Mahatma Gandhi's vision of India was of disarmament and he saw a future where it enjoys goodwill with the neighbouring countries, a Japanese author today said.
Gandhi's view about future of India is reflected in one of his articles in 1940s where he wrote that India should not be armed in future and it should rather depend on goodwill of the neighbouring countries, Yamaguchi Hiroichi said.
He was speaking at the launch of his book 'How relevant is Gandhi Today? A Japanese Perspective' at a function organised by the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR) here.
Yamaguchi highlighting Gandhi's views on peace and non-armament as one influencing the other.
"Almost the same thing has been written in the Preamble to the Japanese Constitution, after the end of the Second World War, in more detail," he said.
Gandhi's vision of India was "inspired" by the "Russo-Japanese War" rejecting military and industrial might, he said.
"Already in 1907 Gandhi had a very strong idea of how India should be developed. A large part of that idea came from the experiences of Russo-Japanese war," he said.
R P Mishra, ex-Vice Chancellor of Allahabad University, who edited the book, said Yamaguchi's book was the 7th one in the 10-book series on Mahatma Gandhi.
The remaining three books in the series would be released this year itself.
The first part of Kulkarni's book is a compilation of
what eight eminent personalities from the era of the freedom struggle - Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Maharshi Aurobindo, Swami Ranganathananda, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Ananda Coomaraswamy said, wrote or did on August 14-15,1947.
Hence the title of the book August Voices, Kulkarni said. "None of these great men wanted partition to be what it, catastrophically, turned out to be," he added.
The call for friendship and cooperation among India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, leading to a three-nation confederation, is embedded within the history of our freedom movement itself, he said, adding the confederation should be achieved before 2047, which marks the centenary of the end of the British rule in the subcontinent.
The book lauds efforts of former prime ministers Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, and also those of Pakistan's former president General Pervez Musharraf, to arrive at an innovative solution to the Kashmir issue.
"Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif should build on the edifice of constructive dialogue between their predecessors, and conclude an agreement acceptable to both countries and also to the people of Jammu and Kashmir," Kulkarni said.
According to him, alongside resolution of the Kashmir issue, India and Pakistan, together with Bangladesh should expand cooperation on all fronts and move, step by step, towards a three-nation confederation.
"This will not only benefit the three countries, but also revitalise the entire South Asia making it a region of peace, prosperity and shared progress for the largest section of global population with a common civilisational legacy. To achieve this goal, the ties between South Asian countries and China should be strengthened on the basis of equality and respect for the legitimate core concerns of all," he said.
Mahatma Gandhi had made an impassioned plea that India and Pakistan, like Hindus and Muslims, should co-exist as brothers belonging to a single family, Kulkarni said. In 1964, Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya and Rammanohar Lohia had called for an India-Pakistan confederation, he added.
Senior BJP leader L K Advani has publicly endorsed the confederation idea on many occasions, he said.
"Therefore, I have dedicated my book to Vajpayee, Advani and Singh, guided by my conviction that India needs close Congress-BJP cooperation to tackle major national problems," Kulkarni said.
His previous book was Music of the Spinning Wheel: Mahatma Gandhi's Manifesto for the Internet Age.
Kulkarni's initiative 'Mumbai-Karachi Friendship Forum' is aimed at normalization of India-Pakistan relations and seeks to promote people-to-people contacts and cultural exchanges between India and Pakistan.
