Latest news with #DandiMarch
The Hindu
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Hindu
History, brick by brick at the AIWC wall
Encapsulating significant events associated with the All India Women's Conference (AIWC), established in 1927 to address issues such as women's education, health and gender equality, a newly opened Wall of History at AIWC in the capital is a trip down memory lane. With a beautifully curated corridor featuring 29 panels, the Wall arrests the viewer not just through its luminosity but the profundity of the brief write-up accompanying each photograph. Curated by AIWC general secretary Manju Kak, it was inaugurated by former ambassador TCA Raghavan this past week. The conference was started well before the call for purna swaraj was made in December, 1929 and much before Gandhiji's Dandi March, which shook the foundations of British rule with a fistful of salt. Who were these brave women of AIWC who saw tomorrow yesterday? There was Sarojini Naidu, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay. Then there was Margaret Cousin, not to forget Maharani Chimnabai Gaekwad, the first president and Rajkumari Amrit Kaur who went on to join Jawaharlal Nehru's Cabinet, the first of independent India. It actually started in Pune's Fergusson college in 1925 when nearly 2,000 women gathered raising their voice for equality. A couple of years later AIWC came up, now just two short of a well-deserved hundred. The AIWC History Wall commemorates the remarkable innings. Says Manju Kak, 'Beginning with our emblem and the landmark first conference in 1927, this powerful visual exhibit takes you on a journey through time, highlighting AIWC's pioneering efforts in women's education, healthcare, child marriage, legal rights, and socio-economic empowerment.'AIWC general secretary, Kak recalls the efforts made to fix the minimum age for marriage of girls through the Sarda Act in 1929. 'From the Sarda Act to launching Mobile Health Vans, establishing libraries and textile units, and initiating computer training and skill development programs, each panel reflects AIWC's dedication to the upliftment of women and children across India,' Kak points out. Some of the exhibits are truly enlightening. For instance, the one which talks of the foundation of Irwin College, not too far from the AIWC precincts. The college was designed as a haven for girls to hone their skills in arts and aesthetics and home science. Or the exhibit dedicated to Sarojini Naidu, the Nightingale of India, who was its fourth president or the one about Begum Shareefah Hamid Ali, the AIWC president in 1940 who attended a Congress session in 1907. Shareefah developed the Swadeshi movement and later went on to champion the cause of the implementation of the Sarda Act. As you walk through this corridor, Kak sums up, 'You'll witness more than just the history of an organization, you will experience the story of a movement, led by visionary women, shaping a more just and equitable society.'
IOL News
22-05-2025
- Politics
- IOL News
A journey of peace: the significance of the Salt March
Mahatma Gandhi with Sarjojini Naidoo, a powerful leader in the Indian struggle, during the Salt March. Image: Supplied IN 2005, there was a resurgence of interest around the world in nonviolence. It was the 75th anniversary of the famous Dandi March organised by Mahatma Gandhi. Many peace activists began to consider observing this anniversary in some symbolic way and to re-commit to nonviolence and peaceful means of resolving conflict. In Durban, a group of people came together under the banner of the Gandhi Development Trust to re-enact this famous march and dubbed it the Gandhi Luthuli Salt March. It symbolically joined the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Charter, drawn up in 1955 in Kliptown at the Congress of the People, with the 75th anniversary of the Dandi March. The Freedom Charter was drawn up at a time when Chief Albert Luthuli was president of the ANC. This prompted the name Gandhi Luthuli Salt March and in short, the Annual Salt March. This year, we recall that 95 years ago on April 6, 1930, Mahatma Gandhi and 78 volunteers began their nonviolent defiance march from Sabarmathi Ashram in Ahemdabad in India to the coastal town of Dandi. This turned out to be one of the largest and most effective defiance campaigns in the world in which millions of people throughout India participated by defying the unjust monopoly on salt by the British colonisers of India. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ The British not only prohibited the manufacture of salt but also imposed a tax on it. Salt is an essential ingredient on the table of every person regardless of status, race, class, caste or gender. This prohibition affected everyone, and the act of defiance against this law spread like wildfire across the length and breadth of India, drawing millions into this nonviolent campaign involving the making of salt. The band of 78 trained volunteers together with Gandhiji walked through hundreds of villages for 241 miles and for 24 days mobilising the communities as they marched, making their way to the seaside village known as Dandi. There they began to manufacture their own salt. Gandhiji led the march and having made the salt, he picked up a fistfull of salt and said to a captive audience of international and local journalists: "With this I will shake the foundation of the British Empire." The impact of this little act was unprecedented. Not only was India shaken into action but the injustice of this law drew the attention of the world. There was widespread publicity throughout the country and the international press covered the stories of this protest. Attention was particularly drawn to the atrocities committed by the police. The unarmed peaceful protesters were beaten up, arrested and imprisoned. Mounted police stormed the marchers and threw blows on their heads but no one raised a hand to retaliate. Instead,, as the wounded fell, survivors continued to march and new bands of people came in. Sixty thousand people were imprisoned as a result of this civil disobedience and eventually the British were forced to agree to negotiate a settlement and the path to freedom of India was charted. India won its freedom 17 years later on August 15, 1947. The Dandi march has served as a beacon of hope to millions around the world who chose to use nonviolent means to attain freedom and it continues to inspire nonviolent resisters all over the world. We in South Africa too, mounted many nonviolent struggles. We also opted for a negotiated settlement. Let us be aware of the fact that the alternate could have been as ghastly and devastating as Gaza. We see the devastation of war in other parts of the world where not only people die but the entire environment is damaged to the extent that rebuilding from the destruction becomes a nightmare. Significantly in 2008, a pledge was made by the participants of the 5th Salt March. We reproduce a summary of it: "War and violence are destroying the lives of millions of people in the world. While thousands are killed, families are left destitute to suffer untold misery and deprivation. Further the violence of greed exploitation and corruption is causing poverty, misery and environmental degradation among millions who are left homeless and without work or shelter. We pledge our solidarity with the millions who have died and the billions who are living a life of poverty and we rededicate ourselves to the moral, and spiritual philosophy of nonviolent resistance against war, violence, greed and exploitation." From the outset, the Durban Salt March Committee agreed that this march would carry a clear message of peace, nonviolence, ubuntu, reconciliation and social cohesion, that in that spirit the march would be non-competitive and that it would not be a march to raise funds, but to draw everyone, rich and poor, to the march in solidarity. This march carries the message of the Freedom Charter. In particular, it draws attention to the important clause of the Charter which says: "South Africa shall strive to maintain world peace and the settlement of all international disputes by negotiation-not war. Peace and friendship amongst all our people shall be secured by upholding the equal rights, opportunities and status of all, within the country, in Africa and internationally." As we witness the inequalities in our society today, the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor, as we see the many challenges that our society faces in terms of access to basic necessities of life such as work, security, shelter, nourishment caring and education, we realise that although we are liberated, there is still much that we need to do to achieve both our dreams and the dreams of our forefathers, who sacrificed so much that South Africa may attain freedom. The Salt March 2025, in celebrating its 20th anniversary, seeks to invoke the spirit of compassion and love that all our scriptures speak about, so that together we can rid our community of corruption, of crime, of violence, and of wanton vandalism and build a strong, peaceful nation where ubuntu can once again prevail across the country among all South Africans. If this is your dream too, then let's get together in this march and contemplate on how we can together make a difference. The march start will start on May 25 at the Gandhi Phoenix Settlement in Bhambayi, Inanda, at 7.30am. Secure parking will be available at the Gandhi Luthuli Peace Park in Phoenix, from where a shuttle will bring you to the Gandhi Settlement. The march is a 4.5km walk from the Gandhi Settlement to the Gandhi Luthuli Peace Park. Ela Gandhi Image: File Ela Gandhi is the chairperson of the Gandhi Development and Phoenix Settlement Trusts. ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media. THE POST
Scroll.in
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
Jyoti Bhatt: The Gandhian whose expressive artwork is an archive of India
Jyoti Bhatt was born in Gujarat's Bhavnagar on March 12, 1934 – the fourth anniversary of the Dandi March led by Mohandas Gandhi. This coincidence always felt meaningful to him. Bhatt's father was deeply influenced by Gandhi. That association may have shaped the outlook of the printmaker, photographer and teacher indirectly – and sometimes more directly, such as his decision to always wear khadi. Bhatt, now 91, was especially struck by Gandhi's advice to writers to use language so simple that even unlettered farmhands engaged in agricultural tasks could understand it. Bhatt says that he has always tried to follow this principle, especially in his writing. The nonagenarian's prolific artistic career and philosophies are being showcased at an exhibition titled Through the Line & the Lens at Gallery Latitude 28 in New Delhi. It has been curated by artist Rekha Rodwittiya. This is the largest retrospective in recent years of the art and practice of Jyotindra Manshankar Bhatt, popularly known as Jyoti Bhatt. The exhibition offers a new reading of the enduring influence of Bhatt on an entire generation of post-independence visual art practitioners. Also on display are his personal writings in diaries and letters. Bhatt's lifelong vocation to document India's living traditions, rural artistic practices and vernacular art forms has contributed significantly to preserving India's visual heritage, says curator Rodwittiya. 'Bhatt understood that rural social practices were not going to remain intact and unimpaired from the changing economic and socio-political situations that India was encountering,' she said. 'His travels brought him into contact with folk traditions, where art was practiced as part of the everyday occurrences of the lives of the people in rural India.' While this could be viewed as a process of archiving and documenting, Bhatt's keen creative approach makes them works of art in their own right, as well as a tool for preservation of the memory and a belief system he saw as slowly vanishing. In 1967, Bhatt began using the camera to replace his sketchbook during travels, allowing him to record images immediately. Led by curiosity and experimentation, Bhatt used opportunities to explore new techniques, processes, and even technology. Image making through the camera began as an act of documentation and a cerebral exercise, but gradually evolved into a medium of expressing emotions. A Gandhian at heart, he approached his work with empathy and humanism. His documentation of living traditions was far deeper than a mere record of events and scenes. Bhatt's practice straddled various disciplines. As an artist, he created a unique pictorial language that permeated many media in an era of seminal change within Indian contemporary art. He was educated at Bhavnagar's Home School, where the teaching philosophy was influenced by Rabindranath Tagore. 'The environment was liberal, even progressive, for its time,' Bhatt recalled. 'Music, dance and the arts were given as much importance as subjects like mathematics or science.' Since he was not particularly strong in academics, his interests grew naturally towards the arts. This led him to the newly established Faculty of Fine Arts at the MS University of Baroda in 1950. Here, Bhatt assisted his teachers, first NS Bendre and later KG Subramanyan, on their personal mural projects. 'Those experiences were formative and gave me confidence in my own ability to handle collaborative and large-scale work,' Bhatt said. Attending events such as a fresco workshop at the Banasthali Vidyapith in Rajasthan in 1953 and his exposure to mandana, a traditional form of rangoli, gave Bhatt a familiarity with the form and a curiosity about it that later lead to his photo-documentation of similar living traditions in rural and tribal India. He was exposed to printmaking during his college years. An exhibition of Krishna Reddy's prints left a deep impression on him. Later, in 1964, when he received a Fulbright Scholarship, he studied the subject at the Pratt Institute in New York. Bhatt began teaching at his alma mater in 1959. With limited resources and minimal access to information, it was a challenge for a teacher to open up the minds of young students. 'Looking back, I think I was playing a pretend game, like the ones young children play, by simply imitating how my teachers shared their knowledge of art,' he said. 'Even then, and perhaps always, I preferred not to advise students on what they should do. Instead, I tried to make them aware of various possibilities, often drawn from the past.' Situating India's rural and tribal traditions within contemporary processes, as well as viewing Indian creative expressions in the context of Western and larger global discourses made Bhatt a unique bridge transcending the two worlds. While his work remained deeply rooted in the ethos of India's history and heritage, it examined critically the dichotomies and ironies of Independent India. At a time when most artists of his generation were aligning themselves with positions that reflected either Western or Eastern influences within their vocabulary, Bhatt did not conform. 'He deliberately becomes a tightrope-walker and juxtaposes his need to view both these territories as historical ancestries that accommodate him,' said Rodwittiya. Positioned at the cusp between tradition and modernity, his work referenced cubistic attitudes and pop culture before arriving at the deeply rooted Indian folk characteristics. It reflects the socio-political environment and harmony and discord of Indian society. His engagement with the complexities of modern India can be seen in his pictorial narratives, where image and text are often of equal importance to the cohesiveness of the image. His work is still relevant, asserted Bhavna Kakar, the founder of Latitude 28. 'Bhatt's practice is foundational to many conversations that today's younger artists are engaging with – whether it's around identity, craft, documentation, or politics.'
Time of India
18-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
A heritage garden rooted in history, mythology
As you immerse yourself in the lush embrace of this garden, every tree whispers the tales of valour, resilience, and unwavering spirit of freedom. Here, trees stand as living monuments, bearing witness to the sacrifices and struggles that paved the way for India's independence. The CSIR-National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI) has undertaken a remarkable initiative, establishing a ' Heritage Tree Garden ' in Banthra, Lucknow, that serves as a living repository of India's rich historical and mythological legacy. The heritage garden, which has at least 30 plants related to the freedom movement or of historical importance, celebrates India's freedom movement and historical legacy. Amidst the lush foliage, the peepal tree from the Cellular Jail in Port Blair commands reverence. Its branches bear silent testimony to the atrocities endured by the freedom fighters incarcerated within those walls. Yet, its presence offered solace to the likes of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and countless others, reminding them of the indomitable human spirit that could not be confined. The tree could be seen from the corridor outside Savarkar's cell and might have provided some solace to him and other prisoners during their jail term. Each tree in this garden carries a barcode that, when scanned, unveils its historical relevance, allowing visitors to immerse themselves in the narratives woven into the fabric of India's freedom struggle. Scientists have traversed the length and breadth of the country, collecting planting and propagation materials (cutting, seeds, roots and others) from the original heritage trees from the respective sites and planted them on the Banthra campus. The garden also has heritage trees, including those from Andaman & Nicobar Islands, several places in Uttar Pradesh, Champaran in Bihar, and the Dandi March route. Each tree in this garden carries a unique story, etched into its bark and branches. The 'Bawan imli ka ped' (a tamarind tree) from Fatehpur bears witness to the ultimate sacrifice of Thakur Jodha Singh Attaiya and 51 freedom fighters, whose bodies hung from its branches for thirty-seven days. The mango tree from Dashehri village in Lucknow stands as the mother tree of the renowned Dussehri mangoes, a testament to the rich agricultural heritage of the region. The banyan tree from Patalpuri Temple in Prayagraj is believed to have hosted Lord Vishnu as Balmukund, symbolizing the eternal presence and grace that sustained the freedom fighters. The sponge tree from Gaudiya Math in Mathura safeguarded the weapons of Pandavas during their exile, earning the reverence and prayers of generations. From the Toothbrush Tree of Nidhivan Temple in Vrindavan to the banyan tree of Mahamaya Devi Temple in Modinagar, these living witnesses stand as reminders of the sacrifices made and the resilience displayed in the face of adversity. NBRI director Ajit Kumar Shasany said, 'We recently visited the cellular jail in Port Blair and brought the planting material of the historical peepal tree at the jail. We are continuously making plants from such original heritage trees and enriching our garden. CSIR has launched an initiative, focused on identifying, documenting, and preserving heritage trees, with an emphasis on their conservation.' 'These heritage trees, some over a century old, hold significant historical importance and freedom movements in the region. These trees not only represent nature's endurance but also serve as living monuments of India's history and heritage. The institute's goal is to propagate these trees ensuring their legacy continues,' he added. The heritage garden was inaugurated this year by secretary, department of scientific and industrial research, and director general, CSIR, N Kalaiselvi. 'Our next goal is to collect and propagate heritage trees from Southern India — an exciting step in preserving historical and cultural legacies,' the NBRI director said.
The Hindu
22-04-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Gandhi Bhavan inaugurated in Dharwad
Mahatma Gandhi's life and fight and the ideals advocated by him continue to the be the guiding principles of various governments and governance, Labour Minister Sanotsh Lad has claimed. He was inaugurating a Gandhi Bhavan newly constructed by the Department of Information and Public Relation near the new bus station in Dharwad on Monday. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had launched a series of programmes aimed at spreading the messages of the Buddha, Basava, Gandhi and Baba Saheb Ambedkar, particularly among students and the younger generation. 'The government is executing the plan to construct Gandhi Bhavan in every district with the objective of spreading the message of Gandhi. The project was first announced in the budget by the Chief Minister during 2016-17,' he said. The Minister said that ahimsa and truth were the two vital weapons of Gandhi to make India free from the clutches of the British. The principles of Gandhi are relevant always and the effort of the government is to spread more awareness on his life and contribution and thereby, motivate the younger generation, he said. Deputy Commissioner Divya Prabhu G.R.J. elaborated on the objective of building Gandhi Bhavan and the activities for which it will be utilised during the coming days along with the facilities being made available in it. MLA N.H. Konaraddi spoke on the relevance of Gandhi and appreciated the efforts taken to make the Gandhi Bhavan impressive. Gandhi Bhavan has various portraits and exhibits on Gandhi's life and freedom struggle, including the Dandi March or the salt satyagraha. Deputy Director of Department of Information and Public Relation Gurunath Kadabur made the introductory remarks. Police Commissioner N. Shashikumar, Superintendent of Police Gopal Byakod, Sanjiv Kulkarni of Gandhi Peace Foundation and others were present.
