President of Gandhi International France on his Visit Ashram and about the Colloquium

 




  This passage was written by Mr.  Louis Campana, President of Gandhi International France and recipient  of  Jamnalal Bajaj International Award  after participating in a colloquium in January 2024 by Sevagram Ashram Ashram Pratishthan . It is culled out from Gandhi International Newsletter, March 2024.

We now head to Sevagram, the Gandhi ashram since 1936 (where Lanza del Vasto will meet him in 1937, origin of the communities of the Ark), where we are invited to speak to open the «Colloquium on new emerging challenges and expected Peace solutions!» Joseph Siby, the director of this think tank, has been a friend since my first visit in 1999 to the Institut d'Études Gandhiennes in Wardha.


I developed my «Elements of reflections on the contemporary world» that were the subject of the January 2024 newsletter (short version, but the long one is on the website, «newsletters»). Three days during which university professors and their students, from different states of India, drew on modern innovations, computer science and artificial intelligence to find a link or applications with the Gandhian long-term prospects. It goes without saying that the approaches of AI (and WHO, in particular) concerning the health of everyone is the opposite of the Gandhian principle for which the individual is responsible for his own health and must remain so, even in case of contagion, even when States or globalized institutions impose an element to stop this contagion without precaution and to the uncontaminated risks which often turn out to be the case. Regarding the benefits of AI for agriculture that could develop in a totally mechanized way, without problems of prophylaxis because the seed is protected in advance, it is the very principle of an above-ground cultivation, chemically assisted, dream of the most daring agro-industrialists, reservoir of pesticides and long-term diseases for consumers. Yet these directions are well taken by the proponents of power, factors of struggles between states for patents, it brings money and sneakily maintains a dependence on the opposite of Swadeshi. I am happy to see that these young people, girls or boys, born in this globalized world realize that the reconciliation of these two elements is impossible, useless, fallacious and fatal, because it is fundamentally about the freedom of women and men. Freedom is a spiritual requirement, better to die of hunger, stripped of everything than to lose it. The «consciousness of being» prohibits this dependence on the e-machine, whatever it is, mechanical, computer or «magic», and vigilance is required.

 

In the evening at 6 pm, we gather 20 minutes, sitting in front of the house of Gandhi, under the Pipal Tree planted by himself, where for years the prayer united the ashram, all confessions combined. A troupe of monkeys comes to share these moments with somersaults, stripping and antics.

A few steps from a mud hut maintained, Gandhi welcomed one  leper that he treated personally, pledge of unconditional love, not even fear!

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