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31-May-2019 12:00 AM 3944

Gandhi Matters is a series of monthly talks on Mahatma Gandhi to commemorate his 150th birth anniversary. These talks revolve around the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi and its social and political relevance in contemporary times. The series began in October 2018, and will be wrapped up in October 2019. The Raza Foundation invites renowned social scientists, activists, and social workers to discuss on different themes in relation with Gandhian thought.

Amidst various issues ranging from deteriorating political scenario, environmental degradation, decline of social values, to different kinds of covert and overt violence witnessed around us, one can see formation of a vacuum in political thought to produce a profound solution for such issues or at least to pave the way towards their resolution. In such a scenario, Mahatma Gandhi emerges as a philosopher who not only, through his writings, compellingly professes his beliefs such as non violence (ahimsa), satyagraha, etc., but also allows us to rethink and re-evaluate his principles, and mould them to create variations in order to make them compatible with the present situation. The series ‘Gandhi Matters’ is one such initiative to revisit Gandhian thought.

Here, we publish the first discussion of Gandhi Matters, titled ‘Gandhi as a Dissenter’ by Prof. Ashis Nandy, with an introduction by Mr. Ashok Vajpeyi. Prof. Ashis Nandy is a political psychologist and social theorist called the country’s “most formidable and controversial intellectual, its most arresting thinker,” and recently listed as among the world’s "top 100 public intellectuals" by Foreign Policy magazine, is a major political and cultural critic in contemporary India.