Distinguished Guest Introduction: Relevance of Gandhi in Today's Times

A question being raised these days, particularly and directly in India, and in indirect ways globally through our ways of living, working and desiring, is this: What really is the relevance of Gandhi today? The question is in many ways quite natural, given the rising tide of violence we see in the world, and the headline Gandhian image that lends a narrow and limited ‘niceness’ quotient to the Mahatma and little more. Gandhi has been largely seen as a leader who made a heroic and giant contribution to public life, and particularly to the Indian independence struggle. He is then raised to the level of reverence in textbooks taught in schools and colleges, and read only to be forgotten. Gandhi’s thoughts on economic systems, political governance, and social reforms are hardly debated and are often seen as irrelevant. This is so at many levels, in the Indian as well as the global context. For instance, consider the popular historian Yuval Noah Harari who, while discussing the potential of religions to solve problems of humanity, referred to Mahatma Gandhi thus: