GANDHI – The alternative to violence By: Carlos G. Vallés First published : August 2012 Printed & Published by: Vivek Jitendrabhai Desai Navajivan Publishing House Ahmedabad 380 014 (INDIA) Phone: 079 – 27540635 E-mail:
[email protected] Website: www.navajivantrust.org GANDHI – The alternative to violence 01. LESSON NUMBER FOUR A little anecdote to set the reading mood. I was once on a visit to a friend's family in Ahmedabad, when this little but telling incident took place before everybody present. The child of the family came in from school with a classmate, and both sat down on the floor before all of us to do their homework together as their daily task before going out to play. We elders continued with our conversation and our tea while the two small scholars, oblivious to the audience, opened their textbooks and started turning pages, pointing at passages, and writing notes. Mathematics, physics, grammar, history seemed all to form part of their curriculum, and they read out questions and formulated answers by turn in close partnership. In the midst of their research, one of them asked the other a question: "Who was Gandhi?” I pricked my ears. Obviously there had been a lesson about Mahatma Gandhi in the classroom and they had been asked to look the matter up in their textbook. Together with the mathematics problems, the grammar parsing, and the history dates, kings and battles, they had to check on that character of history and write an essay about him. That was when one of the boys looked up and asked the other, "Who was Gandhi?" The other boy, without looking up from his notebook, just pointed at the textbook in front and answered matter-of-factly: "Lesson number four." And both went on with their homework.