Blood in Baghdad

The spectre of bomb explosions, shootings, terrorist attacks, deaths, killings, destruction continues to repeat itself in Iraq. Increase in either the numbers or spread of US military forces will not correct the situation. It’s sad the cradle of Mesopotamian civilization, also the land from where Caliphs reigned, has been brought to this pass. To blame George Bush or Saddam Hussein is to inflate the power of individuals over historical processes.

Madeline Albright, former US Secretary of State, while noting that the US invasion of Iraq was misplaced makes a sublime comment worth pondering over. She writes ‘while our troops face death every day, the least the President can do is to face the truth’.

Ms. Albright claims that if President Bush admits the pre-war criticism of military intervention in Iraq was right, countries in Europe, Arab world and elsewhere will come forward to assist in ensuring peace and stability in Iraq as continued anarchy in that country could lead to chaos elsewhere. This could reduce the pressure on US troops as also limit American casualties. She cites the example of the Balkans where the US, EU and UN aided by international opinion was able to convert a war-torn region in to a zone of peace.

Ms.Albright who understands the divisive nature of politics and society in Iraq suggests that the only workable option here as in similar situations elsewhere is to develop a political power sharing arrangement that recognizes majority rule while protecting minority rights. This is not simple; it requires a psychological transformation that prepares people to compete for power peacefully instead of plotting how to survive amidst anarchy.

Ms.Albright as Secretary of State justified the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after the Kuwait war forgtting such sanctions cause hardship only to the innocent and the poor who were in no way responsible for Saddam Hussein's excesses. But being away from the centres of power and decision making for a few years, and spending time to reflect and ponder in the light of experience, she suggests a sensible exit for the United States while ensuring peace in Iraq.

Hoping her ideas will have many listeners!

Blogging Again!

My blogmate, Lynn DeSouza, the talented advertising professional, ex-tennis champion, animal lover, in short, a passionate human, is temporarily quitting the blogging world but not without giving us this meaningful message :

‘A dear friend once described himself to me as a comma. The strategic pause before the next important phase in the lives of all his key relationships. The mark that makes sense out of disconnected phrases, that glues together connected thoughts, that allows for that most important of all needs - time to stop and ponder.

It's comma time for me, folks. Time to leave a phrase behind while I go in search of the next one. Time to answer some internal questions, erase some full stops and add a few exclamation marks to my already oh-so-interesting life. But not before taking full advantage of the comma.
I will be back here someday soon. Till then, may the good Lord bless you with love, joy, peace, security, and success. Boa Sorte.’

Today, I, re-enter the blogging world after a gap of almost two months, an enforced absence, caused partly by repeated repairs to my laptop which also helps explain away my lack of ideas and topics to blog about. ( Doesn’t a bad workman always quarrel with his tools?)

But the comma in my life convinces me how indispensable writing is to create, explore, develop and publish my ideas and views. Not to write is a sin! So, with renewed vigour and added personal responsibility I reach out , to share with and and to learn from all my friends.

As dear Lynn so correctly points out, we need ‘comma time’. But if we are not alert, comma time may turn in to full stops!

Jesuit Alumni Congress - 2007

A side view of the Laurie Baker designed Loyola School auditorium where the Congress was held .

(Top) - A Panel discussion in progress.

(Below) - Mr.Alphonse Kannamthanam speaking at the inaugural function. Seen on the dais are Mr.T.P.Srinivasan, senior diplomat and Fr.Hector D'Souza S.J., Provincial of the Jesuit Order for South Asia.

'Chilanka', The Vth National Congress of the 'Jesuit Alumni Associations of India'- 2007, was held at my alma mater, Loyola School, Trivandrum, from 7-9th,September. The Jesuits are an order of Catholic priests founded by St.Ignatius Loyola in 1534. Their wordwide renown is for the high standards in the educational institutions they have established and which they manage successfully. In India, Jesuits manage 38 colleges, 5 business schools and 155 secondary Schools in places as far off as Kohima and Surat. Some of the Jesuit insiituions like XLRI jamshedpur, XIM Bhubaneswar have won international recognition. Jesuit colleges like the St.Xavier's colleges at Mumbai, Calcutta, Ahmedabad,Jaipur, and Trivandrum, the St.Joseph's colleges at Bangalore, Trichy and Tirunelveli, St Aloysius College at Mangalore and Loyola College in Chennai have a rich tradition behind them. Equally, if not more famous are the Jesuit run secondary schools of St.Xaviers at Calcutta, Mumbai and Delhi, St.Stanislaus at Bandra, Campion in Colaba, St.Vincent in Pune,North Point in Darjeeling and Loyola schools in Jamshedpur and Trivandrum.

The theme of the Vth Congress was 'The role of Jesuit alumni in resurgent India'. The concept paper, circulated in advance among alumni associations, referred to the current status of education,ecology,good governanace,economy,health care and culture in the country and the responsibility of jesuit alumni in enabling their progress and meeting its challenges. The resurgence in India, its commencement and the direction it is taking were also to be discussed.
Almost 500 delegates, representing various Jesuit alumni associations, were present on the evening of Sep 7th at the Loyola school auditorium, renamed the Fr.Joe Lawrence Hall, to witness the inaugural function. The auditorium, a simple red brick building, was designed in 1971, by the world renowned architect, Laurie Baker. The Congress was inaugurated by Fr.Hector D'Souza S.J. the provincial of the Jesuit order in South Asia. Mr.T.P.Srinivasan IFS, formerly India's permanent representative to the United Nations and a senior diplomat spoke on 'Can India make an impact in the global arena?' Referring to contemporary debates, he pointed out that India had been the victim of nuclear apartheid ever since it conducted atomic tests in 1974 and the 123 agreement with USA is the only opportunity for us to escape from this situation. He said that USA represented all nuclear states that had signed the NPT and were members of the Nuclear suppliers group. This agreement enables India to enter in to nuclear collaboration with all these countries.

Mr.Alphonse Kannamthanam, an IAS officer turned MLA, spoke on 'Clean Public Life, Can we dream of it in India'. He drew examples from his personal experiences as a bureaucrat. Politicans are produced by the society of which they are a part and the decadence affecting society has affected political processes too, was his contention. The seeds of change lie inside us and not elsewhere, he stated. Mr.Srinivasan and Mr.Alphonse referred to their early education in government run schools and childhood in villages were electricity hadn't yet reached.

The first session on Sep 8th was a talk on 'Women in Resurgent India' by Mrs. Lyda Jacob IAS. She pointed out that South India had achieved remarkable levels of social develoment which were not visible in other parts of the country. This, she said, was due to effective implementation of various programmes in health care, child care, nutrition and primary education. Mrs. Jacob referred to the high levels of female infancticide in many parts of India and warned of the effects of a decline in the sex ration. When questioned as to how she felt being in an audience consisting overwhelmingly of men, she replied that she was comfortable as four generations of men in her family, from her grandfather to her son, were jesuit alumni.

The next session on 'Science and technology in a resurgent India' had two different points of view,both eloquently stated by Fr.Vincent Braganza S.J., a P.hd in biotechnology from Loyola University, Chicago, now working at St.Xavier's, Ahmedabad and Prof.Joe Peter, ex- Director of Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and alumnus of XLRI, Jamshedpur. Fr.Vincent spoke of the two India's existing within one nation and drew attention to the problems of the villages. He also pointed out to the dangers of the haphazard urbanisation taking place. Fr.Vincent was of the view that science and technology was now capable of finding a solution to most problems of scarcity and want facing us but lamented that the political will was lacking. Prof.Joe Peter requested the audience to see the glass as half-full, not half-empty. He said that globalisation had been made inevitiable by the massive developments in communications, information technology and transport. The 9% growth in India, to him, was going to be a sustained one and only two other countries, China and Vietnam were growing at this rate. This could lead to India emerging as a world power in a few decades. Prof.Peter also wondered as to what was in the Jesuits that led them to command the ferocious loyalty of their alumni.

Mr.K.Jayakumar IAS, spoke on 'In a fast changing world, can moral values erode'. The speed of change, he said, was relative from one generation to the other. Erosion in moral values, to him, was the result of man's crazy and reckless drive to succed at any cost. In this mad race, we don't mind our success being at the cost of another's failure. All problems, he said, are ultimately moral problems and an education distanced from moral values fails the individual in his moment of reckoning.

'Role of Jesuit Institutions in a resurgent India' saw open dissent between two Jesuit priests, Fr.Casmir Raj S.J., Director, XLRI, Jamshedpur and Fr.P.C. Mathew S.J., Principal, St.Xavier's College, Kolkatta. Fr.Casmir Raj regretted the fact that Jesuits had refrained from entering the field of technical education. The Jesuits do not manage engineering or medical colleges in an age when utmost importance is being accorded to professional education. With their credentials and institution building experience it was easy for Jesuits to make a mark in this sector, said Fr.Raj. He blamed this on a refusal to think out of the box. Rebutting this Fr.P.C. Mathew emphasised that most of the Jesuit run arts and science colleges had introduced new graduate and post graduate programmes with an emphasis on technology.

The speeches were carefully listened to by the delegates who asked questions and actively participated in the discussions. It was never a one-way affair. The different alumni associations also made power point presentations on their activities.

Justice M.C.Chagla, jurist, diplomat, statesman and a jesuit alumnus once spoke of the 'aristocracy of the mind'. This was evident at the Congress. I felt proud to be a jesuit alumnus.

Independent India - Three Score Years

The pics taken within a span of a few minutes on the morning of August 15th.



August 15th marked the 60th year of India's Independence. The print and visual media, beginning with Time (which featured India on its cover page) considered this of monumental importance to be celebrated unlike an annual birthday. Completing 60 years in an individual's life has religious significance among Hindus. In Kerala, it is called 'shashtibdapoorthi'. When one reaches 60, the major portion of one's years on earth have passed and it is time to look back.
In a nation-state's life, 60 years is not a significant passage of time. For India, one of the world's two longest surviving civilisations with recorded history going back to 5000 years, it is only a miniscule amount of time for major transformations to appear. The Hindus are a civilisation with yugas and kalpas referring to millions of years around which human and divine destiny unfurls.
The articles, endless tele- discussions, speeches, all seen in plenty this season played on the same set of tunes which one has oft heard. India was portrayed as an emerging power, charting out its righful place on the world stage. Few mentioned that the secret of India's strength and resilence, which enabled it to survive for 5000 years when other civlisations which began along with it or after it were reduced to dust, lay in its diversity. In no other land can you find such magnificent diversity exisiting with so much harmony and with little of civilisational angst. A diversity which ranges from clothes to food to languages to rituals....the list is endless. Globalisation and Capitalism endanger our diversity and replaces it with homogenity, even when they claim to defend democracy and freedom of choice.
The civilisational crisis facing India is the destruction of its diversity. The forces unleashed by capitalism and globalisation can never co-exist with diversity and need homogenity and uniformity for their growth. In various ways, Indian's have begun to respond to this crisis. How we resolve it will be interesting.
To conclude in a personal note, on August 15th, I hoisted the national flag (see pic) in the gardens of the historic Saraswati Vilas Palace in Trivandrum where a play school, kindergarten and primary school function. The little children sang patriotic songs and we distributed sweets to mark the gaiety of the ocassion. Speeches were dispensed with.
But when I emerged out of the Palace on to the road, this sight of an haggard old man fast asleep on the pavement, all his wordly belongings filled in two sacks, touched me. What does 60 years of Independence and India's emergence as a global power mean for him? Dear reader, can you tell me, please!

Mirror(s) in Our Brain

The Italian scientist Giacamo Rizzolati was the first to observe a special set of neurons in macaque monkey brains, an observation neuroscientist Vilayannur Ramachandran hails as of revolutionary implication to humanity. When a monkey performs an action these neurons show activity . But when the same monkey watches another of his tribe do the same action, the neuronal activity mentioned above is repeated. This quality led to these neurons being termed 'mirror neurons'.
Further research revealed the fact that the human brain was well-endowed with mirror neurons. The mirror neuron system in the human brain seems to be more highly developed, sophisticated and specialised. They possess the capacity not merely to understand and respond to the motor actions of others but also to their intentions, sensations, behaviour and emotions.The current knowledge of mirror neuron system is skeletal but sufficient to prove that they play a pivotal role in organising our ersonal and social life.
Scientists studying the mirror neuron system point out a marked difference. In the monkeys, individual neurons fire as specific motor actions are performed or witnessed. In human beings, on the other hand, scientists have not been able to pinpoint single neurons but mark out an area in the brain which witnesses activity. Scientists now aim to go beyond mapping out motor neuron activity to understand how mirror neuron system acts when human beings have or percieve emotions or tactile or olfactory sensations etc. They are also researching into whether the system responds only to to perceived emotions or also to intentions of others. It as also to be found as to whether mirror neurons are restricted to a single specific area of the brain or whether their presence is diffused throught the entire cortex.
Vittorio Gallese who was Rizzollati's colleague at the University of Parma when this discovery was made says it is now 'clear that mirror neurons are one key to understanding how human beings survive and thrive in a complex social world. This neural mechanism is involuntary and automatic, with it we don't have to think about what other people are doing or feeling, we simply know. It seems we are wired to see other people as similar to us, rather than different. At the root, as humans we identify the person we are facing as someone like ourselves'.
That brain structure is innate and that we are born with these special cells that allow us to connect with other people is vehemently opposed by those who believe that everything about the brain including the tuning of individual neurons is shaped by experience. They regard mirror neurons as a 21st century scientific myth. The imaging studies, they say do not measure electrical activity in single neurons but only the oxygen suply to large areas of the brain. From this incomplete record we cannot even assumea the existence of mirror neurons, goes their argument. They deny that mirror neurons constitute the fundamental neural basis of human social cognition.
But Ramachandran asserts mirror neurons will dissolve the barrier between 'self vs others'. Will he be proved right or will mirror neurons become another mirage?

Age of Irreverence!

The 'New Indian Express' in its editorial comment of July 19,2007 refers to the Presidential poll campaign of July, 2007 as marked by unprecedented acrimony witnessed in no earlier election for that office. The nomination of UPA candidate Prathbha Patil led to media exposure of the illegal and criminal activities indulged in by her close relatives and in which her connivance is difficult to disprove. There may be exaggerations but most of the details revealed by Indian Express and other print and visual media will stand the test of scrutiny. The Congress and UPA constituents remain silent about the blemished record of their candidate and Indian Express cautions that Prathiba's elevation to the highest office of the country will not lead to allegations being discarded on that count alone . It's reason, the editorial says, is because what is being demonstrated as the temper of these times is 'that the relationship between the people and power, or the people and their institutions is changing in dramatic ways.... The change is not all due to coming of new technologies and wider access to them. The new ways of seeing have also to do with a waning of deference and the establishment of a more intimate -- and a more irreverent -- equation with our institutions'.
This is a radical, even revolutionary departure from time and tradition worn practices. Indians always genuflect before authority; political,hierarchichal, social, religious or cultural. They seldom dare to challenge individuals or institutions which demand their implicit obedience. .One reason for this, pointed out by Dr.B.R. Ambedkar in many of his writings, is that our society has evolved in ways which show scant regard for the individual, for his rights and his autonomy. The individual was destined to fit into a collective unit, be it of the village or joint family or caste or occupation. The transformation, placing the individual at the centre, has been slow in arriving but is now an inevitability from which there is no return. In India, social change doesn't come in the Western manner through revolutions that shake the earth but at snail's pace,unfolding so slowly, one never knows it is there. Could this be because our concept of Time is different, not the Western linear time, advancing irreversibly in a straight line and against which man races but a cyclical movement where everything repeats itself?
The signs of the current change could be discerned by any one who read V.S. Naipaul's 'India - A Million Mutinies Now'(1990), which graphically pointed out new trends being initialized by individuals in this land of continental proportions and now acquiring a momentum and strength of their own that cannot be supressed. The individual, transcending caste,religion,language,gender,position is beginning to assert his self. In this assertion the awe for persons in power will decline. His Excellency, The President of India will become Mr.President of the Americans. Mr. Prime Minister will have to rise from his Honourable seat and get ready to be questioned by the commoner.

Dance,dance,dance!

Dance till the stars come down from the rafters!

Dance,dance,dance till you drop! - W.H.Auden.
India is a country with diverse physical traditions and dance forms. You can number them by the hundreds. But most of us feel threatened by movement. Trapped in rigid body attitudes we rarely use our bodies to create, express or communicate. The body has a language and a wisdom of its own and those who never discover or apply them are the poorer for it. This is the message, Tripura Kashyap, an accomplished dancer, choreographer and trainer, conveys in her book 'My Body,My Wisdom' published by Penguin Books, India. Reading the book brought realisation of my limited patterns of movement and deep inhibitions in moving the body beyond its functional requirements. It dawned on me that the doors had been closed tight to a whole universe of experience and drastic action should be taken to to kick it open. An email to Tripura wailing of my situation was promptly replied to and some time later she wrote suggesting I attend one of her movement training sessions in Hyderabad, where she lives. The sessions were organised by Rainbow Inc. and its Secretary, the indomitable Vaneeta Bhattacharya who was a significant presence through out the programme . The sessions were spread over two days and held in the pleasant surroundings of the Vidyaranya School, more of a garden than a school, in Saifabad, the heart of Hyderabad. Reaching there, I longed to go back to childhood, only to study in Vidyaranya.
The participants were a diverse lot and included quite a few educators for special needs children who had prior exposure to dance and movement. Nithin, a radiologist, Nirupam, a farmer from Haryana as he chose to describe himself, Sherin, a software engineer, Alina who works for the Nandi Foundation, Aparna, an architect and interior designer, Priti Anand, an editor for Penguin and myself were among those who were in it for the movement experience. But there was perfect rapport between these distinct groups. Nalini Praksh, an accomplished dancer in her own right had come down from Coonoor to understand Tripura's ideas.
It was pure dance that we practiced, creating and choreographing our own movements, individually and in groups, based on themes of our choice in place of traditional dance instruction where one is taught movements structured by others with performance as the goal. In the initial period of body preparation we were made to sit, stand, balance and lie down, to paint brush which is exploring space with hands and fingers and exercise legs by moving it in various positions in space. We expressed our names through a movement sequence. This was my first brief experience of choreography and dancing. Every participant had to go solo from one end of the hall to the other, moving the body in any sequence of movements of his choice. We had to imagine an animal or bird of our choice and then imitate its movements. We were divided into two groups and each group had to carry its members from one end of the hall to the other, one by one till only two remained, and one of them had to carry the other. So, the strongest and the tiniest amongst us had to be the last two to remain for the entire exercise to end in a success. The intensive sessions, spread over two days, helped us in sqarely facing our inhibitions on body movement and body expression and gave us the courage and confidence to explore and understand the world using our bodies and our senses.
In well-written and convincing passages of her book, Tripura destroys the myth that only dancers can dance. She states that the natural instinct for movement that all of us had as children became task-oriented and restricted as we grew up. Dance was a communal activity in ancient societies and denoted social interaction without distinction between the audience and performers.They knew no forms or styles of dancing and it was the natural movements of the body in its many daily activities like hunting, fishing, cooking, that were their source. Today, dancing is a formalized, technique bound and performance oriented activity requiring years of specialized training. Four elements combine in any dance - bodies, space, time and force.
Creative dance therapy on which Tripura devotes a few chapters removes our misapprehensions on the subject. Dance therapy is not meant for the physcially disabled or the mentally ill. It deals with the intimate connections between our bodies, our movements and the workings of our mind. The body can and does influence the mind and reflect the mind. An heightened awareness of the body, eye contact and spatial awareness are the qualities that this therapy can impart to us. Her collaboration with Santha Kumar, a psychotherapist in Bangalore and their successful efforts to conduct programmes that help normal functioning adults to explore the body and its potential and experience an unstructured, personalized form of movement expression make interesting reading.
Tripura writes of her collaboration with Aanand Chabukeshwar, a drama therapist and Zubin Balsara who uses music as therapy and how they combined dance, drama and music as therapeutic intervention in mentally challenged children at Sadhana Village in Pune.. What was of significance to me was Zubin's idea that music is not to be merely listened to but a process in which we should actively participate. Sounds being the vocabulary of music, Zubin helps us to discover and vocalize our personal vocabulary of sounds. To feel one's music physically pulsate through one's body is energizing, notes Tripura.
The days spend with Tripura and the other participants were wonderful. We shared a lot of ideas, overcame the inhibitions of our bodies and delighted ourselves in the joy of unrestrained movement. It is an experience I cherish and which I hope will recur many more times in this life.

A 'Crezendo' and After

The Puritans of his time, British poet John Milton wrote, prohibited bear fighting, not for causing pain to the bear but for giving pleasure to the viewer. The upholders of public morality in contemporary India seem to spring from the same gene pool. Their latest contribution in the crusade to contain public morals from contamination is the strident demand to ban sale of the Condom pack, Crezendo, manufactured by the state owned Hindustan Latex, for containing a vibrating ring, which they allege is a sex toy. What astounds me is that leaders of all political parties, spanning a wide ideological spectrum, from militant right to extreme left have come out publicly in support of the demand.
This camaderie crossing party lines was visible on earlier ocasions. The closure of dance bars in Mumbai, the response to actress Khusboo's comments approving pre-marital sex, the controversy over Richard Gere kissing Shilpa Shetty at a public venue, all drove home the point that Indian politicians speak in one voice, though with varying degrees of intensity. There is no point in blaming the political class for holding retrograde views. They only reflect the conservative values and mores prevailing in the society of which they are a part.
The challenge facing Indian liberals, men and women, is to transform the old and establish a new order wherein sexual freedom is an article of faith and sexual relations between consenting adults remain the sole concern of the people involved. A sexually open society can never be against Indian traditions. The civilisational heritage of India is of sexual openness and experimentation. Sexual repression was never its agenda. The erotic sculptures in Hindu temples, the serious study of Kama Shastra, the practice of Tantra which says union with the divine can achieved through sexual ecstasy, all prove that our civilsation was never prudish.
Somewhere along the line, attitudes changed and we began to associate sex with guilt and secrecy. Society imposed restrictions we meekly accepted. The regimentation of sexual behaviour gained legitimacy. The need of the time is to write the liberal testament on matters sexual. But we must ensure the freedom doesn't degenerate into licentiousness. To allow so, would be to play into the enemy's hands.

June 26, 1975

Thirty two years ago, on this day, and to be precise, at mid-night on June 25-26, a murder took place in the darkness and foreboding silence of Raisina Hill in New Delhi. A spineless Rashtrapati (as India's President is known), Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, signed the proclamation declaring a State of Emergency in the country, blindly putting his signature on the piece of paper send by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Democracy and Individual freedom had been murdered and their corpse buried. The young Indian Republic was facing the first major challenge to its existence, not from external enemies but from inside.
Day break saw prominent leaders of India's Opposition like Jayapraksh Narayan , Morarji Desai and many others put behind bars. Fundamental Rights guaranteed by the Constitution were suspended and Censorship imposed on the press. The ruling Congress party and its leader Indira Gandhi trampled on the democratic traditions carefully nurutured by the stalwarts of the freedom struggle, many of whom were also the founding fathers of India's Republic. What the British once did to their Indian subjects, Congress was repeating on citizens of free india. 'Indira is India and India is Indira' was the Congress slogan.
Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka's 'The Man Died' is about a similar situation in Nigeria. It's opening line ' The man dies who remains silent in the face of tyranny' echoes in me as I write this. Thousands of Indians, civil servants, judges, professors, journalists, doctors, technocrats, writers, all remained silent, before the ruthless might of the Establishment. They had died to ther conscience.
This blog entry is a tribute to those Indians who dared to fight the Emergency regime and stood up to the powers that be. It is not proper to list names, for all cannot be included. 'Indian Express' was the only English newspaper to challenge the dictatorship of Indira Gandhi. A 'Journalism of Courage' marked its presence. Justice H.R.Khanna boldly wrote a dissenting judgement allowing Habeas Corpus which led the New York Times to comment editorially 'If ever freedom and democracy returns to India, a grateful nation will erect a monument to Justice H.R.Khanna of the Supreme Court'.
This entry also salutes the rustic,illiterate, and simple people of the Indo-Gangetic plain, who in their millions, hit back through the ballot box in 1977, defeating Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party. They alone helped restore the democratic freedoms of the Republic . If they had done the reverse, perhaps, I would not be writing this entry today.

Ramachandra Gandhi - A Tribute

I confess that I never heard of Ramachandra Gandhi till reading newspaper reports announcing his death on June 13th at India International Centre, New Delhi. Of course, I had heard of his more famous brothers, Rajmohan Gandhi and Gopal Krishna Gandhi. The three are the grand children of two illustrious Indians, Mahatma Gandhi, on their paternal side and C.Rajagopalachari,India's last Governor-General, on their maternal side. Of course, it is not lineage that is on focus here but that Ramachandra Gandhi was a Professor of Philospohy with a Phd. from Oxford and an exponent of Advaita-Vedanta with a few erudite works to his credit.
Articles written about Ramachandra Gandhi in the Hindustan Times and New Indian Express, immediately after his demise, have convinced me to find and read his books and understand his ideas.
In the Hindustan Times, Sanjay Baru, now media advisor to the Prime Minister of India, has written of how he first met Ramu ( as Ramachandra is affectionately called),in 1979, immediately after joining the teaching faculty of the University of Hyderabad. Ramu was Prof. of Philosphy there. Ramu would jokingly say that his office was in the bathroom of Sarojin Naidu's Hyderabad home, 'Golden Threshold', (which the Nightingale of India had gifted to the University) while the Prof. of English sat in the bedroom. This, Ramu would say signified the status of Philosophy in modern University life in India. Sanjay is first introduced to Ramu at a seedy bar where he is enjoying his beer and listening to Hindi film tunes. Sanjay describes himself as being thrown off his feet when told that his fellow drinking companion was a Prof of Philospohy and the grandson of the Mahatma. Sanjay narrates how Ramu had launched a mini-chipko movement, with the support of students, against the cutting of a huge neem tree planted by Sarojini Naidu to build classrooms. And how the University authorities did chop it a few days later in the dead of night leading to Ramu resigning his job in protest. Sanjay shares more of his personal encounters which bring out the warm human being that the late Prof. was.
Chandan Gowda, writing in the New Indian Express devotes more attention to Ramu's philospohical inquiries, his deep understanding of Advaita and other Hindu scriptures and how he drew their connections with modern life from which they have been banished in the name of progress. Ramu was concerned that modern day politics had freed itself from trancendental concerns with the meaning of life and death to dwell in exlusive identities of caste,class,race,nation and religion. He warned that such identities wouuld only give false answers to the question of 'Who am I' or ' Who are We'. This reminds me of reading Raja Rao's book, 'The Meaning of India', where he quotes the French writer Andre Malraux telling Jawaharlal Nehru in Paris in 1936 'keep India from duality... let the great Sankaracharya, let him guide India. such my prayer'. Ten years later, Malraux confronts the Indian Socialist leader Jayapraksh Narayan in Paris with the question 'What influence has Sankara on the government of modern India? to which a startled JP could only smile . Ramu, Gowda points out, was very conscious of the fact that while economic domination of the West was widely criticised, there was little concern about the domination of the Western intellectual framework over the rest of the world. He considered the second as dangerous as the first and wanted to ensure that India's civilisational autonomy (svaraj) was preserved amidst the wild charge of globalisation.
Ramu's interest in Hindu names led him to discover that the word gandhi is a derivative of the word 'gandha' meaning perfume and that the gandhis are traditionally perfume sellers.
'Svaraj - A Journey with Tyeb Mehta's Shantiniketan Tryptych', 'Sita's Kitchen',
'I am Thou; Meditations on the Truth of India' and the novel 'Muniya's Light' are among his famous books.