On October 2nd, India celebrated the 145th birth anniversary of the father of the country’s independence movement Mahatma Gandhi (or “Gandhiji” to Indians) and the event was celebrated globally as the ‘International Day of Non-Violence’. In India, the day is an occasion for sober reflection on the principles which Gandhiji espoused through his life and the freedom struggle which he led. In this month’s Frontline, we present a lecture by Rajni Bakshi who is the Gandhi Peace Fellow at Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations – a leading foreign policy think tank based in Mumbai – on the relevance on Gandhiji’s ideas of non-violence in today’s global context.
Gateway House was founded in 2009 by Manjeet Kripalani, a former BusinessWeek columnist and Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Neelam Deo, a career foreign service diplomat who served as the Indian Ambassador to Denmark and Ivory Coast and several West African countries, and most recently as the Consul General in New York. Unlike most Indian foreign policy think-tanks, Gateway House is based in India’s financial capital Mumbai rather than New Delhi as it seeks to engage with India’s businesses on foreign policy. Its mission is to “engage India’s leading corporations and individuals in debate and scholarship on India’s foreign policy and its role in global affairs” and its research and debates have covered an array of topics including geopolitics, economic reforms, democracy and nation-building, national security, science and innovation, and energy and environment.