Lexington Books
Pages: 208
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-4985-7639-0 • Hardback • June 2018 • $95.00 • (£73.00)
978-1-4985-7640-6 • eBook • June 2018 • $90.00 • (£69.00)
Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra is the director of Mahatma Gandhi Center for Non-Violence, Human Rights and World Peace at Hindu University of America.
Yashwant Pathak is professor and associate dean for faculty affairs at the College of Pharmacy, University of South Florida (USF).
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Revisiting Gandhi, by Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra and Yashwant Pathak
Chapter 1: Two Worlds: Gandhi and the Modern World, by Johan Galtung
Chapter 2: Mahatma Gandhi, International Relations and War, by Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra
Chapter 3: The Future of Humanity between War and Peace, by Abdelwahab Hechiche
Chapter 4: Satyagraha and the Bodhisattva Way: Spiritual Training for Personal and Political Liberation Today, by Frank M. Tedesco
Chapter 5: Swaraj as Blossoming and Satyagraha as Co-Realizations: Compassion, Confrontation and a New Art of Integration, by Ananta Giri
Chapter 6: “God is not in Temples, so it doesn’t Matter Who Enters Them”: Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Critique of Gandhi’s Ahimsa principle, and the Problem of Advaita-based Ethics, by Richard Grego
Chapter 7: The Concept of Non-violence in the Thinking of Leo N. Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi: Utopia or Reality? By Anna Hamling
Chapter 8: Sustainable Development and Tribal Populations: Spiritual and Gandhian Approach, by Ravi Bhatia
Chapter 9: Beyond Intolerance: Policies for Ethnic Communities Assimilation in India: A Gandhian Perspective, by Bina Sengar
Chapter 10: Applicability of Gandhian Principle of Non-violence in the Ethno-religious Conflicts among Hindu Community of North Carolina, USA, by Narayan Khadka
About the Contributors
Appendix A: A Message from Tulsi Gabbard, the United States Congresswoman
Appendix B: A Message from Ela R. Bhatt, Chancellor, Gujarat Vidyapith
"A stimulating collection of essays that explore and reflect on Gandhi’s continued relevance to a wide range of social and political tensions in the twenty-first century."
— Neil Jarman
"The book is a principled assault on current traditions of international relations. The declining power of states to protect people or address global problems beyond the power of national states to solve alone, like climate change, necessitates, argues Mahapatra, new mechanisms that transcend state foci on territorial integrity, sovereignty, and dominance of other states. His mechanisms are human security, world citizenship, international norms, global popular action. He cites current difficulties to resolve the civil war in Syria or to arrest fraying U.S. relations with Russia. Nothing concrete on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ISIS, or Boko Haram. His best example is his own work with Kashmiri militants. He could have mentioned the fall of Communism after 1989. Mahapatra does not come to grips with big international problems, for which most people would think humanitarian intervention (use of military force, if possible with U.N. mandate) is necessary. Even Gandhi conceded that, if the choice is between cowardice and violence, he would advise violence.
The many believers in Gandhian nonviolent methods have a long struggle ahead. Gandhi’s methods worked to free India from the British, but where else in the anti-imperialist struggle? Not in Algeria. Not in Kenya. Not in Zimbabwe. Not in Vietnam. Why has India’s economic development not followed in his vision of Sarvodaya villages, self-regulated, linked in “oceanic circles”? Hence the focus of IR scholars on power as it is currently exercised. Even a federation of the world would only unite force in the common defense. Very slowly, beginning now in the global South but extending for hundreds of years, Gandhian “values,” including Eastern moral values, should spread throughout world society."
— Joseph Barratta
Gandhi’s relevance in this age of crises and multi-level conflicts is beyond question. This book is a precious guide to the world of the apostle of truth and nonviolence, providing a deep insight into the Gandhian methods marvelously linked with real life situations. The framework derives from the awareness that contemporary world has increasingly witnessed strenuous relationships between moral and ethical values, and their practice: recent conflicts depict a more polarized and violent world. Gandhi’s principles based on nonviolence as the only strategy for conflict prevention and resolution acquire today a new and innovative value. This book has elaborated an interpretation that gives an answer to the much needed and demanded correct and effective connection between action and values. This stimulating book takes the reader by the hand along an exciting intellectual path in which the Gandhian message emerges in all its significance not only for the construction of our present, but more importantly, for the future.
— Emanuela C. Del Re