NARO UDESHI: FOUNDER OF MAHATMA GANDHI CENTRE REMEMBERED!!!

Naro Udeshi: Founder President of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre Remembered

On behalf of the Mahatma Gandhi centre, I take special pleasure in welcoming all of you to this simple gathering of family and friends in the memory of a soul that departed from us, this day 12th January one year ago. Naro visited this world and lived amongst us for little over eight decades, and although he made this country home by choice for him and his family, he held a strong view and departed with it, that this country could have been better and progressed much faster had there been an environment of good governance that ensured equity and justice to all its citizens in the spirit that the country belongs to all. In the last few years Naro was very actively associated with every effort that stood for good governance, and culmination of this effort led to the birth of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre, Sri-Lanka.

People of Sri Lanka feel notionally divided, and language, religion, race and territorial affinity are dividing factors. Development in Sri Lanka has largely been urban centered and villages are made service units for the cities. We live at a time of racial hatred, during which violence reigns freely, corruption is rewarded, dissension is brutally destroyed, and freethinking is permanently silenced. The country cries for a change, and like many other friends he came to associate with, Naro believed that the country needs a discipline that is relevant and acceptable to all at all times and in all circumstances – a discipline of national life, ensuring the right of individuals blended within the aspirations of their neighborhood, their community, their village, other adjoining villages and the country at large. This search led to the concept of Swarajya.

We in the Mahatma Gandhi Centre are convinced that the new Sri Lanka we wish to build will be safe and prosperous only when the necessary amenities of life are also enjoyed by the poor in common with the rich, and when the masses in the villages feel free to improve their lot by their own effort and shape their destiny the way they like. Therefore, encouraging villages to be self-reliant by producing most of their needs through own efforts is the main focus of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre. People of Wattegedera in the Kurunegala district are leading this effort by having constituted their own Swarajya, and they are gradually learning the power and rewards of collective effort to develop the village.

We all know that violence is evil and should be resisted by all means at our disposal. But, do we have sufficient good in us? Can we marshal all our collective good to overcome violent tendencies of others? These are questions we at the Mahatma Gandhi Centre ask constantly. During 2008 we associated with some other organizations to advocate that the country has the requisite spiritual strength and values to cultivate good in the people for co-existence, and has been in the forefront to recommend formation of village based peace councils. Contact with the youth organizations has revealed that individual goodness in youth is easily transformed to collective evil, and overcoming this tendency in youth groupings has also become another important focus in our work.

We are living in a world of science and technology in which spirituality and its guidance are obscure and viewed as outmoded and have no relevance. The world that has been chasing material comforts seem to be crashing under the weight of those comforts to which the people have become slaves. There is a search for a new paradigm the world over, and the Gandhian Philosophy that has been considered up to now irrelevant to the modern world is being reconsidered and researched. The Mahatma Gandhi Centre was one of the organizations invited for a conference recently held at the Centre for Rural Research and Development, Chandigarh, India to share thoughts on regaining rural democracy along Gandhi’s lines of empowering people. Relevance of Gandhian principles of need based production will certainly have to replace greed based production that has been advocated so far throughout the world, and we believe that Mahatma Gandhi Centre has a vital role to play in the future of this country.

Although many did not understand why the Mahatma Gandhi Centre was being established, I am sure they will now understand the relevance of this centre. We are confident that the family of Naro will be happy that he was one of the main players in establishing this centre, and it will remain a living tribute to Naro. All of us who are now associated with this centre also take pride that we have internalized the wisdom of Naro – that "wealth has no meaning unless used to serve humanity," and we wish to keep it that way.

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