Together with the Government of India, UNESCO New Delhi is proud to be associated with the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi. His life, teachings and contributions have touched on almost every major programme area of the Organization's activities - education, science, culture and communication. It also inspired the creation of  the UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP), a research institute focusing largely on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.7 towards education for building peaceful and sustainable societies across the world.  

We asked the Director of MGIEP, Mr Anantha Duraiappah, how the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi guides the work of the Institute. 

Question: How is Mahatma Gandhi relevant to UNESCO and why do you think it was appropriate to attach his name to your Institute?

The Preamble to the Constitution of UNESCO declares that “since wars begin in the minds of men and women, it is in the minds of men and women that the defenses of peace must be constructed.”  Many still pose the preposition if non-violence is a necessary condition for peace. The life and experiences of Mahatma Gandhi as well as other contemporary freedom seekers (I intentionally use the word seekers and not fighters as commonly used), such as Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King have demonstrated unequivocally that the only path to peace is through non-violence. Therefore, the principle of non-violence is a constitutive principle of UNESCO and to establish an Institute on peace without naming it after Gandhi would have been a gross oversight. He is without doubt the father of the modern non-violence movement.

Question: In practice, how does the life and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi influence the choice and selection of your activities?

Since inception, the Governing Board of the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education on Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP), made a decision to not follow the footsteps of the many other Gandhi named and related Institutes whereby the teachings of Gandhi were propagated. Instead, the Institute focuses on reviewing and reflecting on the competencies he possessed or displayed. Therefore, understanding the behavioral aspects of Gandhi, including understanding the neurobiological basis for his behavioral traits is key to the work undertaken at the Institute.

Advances in cognitive sciences and the neurosciences allow us to build these competencies. We are now designing and implementing programmes to train individuals in social and emotional learning, to first understand themselves, then to understand the “other” and then take action to pursue peace – we have coined this process as “firing the Gandhi neurons”.  Once peace has been secured, sustainability will follow as the concern for others both in the present and future generations will surely enforce the core principles of sustainability as espoused in the 1972 Rio Summit.
 
Question:  On a personal level, you are of course familiar with the principles and contributions of Mahatma Gandhi, but after 5 years at the helm of the Institute bearing his name, has it changed you in anyway?

Applying for this position was motivated by two factors. First, a desire to change our education system for our children. I was frustrated to see how little the education system had changed from the experiences of my three children. The zero-sum game that our school systems put in place through the assessments and selection process just produces individuals who are individualistic and selfish, whereas the research from the neurosciences shows that we are all emphatic by nature. The second reason was that I was driven by the name of the Institute.

But here is where I notice the big change emerging within myself over the past five years. Rather than just advocating what Gandhi stood for, I have learnt of the importance of training each individual, especially the young, to think for themselves, to question norms and beliefs and to not just accept the status quo.

I have learnt the importance of training each individual to find their place within society and more importantly to shape society within an emphatic and compassionate frame of mind. I now try-I say try because it is not easy-to do the counterfactual-the Rawlsian second theorem of veiled ignorance by putting myself in the shoes of the other before making decisions and showing compassion when taking actions that concern others. These I believe are some of the foundational teachings of Gandhi that I now try to practice in my daily life.
 
Question:  We are in the midst of the 150th anniversary celebrations of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, so what are MGIEP’s plans to honour his memory?

The young are the future of this planet. I say planet and not country because we must think beyond national boundaries and interests. The growing population, interconnectivity across populations and the common ecological challenges we face today like climate change and biodiversity dissemination calls for collective action working towards planetary wellbeing. To this end, MGIEP intends to provide a global platform in the form of a World Youth Congress on Kindness to be organized in August 2019 for the International Youth Day.

A principle teaching from Gandhi is about acts of kindness and this calls for actual action and not just talks and conversations about Gandhi. It is time to put to a stop to merely talking about Gandhi and the  doing the very opposite of his principles of non-violence and individualism.

The idea of the World Youth Congress on Kindness is to push for acts of kindness by the youth and for it to happen beyond just this one day, one year but forever till our planet does not thinks of wars, arms and violence as ways to find peace – this is nothing more than an oxymoron! But we must not forget the present generation of policymakers.

UNESCO MGIEP together with the Indian delegation to UNESCO organize the annual “Ahinsa” lecture at UNESCO headquarters in Paris every year in celebration of Gandhi’s birthday. Luminaries such as Nobel Peace Prize winner, Tawakkol Karman have been invited to talk about their own personal experiences and experiments with non-violence to achieve peace. We hope to do something very different this year by stimulating a dialogue with Gandhi using the latest artificial intelligence and Hologram technology- the operational word here is hope as we are still sourcing the raw video and audio data needed to make this a reality.