Gandhi International News letter May 2023

 

Newsletter - May 2023

Ashrams of Gandhi and Lanza del Vasto.   This text is the preface of a libretto by Siby Joseph published on the occasion of the Symposium held in January 2023 in Sevagram on Gandhi and Beyond : Quest for a New World Order. You can read and download  https://gandhiinternational.org/fr/item/235-ashrams-of-gandhi-and-lanza.html   It seems that what characterizes a visionary resistance fighter of another is the ability to criticize what he sees of this world, appears to him as harmful to the life of man and woman in general, and to make in addition proposals of life in which a real coherence comes into play.   Gandhi is one of them and Lanza del Vasto (Shantidas) in his wake. Allow me two quotes, from a man of that time, who, at the end of the last world war, wondered as a witness of what he was experiencing. This is Georges Bernanos.   “I believe that if the methods of destruction eventually wipe our species off the planet, it will not be the cruelty that will cause our extinction, much less the indignation aroused by cruelty, nor even the reprisals and revenge it attracts, but the docility, the lack of responsibility of the modern man, his vile and servile acceptance of the least public decree. The horrors we have witnessed, the even more abominable horrors we are going to witness, do not signal that the rebels, the insubordinates, the refractories are more and more numerous in the world, but rather that there are more and more obedient and docile men.”  “There is absolutely no understanding of modern civilization if we do not first admit that it is a universal conspiracy against any kind of inner life.” Georges Bernanos, “La France contre les robots” (1947)   Indeed, the two are linked: a universal conspiracy against the fundamental freedom to refer to its inner centre as a guarantee of a well-lived life, which all spiritualities propose, especially the Christian faith (which I quote because I know it well, and without prejudging others I know less well).   This slumber of all values, this absence of responsibility of the ordinary citizen of our time which leads to horrors, to resignation in the face of fanciful decrees, to fear as a means of government, finally to war and the bomb... In addition, fear acts as self-censorship to all forms of resistance.   Whether it was Gandhi or Shantidas, they did a serious analysis of this world in the same way as Bernanos, the great Catholic thinker of the post-war period.   All three made the observation of the vanity and inanity of the political, economic, social, educational and health choices deployed in all latitudes with as primary objectives the need to take power, to regulate the life of others, to take away from them all faculties of control over their own lives, making them harmless and obedient. I like to compare it with the very symbol of the washing machine.   At first, you’re watered, then the machine starts to spin you on yourself, then a good dose of laundry with the avowed goal of surprising you and pulling all your ideas out of your head, then comes the moment after many convolutions to rinse you violently and finally to spin out at high frequency. After that, you are cooked and dried to the prevailing winds, ready to submit to avoid another brainwashing.   British colonization is nothing other than this machine passage.   The two wars of the 20th century, and what we are experiencing today, idem.   As enlightened prophets, they proposed an intense gaze of love for the human being to lead him, in truth and without nuisance, to compose from his own inner freedom, both the rejection of harmful experience and a consistent adherence to a community dimension in which each one becomes the author of his own life by sharing it with others, without the pretension of dominating them.   The village becomes for Gandhi the guarantor of the freedom of each one, of his own economic, social, educational, religious, relational and medical support. There are no more masters or slaves, but free men ready to try the crossing of their life with all the tribulations that accompany it, between failures and successes ...     Whether in South Africa, with Phoenix and the Tolstoy farm, then in the various living places then in India, Gandhi’s goal is to experience living together by defending, according to its talisman, which is the smallest or the most deprived in order to give it the tools of autonomy. So the experiences of Kochrab where he begins his fight against the untouchability, then the construction of training in active non-violence at the Ashram Satygraha and then at Sabarmati in Gujurat on the river of the same name, finally, last place and not least, Sevagram, a complete ashram where all aspects of human activity are tested to make them applicable everywhere. His motto is “A free India, with a single flag and 500,000 autonomous, independent and supportive villages.” In order to make this dynamic effective and to transform hearts and mentalities, Gandhi sets up a number of rules for volunteer candidates for life in the Ashram, accepted by all, a strong and meaningful discipline to strengthen the impulses and make them sustainable. Among these the eleven Wishes... pride of free women and men...   In Sevagram, in the spring of 1937, a seeker of truth from his native Italy comes to visit Gandhi. Giuseppe Lanza de Vasto, since it is about him, will in a very short time understand the coherence of the Gandhian experience of the ashrams. He had to wait twelve years to initiate the first experiment in Europe, shortly after Gandhi’s death on 30 January 1948, and following the disaster of the Second World War, with some followers trained during his talks. Thus was born the Community of the Ark, which, as a pilgrim, sought its place of implantation for nearly 15 years and finally settled at Borie-Noble in Herault in France, to spread as well in Morocco with the attempt of Pierre and Thérèse Parodi in the desert, Then the experiments in Grenoble of an urban community at the initiative of Jo Pyronnet. Two other community groups, Nogaret and La Fleyssière, and the communities of Bonnecombe, Saint Antoine and Guenvez were established in France. Others, meanwhile, have taken inspiration from the tribulations of L'Arche to try their community life to find the modus vivendi specific to each region or country. Thus groups are formed both in Europe (Belgium, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, etc.) and in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, etc.): objectives: to avoid as much as possible state constraints, food autonomy, rediscovery of handicrafts related to agriculture, soothe religious dissent, and when the time comes to return to resistance, apply civil disobedience, whenever necessary: Against wars said just or necessary, Such as the Algerian War or the establishment of large military deployment structures such as the Larzac, and also actions against civilian nuclear power plants, suppliers of materials for military use and actions against GMOs and junk food.   All these attempts are honourable and lived by some as free human experiences, sometimes without a future, but with a strong involvement in the search for the meaning of man on our earth. The alternative is simple : either the human species leads to the full awareness of its deep being connected to the Divine, its source and its purpose, or, according to the billionaire tenors, the policies that "loobyised" this species will transform it into a humanity endowed with artificial intelligence, that is, without its own intelligence and devoid of meaning and love, the building blocks of the human being.   So be it, that everyone can realize His life, great and eternal beneficent utopia, between failures and successes, embellished with a drop of anarchism to prevent the excesses of state and financial powers. To escape their control is a crime that we accept without regret...   Thank you to our dear Siby Joseph for initiating this Booklet on the Ashrams and communities of Gandhian thought and the attempts of the Ark with Shantidas, to them all, eternal gratitude.   Louis Campana  ____________________