“We must not forget that India’s conquest was not an invasion by a people but the operation of a trading company.” From Gandhi to Vinoba, by Lanzo del Vasto, p. 26
Gandhi knew that people thought that he seemed foolish by putting his hopes in the spinning wheel, of all things. But he saw into the heart of the matter: India had lost her grasp on her industries and resources. It was a trading company, not an army, remember. Therefore, reclaiming those resources and those industries, required more than grasping them back out of the hands of the machine-driven West. The people had to rebuild their capacity and skills for the work of which they had been temporarily “relieved.” While on the outside it looked harmless, non-confrontational (how could the hand overcome the machine?), it represented a rather serious call for nonviolent resistance, for reclaiming their culture as much as their resources.
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About Daily Metta
Stephanie Van Hook, the Metta Center’s executive director, launched Daily Metta in 2015 as a way to share Gandhi’s spiritual wisdom and experiments with nonviolence.
Our 2016 Daily Metta continues with Gandhi on weekdays. On weekends, we share videos that complement Michael Nagler’s award-winning book, The Search for a Nonviolent Future: A Promise of Peace for Ourselves, Our Families, and Our World. To help readers engage with the book more deeply, the Metta Center offers a free PDF study guide.
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By: Stephanie Van Hook
Stephanie Van Hook is Executive Director of the Metta Center for Nonviolence.
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Film Screening Thurs. Dec.10
We cannot love our “enemies.”
“We must not forget that India’s conquest was not an invasion by a people but the operation of a trading company.” From Gandhi to Vinoba, by Lanzo del Vasto, p. 26.
Not till just now did I realize I have been in such good company in all these years that I have discerned and shared the same intelligence. Over 500 years, what used to be but a few ‘resource capturing” trading corporations ( chartered by state authority, financed by a few share-holders) that built empires (and inflicted genocide on all continents), have today turned into hundreds of thousands of global monopolies running long supply chains in an academically embedded and emboldened”economics” of ‘cheap labor markets” “comparative advantage” and ‘for profit’ ideology. Corporations have become us. To wrench ourselves free is the call of the hour. Human Rights Law is our ‘sword and shield”.