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Gandhian values declining, says Ananthamurthy

Staff Correspondent

Attitude of Government towards struggles faulted

MANIPAL: The Jnanpith Award winner, U.R. Ananthamurthy, said here on Thursday that there has been a steady decline of Gandhian values in the country. He was delivering a talk on `What it is to be an Indian today' at the national convention of SPIC-MACAY.

Dr. Ananthamurthy said Gandhiji was a revolutionary in the true sense. It was only a great mind like Gandhi's that questioned modernism. In his `Hind Swaraj,' Gandhiji said the British were in India because Indians loved modern civilisation. Modern civilisation was a disease from which both the Indians and the British had to be saved.

Govt. attitude

Dr. Ananthamurthy said the Government had ignored the pleas of the environmentalist, Medha Patkar, though she had been using the Gandhian means of struggle. But it wanted to respond to the naxalites. This only proved that the Government responded to violent methods and proved the ideology of naxalites right. Even the British were considerate to respond to Gandhi, but the same could not be said of the Union Government.

There were three "hungers" in the 20th century: hunger for equality, spiritualism and modernism. Love of modernity led to hunger for equality. Hunger for equality produced the politics of the worst kind. Spiritual hunger had produced English-speaking gurus. Under globalisation, modernity had become vulgar. Earlier, English was being studied to read Shakespeare, Tolstoy and other great writers, but now people studied English to read third-rate literature.

Unlike European countries, India was not a nation, but a civilisation. The call centres, another product of globalisation, were producing "IT coolies." To create the real India, it was necessary to rejuvenate common schools. Presently, the common schools had been relegated to the background due to the emergence of elite schools.

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