Chandan Gowda, the sociologist from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, has an interview with the late Ramachandra Gandhi in the magazine section of The Hindu (the interview was first published in Lankesh Patrike):
In an earlier conversation, you said that you were not interested in the Right or the Left but in the truth. “People want the truth,” you said. What did you mean by this?
Ignoring questions about the meaning and purpose of life, politics in our times has merely championed the cause of exclusive identities: caste, religious, socio-economic, nationalist.Never contemplating the possibility that these identities might be falsehoods, false answers to questions “who am I?” and “who are we?” which concern us most deeply.
Pitting us against one another and all of us against non-human life, nature and nothingness, the politics of exclusive identities has understandably failed to deliver on its promises of justice, freedom, or happiness.
Truth matters. Selfhood might be non-dual, we might be all things and nothingness too. Each one of us. Empowerment and humility can be like gifts only if exclusive identity and its agenda of limitless compassion and love and joy.
Read the full interview: Ethics, ecology and enlightenment
churumuri 
Brilliant interview. Humility oozes out of Ramachandra Gandhi. Such a pity that Gandhiji’s Hinduism and his political imagination have died. Thanks Chandan, for a refreshing interview.
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an enlightened & sensitive being no doubt.
but such enlightenement and sensitivity cannot be flesh and blood of any society.
consider this, if the tamil’s of lanka become unilaterally so sensitive, then they, their languge and culture will be wiped out within two generations, perhaps even faster. (LTTE & its brutality is there, but there is also the struggle of ordinary tamils).
Check what has happenned/is hapenning in Indonesia and even Malaysia and closely observe the changes that are hapenning in South Korea and the fallout of that in the rest of the world. Even the uber-enlightened Europe, whom as RG mentioned our secularists copy/xerox, is waking up to a monster that it is not able to control. The Danes cannot draw their cartoons, the dutch cant talk, and the brits & the french cant have their peace and making concessions after concessions that are hacking into the very enlightened system that made such concessions possible in the first place.
Back home buddhadevaru is forced to withdraw magazines published by his own party from the market, because somebody did the type of dialectic analysis on Muhammed, that RG prescribes for Rama & Sita. Buddhadevaru pulled that magazine under protest from minority politicians, whose only line of argument was ‘how dare he say such things about Him’ and under the nose of the rest of the unquestioning enlightened media – too hot to handle even for those who were falling over themselves dissecting north-south nuances, bhadrachalam & mylapore’s legendary tyagaraayara aaradhanes be damned. In this case however, why give grief, when we have a SRK on matinee? The insecurities of the bhadra-lok, i say.
this is mindless application of sarva dharma samabhaava. it can be a great ideal if all concerned believe in it. It cannot work if only one party has to do all the dirty work and it most certainly, cannot work under the stewardship of those who cannot tell their dharma from their dharmendra.
Any one who has assumed holier than the other attitude, and assumed unrequited high pedestal positions has been trampled. Ask the Buddhists of Nalanda. Anyone who is arrogant enough to have unquestioning belief in their own theories (no,no,no that is against my principles) and foolish enough not to look beyond them and adapt even in the face of danger, will get wiped. When at war, even the Taliban does not mandate namaz five times a day. Europe should take a leaf out of their book.
It is only because the raayas, the shivajis, the rajputs and the sikhs (& others whom i have not mentioned) who fought the political battles for centuries, that there even was a platform left for the genius of gandhi to stand. Even then, what Gandhi’s inability to distinguish the political other from the social same led to, we all know.
Bottom line is this, the editor of the newspaper that carried this article, was only last week seen defending certain militias.
PS:
I am no apologist for Rama, my mom sings rama naama every night, but my ajji would diss rama and my aunt, who used to tell us a story everynight, never told us ramayana stories. had to read ACK to know what they were talking about. recently came across this apparent best seller in telugu that rips rama’s character asunder by ranganayakkamma, an avowed revered leftist i was led to believe. though i cant read telugu, i hear passages of it many a night. good stuff.
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