Celebrating the UN International Day of Non-Violence and the 148th birthday of the Indian leader Gandhi, Indian Embassy in Cairo organized a set of lectures and an exhibition to revive the peaceful morals the philosopher aimed to spread in his life.
India’s Ambassador to Egypt Sanjay Bhattacharyya said in the event, which took place at the Maulana Azad Centre for Indian Culture, that Gandhi continued to be always relevant and that his principles inspired people and provided guidance to civilizations across time and boundaries.
The event also witnessed opening an exhibition themed with “Spirit of Gandhi” by the Egyptian Caricature Society in collaboration with the Embassy of India in Cairo.
“This year we have worked again with the Caricature Society which we haven’t done the last two years on this theme. We worked on the spirit of Gandhi and we got 73 contributions from artists from 24 countries and we put them into a booklet,” Ambassador Bhattacharyya said.
The exhibition included 40 caricatures by artists from India, Egypt, Brazil, Colombia, Spain, Greece, China, Italy, USA, Indonesia, and other countries.
(Photo Handout to DNE)
The lectures hosted Rajni Bakshi, a well known Gandhi scholar, whom spoke about the message of peace Gandhi dreamed of spreading all of his life.
“We should always have confidence that the spirit of non violence is actually very powerful. Gandhi used to say ‘if no body else is coming with you please go alone’. Each of us as individuals need to do this individually and then collectively to bring back peace and love to this world,” Ambassador Bhattacharyya told Press Trust of India (PTI), the largest news agency in India.
Bakshi gave two speeches the first one was in Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria on Sunday entitled “After Gandhi: Promise and Peril of Non-Violence”, and the other was in Cairo.
“Gandhi’s philosophy is relevant today because people are tired of violence and it is only natural for human to want to live in peace. Many people are now understanding that non violence is not just absence of violence but the true non violence is that when we seek to engage with others to compassion and even if we have a conflict we are willing to dialogue and try and find common ground,” Bakshi told PTI.
“Violence is a reality in our lives bit it doesn’t have to dominate us,” he added.
A booklet about the Spirit of Gandhi, was also distributed among the attendees. It includes two articles, one of them is written in Al-Ahram Arabic newspaper in 2002 about Gandhi’s visit to Egypt in 1930s and the second article is by the celebrated Indian artist K.G. Subramanyn, originally written in 1995, and gives an artist’s perspective of Gandhi.
