Bhopal: Gandhi’s women talked to him at every level, says thinker Arvind Mohan

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Gandhi does not limit women to the role of fasting and spinning the wheel, says thinker Arvind Mohan. His women talk to him at every level, fight, come to the leadership, advocate for changes in the laws related to women and demand representation of women at every level but they don't call it reservation or feminism, he added.

Mohan was speaking on ‘Mahatma ki Mahila Shakti (Mahatma’s Women Power)’ under ‘7th Mahesh Buch Memorial Lecture’ at RCVP Noronha Academy of Administration on Sunday.

National Centre for Human Settlement and Environment and Friends of Environment organised the event in the memory of Mahesh Buch. About the leadership development of women and their role in the freedom movement by Gandhiji, Mohan said that getting women out of the screen or sitting silently on dharna is also a revolutionary act? Only Mahatma Gandhi could have imagined this. “When Gandhi decided on the Namak Satyagraha, despite various restrictions on women, more than twenty thousand women had been arrested. Till date, so many women have never gone to jail in any movement”, he said.

He said dozens of women made Gandhi. “Ganga taught him to operate the spinning wheel. Hundreds of women, including four daughters of Dadabhai Naoroji, Uma Bai Khandekar and Durgabai Deshmukh, took part in the freedom movement inspired by Gandhi,” Mohan added.

Additional Director General of Police and thinker Anuradha Shankar Singh presided over the event. She said that the formulas given in today's lecture is important and the generations to come will find their way into it and connect with Gandhi. She quoted George Orwell as saying that Gandhi's life was a pilgrimage. Besides the lecture, Sarang Phagre and his troupe presented Gandhi's favourite bhajan Ram Dhun and 'Vaishnav Jan…'.