tractatus of "Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion but as a New Theory of Life", a primer of (among other things) the doctrine of non-violence. Among the many fans of the 1894 book was an imprisoned Hindu barrister, a "half-naked fakir" if you want, a certain Mohandas K. Gandhi who was fascinated by "the independent thinking, profound morality, and the truthfulness" of the book. So he ended up writing fan letters to the great Russian man: who warmly wrote back to his young Indian "friend and brother". The old wise Christian anarchist literary giant and the shy, insecure young man who sparked a revolution: to paraphrase another wise, badly-dressed , pacifist old man, "Generations to come, it may be, will scarcely believe that such men ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth."
posted by matteo on Jun 17, 2004 - 16 comments

Osama vs Gandhi. Alas not Celebrity Deathmatch but an interesting discussion of worldviews from the latest Prospect.
posted by biffa on Mar 26, 2004 - 9 comments

Five champions of nonviolence. A look at five people who have fought for political and social justice using the principles of Mahatma Gandhi.
posted by homunculus on Nov 13, 2003 - 30 comments

Meet Gopal Godse, last surviving conspirator in the 1948 assassination of Mohandas Gandhi. Still proud of what he, his brother, and the other co-conspirators did, and still looking forward to "the day when India's Muslims convert to Hinduism."
Or die.
"He speaks almost gleefully about religious riots last year in the western state of Gujarat that killed about 1,000 people, most of them Muslims. 'If (Muslims) get the reaction like they did in Gujarat, they will get to know that Muslims are not supreme,' he said." The greatest tragedy of our age is that a civilized monster like him remains hopeful.
posted by wendell on Jun 15, 2003 - 14 comments

The recent violence in India and in various parts of the rest of the world made me ponder the contemporary relevance of MK Gandhi and his writings, specifically on violence.
posted by ajayb on Mar 1, 2002 - 27 comments