Historian YN Harari was interviewed by Russell Brand not long ago and commented that Gandhi´s plans of agrarian co-operatives were "irrelevant" for modern India and that his only legacy was his face on a rupee note. The brand made the point that food quantity was not a problem, but that distribution had become a problem because of the power structure. I quickly recalled a Right Livelihood Award winner in India that had Gandhian roots.
Gandhi´s direct legacy included the lives and leadership of Sankaralingam Jagannathan and Krishnammal Jagannathan, wife and husband, and their establishment of their own NGO LAFTI in 1981, standing for "Land for Tillers´ Freedom." Their organization continued their earlier commitments in the Gandhian Sarvodaya Movement after the ultimate success of Gandhi´s Satyagraha (non-violent resistance)and the Quit India campaign. From 1950 to 1952, Sankara was with Vinoba Bhave, Gandhi´s protegé, in his Bhoodan "land gift" movement making a pilgrimage on foot to make a plea for one-sixth of large landowners´ land for the landless. Krishnamma joined Sankara Between 1953 and 1967, the couple played an active role in the Bhoodhan movement (that shifted into Bhave´s Gramdan "village gift" movement), through which about 4 million acres of land were distributed to thousands of landless poor across several Indian states.
Vinoba Bhave´s continuation of Gandhi´s legacy was so respected that he is called "Acharya" meaning "Teacher." He himself established at least six ashrams during his campaigns. One is Brahma Vidya Mandir originally founded for women in Paunar, Maharashtra, which is dedicated to sustainable food production and social justice. After a few decades, it also opened to selected men. Like Gandhi and Bhave, they are strongly influenced by the Bhagavad Gita.
Community prayers at dawn involve the Isha Upanishad, a philosophical text with the "purpose to enlighten the reader as to the nature of the soul (Atman)." At mid-morning, they use the Vishnu Sahasranama with the thousand names of Vishnu as a pervasive form of Brahman the Creator, and the Bhagavad Gita with the Krishna-Arjuna dialogue in the evening.
Gandhi was himself only introduced to the Bhagavad Gita by the London Theosophical Society since he had apparently been influenced to think of it as superstitious by Christian missionaries. The segregation and brutality of privileged South Africans had galvanized him. He had become conscious of Tolstoy´s interpretation of Christian love after the Russian´s "Letter to a Hindu" to the revolutionary-minded and future Columbia University professor Tarak Nath Das, and then his book The Kingdom of Heaven is Within You. That was 1906, while two years earlier he had been reading Britain´s John Ruskin´s Unto This Last with three principals relating the good of the individual to the good of all, the legitimacy and dignity of different kinds of work, and the life of manually skilled labour, including especially working the land and soil, is what makes life worth living. Before that same year, Gandhi had been jailed for the first time, and had read the American Henry David Thoreau´s essay, "Civil Disobedience." At that time, Gandhi also established a community at the Phoenix Settlement and his wife Kasturba became political for the first time. Even with their children, she was able to establish her place in Gandhi´s movement, and in 1913, for example, led women in prayer. Later, Gandhi cited Jesus for his direct action in throwing the moneychangers out of the Temple, the prophet Daniel, Socrates, Tolstoy, and Buddha for their demonstrations of the practice of soul force and civil disobedience, and observed, "only when the Satyagrahi feels quite helpless, is apparently on his last legs and finds utter darkness all around him, that God comes to the rescue. (SSA, p. xiv)."
Gandhi only returned to India in 1915, and by 1921, following the Amritsar massacre, came to advocate swadeshi boycotts of British imported goods, began to wear the dhoti loincloth made of khadi homespun worked on the charkha spinning wheel.
Other notable members of the Sarvodaya movement were Jayaprakash Narayan who drew significant inspiration from Marxism as he engaged in union organizing, and in 1974 called for a peaceful Total Revolution, Dada Dharmadhikari, Ravishankar Maharaj, Darbar G Desai, Narhari Parikh, and others.
YN Harari thought that Gandhi was "irrelevant" to India´s development, yet Harari could only say that from a view holding the mainstream bias that profiteering corporate executives and their technocratic associates dictate policy. It is the power and influence that underlie such skewed views that highlight one vital angle of high integrity Christianity that underlay Gandhi´s own interfaith Hindu spirituality, the empowerment to nonviolent living in relation to the power of God´s love.
What are your thoughts about Gandhi´s legacy in India, and the role of spirituality and religion in relation to what the Buddha summed up as "ignorance, greed, and hatred" and Unitarian Universalism call "powers and structures of evil"?
Gandhi´s direct legacy included the lives and leadership of Sankaralingam Jagannathan and Krishnammal Jagannathan, wife and husband, and their establishment of their own NGO LAFTI in 1981, standing for "Land for Tillers´ Freedom." Their organization continued their earlier commitments in the Gandhian Sarvodaya Movement after the ultimate success of Gandhi´s Satyagraha (non-violent resistance)and the Quit India campaign. From 1950 to 1952, Sankara was with Vinoba Bhave, Gandhi´s protegé, in his Bhoodan "land gift" movement making a pilgrimage on foot to make a plea for one-sixth of large landowners´ land for the landless. Krishnamma joined Sankara Between 1953 and 1967, the couple played an active role in the Bhoodhan movement (that shifted into Bhave´s Gramdan "village gift" movement), through which about 4 million acres of land were distributed to thousands of landless poor across several Indian states.
Gandhi only returned to India in 1915, and by 1921, following the Amritsar massacre, came to advocate swadeshi boycotts of British imported goods, began to wear the dhoti loincloth made of khadi homespun worked on the charkha spinning wheel.
Other notable members of the Sarvodaya movement were Jayaprakash Narayan who drew significant inspiration from Marxism as he engaged in union organizing, and in 1974 called for a peaceful Total Revolution, Dada Dharmadhikari, Ravishankar Maharaj, Darbar G Desai, Narhari Parikh, and others. 
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