It was around 144 years ago in a town Porbandar, in Western India the state of Gujarat Mohandas Gandhi was born to a simple middle class family. At that time perhaps very little people knew that he would become a great icon the Great Mahathma and the father of the Indian Nation. His early life was spent in Guajarat before he went to the UK to study law and he returned to India and then went to South Africa where he practiced law that is as President Nelson Mandela just said in the film we saw. South Africa became is his Dharma Bhoomi the place where he discovered the injustice of racialism the injustice of oppression and he owed his message of resistance to imperialism to colonialism and to oppression while he was there the famous incident where he was thrown out of a railway compartment is well known. 

He returned to India in 1914 and at the time the Indian freedom for struggle which was in a very indecent or���.. Stage. The Indian National Congress which was been formed in 1885 was really not a mass based party. It was formed of well meaning people of British origin and Indian to take forward the struggles that have been invited earlier in a very violent fashion in 1857 but the Indian National Congress stood for negotiation with the imperial power to attain independence. Gandhiji invited a great vibrancy and momentum to the movement he decided that the only way India could achieve independence was through a mass based movement and in order to create that awareness that coming together of people of different religions ethnicities and different parts of a huge country like India he had to find an idiom that will be understood by the masses and I think he discovered that idiom as time went by. The concept of satyagraha the concept of non violence was born in a period of extreme adversity. 

As you are aware that in 1818 the British Colonial power in India mandated an attack and I thought it was the most inhuman acts where Indians were asked to crawl and in fact led to a protest and that protest of course in the end turned very violent and we have Dhastaji incident in Jalaliwabahag incident where unharmed protesters were fired upon by the British troops and a large number of Indians lost their lives. This in a way would have been a turning point as far as the Indian freedom for struggle went. Perhaps Gandhji realized that non-violence was far more effective apart from the fact that non-violence is a of moral underpining a spiritual underpinning to any movement or to your way of life and I think that very stupe strategy that Gandhiji adopted because he saw around him the suffering and the might of imperialist power in the first world war and then again the that might used to brutally crush the freedom seekers freedom lovers in India. I think that is why the concept of non violence the concept of satyagraha as political idiom as a political means was born. 

Some people say that Gandhi introduced moralism spirituality in such a way that it actually adversely impacted the freedom struggle in such a way and that perhaps if Gandhi had not advocated for non violence India would have achieved its freedom earlier. I think this is to simplicity to believe that that would have happened, simply because the British had over blindingly superior military power and they could easily crush any movement for independence for freedom and I did refer to the Jaliyawala incident and I certainly think mainly Ghandiji and nobody wanted many such incidents all over India. After the Jaliyawala massacre he led the non cooperation movement in the early 20's. In 1921 he called off the movement after the �.incident when the Police were attacked in a remote village in UP he called of that movement to the great shock of the people because including his colleagues in the Congress because that movement he started had gathered steam and the British were violated, but Gandhi struck to his principles and he said that peace and non-violence were his only weapons and not violence and he called off that movement. And of course he formed other movements later on and had the Gandhi Movement in 1930 particularly famous and verily again he stuply identified a measure that would speak of defiance that would challenge the might of the British Empire and that was to make salt and at that point of time the government had the prerogative the monopoly to make salt and he marched to the seashore and extracted salt that was perhaps in many ways a simple act of defiance but a turning movement in India's freedom struggle. In 1942 he lodged the Guj India Movement and he in between these various movements he went sent to jail, not once, not twice but many times and if may recall correctly he spent 2833 days in jail through out his life for the cause of freedom of India. The World War II which again a was defining moment for the world at large marched by that movement particularly for UK and to Britain in particular and terribly weakened by that war Gandhiji saw yet another opportunity to extract freedom for almost a billion people and he did that with the greatest stoop ness and by maintaining his commitment to non-violence and peace and in 1947 on the 15th August India attained independence. He been rightly called the Father of the Nation not only because he led India to freedom but he was a road model, a road model that all of us can only aspire to emulate because the standards that he felt the immoral values that he stood for is something that in this �.. age many years later we all wish all of us could inculcate even some of those values the world would certainly be a better place. I do not want to take too much of your time because you are looking forward to listen to Prof. Seneviratne but I would like to conclude by saying as our young friend said Gandhi he believed said Be the change that would need to be and that is what we all need to do and the world would be a better place to live in. I would like to borrow from what Mark Anthony said if today I would � today Here lies a man welcomes another. Thank you