Our basic charge was to discuss the root of violence in our world, to ask what we might learn from Gandhi’s teachings, and to examine next steps that perhaps might be taken to build a movement that would strive to take action. We were not there to solve the endemic of violence in a single day, we were there to consider what we might do over a long period of time as individuals and whether we could draw together as a community to amplify our voices.
I was nervous. Since Sam had called me late that Sunday night, I had been obsessing over this weighty question, an inquiry far from my daily work of copying government information from one disk drive to another. While I had certainly gone on at length over the years on topics such as the rule of law, broader issues such as world peace, stopping violence, and the teachings of Gandhi were far out of my comfort zone. I had no pat answers or obvious insights.
Karikeya-ji’s summary of the previous day came down to three points. First, we must learn to tolerate and indeed encourage diversity. Second, we must learn to tolerate and indeed encourage dissent. Third, if we wished to have an impact, we must understand the necessity of fearlessness. All three of these traits are core to Gandhi’s teachings.
Sam Pitroda then kicked off our discussion for the day and explained why he had called us together. I had heard many of these themes over the last few months as he discussed a book he was working on and as I listened to him speak. That we must redesign our world is Sam’s thesis. The last time the world did this was after World War II with the creation of the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the other institutions we know today. That world was based on a few rich and powerful countries and a “third world” of colonies and poverty-stricken, non-democratic poor countries, at least in the estimation of the architects of this system.
But, what Keynes, Marshall, and all the others did not consider was Gandhi. Gandhi’s efforts did not just lead to the independence of India, it had spread as a global anti-colonization movement.
Today, there is no Soviet Union. The European Union has lost Great Britain. India and China have been developing at record rates. Yet, despite that, our world is not working. It is broken, Sam says, because it was designed for a different time, a different world.
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