Book Title: World of Philosophy
Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan
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Mahatma Gandhi and Some Enduring Challenges
for the 21st Century.
- Prof. Dr. Christopher Key Chapple Ahmedabad, the home of the professor to whom this book is dedicated, plays an important role in Indian history and in the world's imagination. For many years, Mahatma Gandhi lived and worked at his Ahmedabad Ashram by the shores of the Sabarmati River. The Ashram now houses both a museum and a training center established by non-resident Indians to educate household servants and bring.literacy to the underserved. In addition to providing an academic home to my friend and colleague Yajneshwar Shastri at Gujarat University, the city also boasts Gurujarat Vidyapeeth, a residential university dedicated to the perpetuation of Gandhian values. In many ways Ahmedabad represents a crossroads of cultures and eras. Its inner core hearkens back to the Mughal and pre-Mughal presence of Islam in India. Its spacious 20th century expansion houses some of the great institutions that helped shape India's independence, including the Ashram, the University, the Vidyapeeth, as well as Loyola College, the Nehru Centre for Science and Environment, and the L. D. Institute of Indology. Since the liberalization of India's economic policies in 1991, Ahmedabad has seen stupendous growth, with the construction of the superhighways, numerous new educational institution, and dense, high-rise residential construction. This new Ahmedabad reflects the new globalized India, look eagerly toward a better future.
However, as India modernizes and embraces the many comforts of consumer culture, Ahmedabad runs the risk of falling prey to old prejudices and difficulties. Periodically, communal riots have blemished the city's history, pitting majority Hindus against minority Muslims, a situation that would deeply sadden the Mahatma. More recently, there seems to be grounds for hope that the new drive toward urbanization and globalization can help minimize present and future conflict. However, in order for peace to prevail, it must not be established merely on the values of secular consumerism, but must draw deeply from the well of India's longstanding cultural values, values that transcend the provenance of any single faith. Furthermore, any solution for India will also serve as a model for the world. India boasts one of the world's most complex melange of cultures, linguistic groups, and religions. The harmonious co-existence of these plural communities can help inspire others to live peacefully with one another while respecting differences.
Some of the premises of Indian thought in regard to the pluralism that informed Gandhi's worldview can be summarized as follows. Origins are obscure. We cannot be certain from where we came or at what point of time things began. The Vedas articulate an unformed foundation, a realm of nonexistence (asat), a mist from which arise distinct worlds, depending
