Out of the city

On the 19th of October we left Delhi by train for an organic farm in Maharashtra. We stayed on the farm for a week before heading to Gandhi's Ashram. I'll work backwards.

To be brief, Gandhi was born in 1869 to a well to do family. He was married at 13 and went to England to study law at 18. After his studies he briefly returned to India before leaving for South Africa. There, he fought institutional racism for years before returning to India. Upon his return he was already seen as a Indian hero and was soon given the name Bapu, which means father. From then until his assassination in 1948 he fought for the Indian people, specifically their right to self-determination, which was won on August 15th, 1947. Gandhi's way of fighting for independence was markedly different than many of history's other independence movements. He embraced the idea that British rule was only possible with Indian submission and that violence was no way of creating a new country. He led a non-cooperation movement, and when it turned violent, he fasted until there was peace.
When asked what his message to the word was, he responded, "My life is my message." Cognizant of the violence caused by industrialization he spun is own thread and grew his own food, Gandhi was not just an Indian back-to-the-lander. He extrapolated his views to every aspect of his life. His messages were not complex or abstract; he was honest with himself and when he made a decision, he followed it unwaveringly. What I think is most relevant to us today is the courage Gandhi had to eliminate contradictions in his life. There was no dissonance between what he held as truth and the way he behaved.

He wrote on numerous topics from education to technology. Truth and non-violence have become the tenets modern Gandhianism. It does not prescribe a specific way of life beyond these two tenets and people have adopted his views worldwide. The farm that we visited was one example. Disturbed by the destructiveness of modern industrial Agriculture, Vacent and Karuna started one of the regions first organic farm after reading "One Straw Revolution" by Fukuoka. Their goal is to produce food without the use of chemical fertilizers or tractors and rebuild the fertility of land that had been constantly degraded since the Green Revolution. If there is one thing that he could give to his children, he said its topsoil. Walking through his forest garden I could spot orange trees, papaya, custard apple, and many other plants growing harmoniously next to each other without any intensive care. The plants may have been very different (papaya, mango, millet, and cotton)  and the farm followed to a concise ethic of truth and non-violence behind them, but it was a mentality that I have seen all over the world. I reminded me of the growing permaculture movement in Vermont and how a combination of a Japanese farmer /writer, Gandhi, and the global permaculture yielded such an amazing oasis that farmers, school groups, intellects are all looking to replicate. It was yet again another bazaar child of globalization, and a beacon of reclaimed self-determination in an age of increasing complexity and interdependence.