It’s October, and we’ve just celebrated another “Charkha Jayanti”, or Spinning Wheel Birthday, as Gandhi wanted October 2nd to be remembered. October 2 is Gandhi’s birthday, but he had asked that the day not be used to celebrate himself or his image, but rather the constructive work that he put in motion. The spinning wheel was at the heart of Gandhi’s constructive program to free India through self-sufficiency and economic uplift, and the wheel has come to represent the steady, ongoing, and individual nature of that work. The struggle to free India ended successfully long ago, of course, but the constructive work represented by that wheel still goes on among all of those who are building nonviolent alternatives to the flawed systems we live in today; in other words, Gandhi’s wheel still spins.
Happy Charkha Jayanti!
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By: Erika
No biography available at this time
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Gandhian activist from Mexico, May 17 at Metta
Michael Nagler speaking to the Islamic Organization of North America
Hope Tank — April 29, 2011
effervescence of the crowd
interposition
