[wsfii-discuss] Fwd: [Fsf-press] Software Freedom Day

Wed Oct 12 11:07:38 UTC 2005

Quoting Mamading Ceesay <mamading at gmail.com>:

> On 05/10/05, Nagarjuna G. <nagarjun at gnowledge.org> wrote:
> >
> > No he didn't.  He practiced a method of protesting by civil
> > disobedience to fight the british.  A part of the freedom movement was
> > how to make salt on owr own, without depending on the british, and how
> > to make cloth on owr own without depending on the imported mill cloth.
> > These are good illustrations of how technology could enable people
> > develop a culture.  So we adopted that spirit and gave the call: let
> > us weave our own code.
> >
>
> Had a discussion about Gandhi in another context.  From that it was
> clear that his methods/approach are still relevant and should be
> studied/practiced today.  I hadn't thought his work didn't have a
> direct bearing on the sort of things I get involved with but now I
> think I should read up on him.
>
> --
> Mamading Ceesay
>
> "Isn't a state that keeps files on innocent persons a police state?"
> -- David Mery - Innocent In London http://gizmonaut.net/bits/suspect.html
>  Radio Interview with David Mery
> http://radio.indymedia.org/news/2005/09/6963.php

Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography is titled " My experiments with truth". In the
book he clearly states his early moral choices between right and wrong and how
he took a conscious decision not to lie for the rest of his life.

His moral courage of non-violent resistance to imperalism worldwide inspired not
only millions of indians against the organising a non-violent freedom struggle
against the imperialist rule that they were subjugated to at that point of time
in History, but also inspired leaders like Nelson Mandela in South Africa and
Martin Luther King right in the very heart of the USA to organise similar
movements against racial injustice.

I hope the book will help you learn more about Gandhi and how his persona
evolved over time, his childhood, his student life in London, his law practise
in South Africa where once he was asked to get off a first class train
compartment for which he had the ticket, only because of the colour of his
skin, and finally his heroic non-violent resistance to the imperialistic forces
in his own motherland which won Freedom for India.

He is rightly called "The Father of the Nation" called India, and his methods
have greater relavance today than during any former period in history,
especially for grass root initatives as a means of non-violent protest against
Globalisation and the Patent Regimes.

-- 
Vivek Varghese Cherian
Free as in Freedom <www.gnu.org>