Bija Vidyapeeth: Centre for Learning

Creating Cultures of Non-Violence: Gandhi and Globalization

December 1 to 14, 2002

The course on "Gandhi and Globalization" aims at exploring, understanding and practicing non-violence in contemporary times. It will reflect and have dialogues on the roots of terrorism in exclusion and undemocratic structures of politics and economics, violence of Globalization, the sustainability of non-violent resistance, economic democracy and peace, the relevance of Gandhi's concepts of Swaraj (self-rule), Swadeshi (self-production) and Satyagraha (non-violent, non-cooperation with unjust systems in the context of globalization).

The Globalized world today has internalized violence in all aspects of life. Violence is being experienced in terms of ecological destruction, destruction of livelihoods, social disintegration and an erosion of ethical and spiritual values. We have seen that Gujarat, the state where Gandhi ji spent lot of time of his life, has been a part of ghastly attack on humanity, secularism. It is even more necessary that we revisit the Gandhian ideas and his views on Globalization.

Mahatma Gandhi offered non-violent alternatives both in the fields of politics, economy and science. He presented an alternative model of decentralized, human scale, land-based, craft oriented and spiritually sensitive decentralization of governance, technology and production and distribution.

The course on Gandhi and Globalization starts on December 1, 2002 to end on December 14, 2002.

Faculty

The main course faculty will be Satish Kumar and Kamla Chaudhary.