On the 148th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, the Embassy of India in Egypt organised commemorative events at Alexandria and Cairo, celebrating the spirit of non-violence.
The events on October 1 and yesterday included a lecture and a caricature exhibition featuring the 'Father of the Nation'.
The Indian envoy here Sanjay Bhattacharyya said that Gandhi continues to be relevant and that his principles inspired people and provided guidance to civilisations across time and boundaries.
"We should always have confidence that the spirit of non- violence is actually very powerful. Gandhi used to say 'if no body else is coming with you please go alone'. Each of us as individuals need to do this individually and then collectively to bring back peach and love to this world," Bhattacharyya told PTI.
This year, the embassy invited well known Gandhi scholar Rajni Bakshi as a speaker for the event.
Bakshi gave two speeches - the first one was in Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria on Sunday entitled 'After Gandhi: Promise and Peril of Non-Violence'.
She also gave another lecture entitled 'Non-Violence: A Temptation and Challenge' at the Maulana Azad Centre for Indian Culture in Cairo on the Mahatma's birthday which is also recognised as the International Day of Non-Violence by the UN.
"Gandhi's philosophy is relevant today because people are tired of violence and it is only natural for human to want to live in peace.
Many people are now understanding that non- violence is not just absence of violence but the true non- violence is that when we seek to engage with others to compassion and even if we have a conflict we are willing to have dialogue and try and find common ground," Bakshi said.
"Violence is a reality in our lives but it doesn't have to dominate us," she added.
The event also featured an exhibition on the theme 'Spirit of Gandhi' by the Egyptian Caricature Society in collaboration with the Embassy of India in Cairo.
"This year we have worked again with the Caricature Society which we haven't done the last two years on this theme. We worked on the spirit of Gandhi and we got 73 contributions from artists from 24 countries and we put them into a booklet," Bhattacharyya said.
Goma Farahat, head of the Egyptian Caricature Society, said the group cooperates with the embassy for different events and occasion.
"Each one of the artists who participated in the exhibition painted Gandhi through his own point of view so there are different paintings and styles," Farahat told PTI.
In addition to caricatures by artists from India, Egypt, Brazil, Colombia, Spain, Greece, China, Italy, US, Indonesia and other countries, a booklet, entitled 'Spirit of Gandhi', includes two articles, one of them is written in Al-Ahram newspaper in 2002 about Gandhi's visit to Egypt in 1930s and the second article is by artist K G Subramanyan, originally written in 1995, and gives an artist's perspective of Gandhi.
In the run up to Gandhi Jayanti Celebrations, invoking Gandhi's principle of dignity of labour and promoting the spirit of service, the Indian mission also organised an online 'Let's Clean Zamalek' campaign in the district of Zamalek in Cairo, and held 'Shramdaan'.
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