By Rajagopal PV

In India, the most publicized land-movement was the Bhoodhan movement. In the 1950s and 60s, a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, Vinobha Bhave walked across the country asking for land as gift. His strategy was to ask land-owning families to treat him as one of their own and give him one share of the land which can then be redistributed to the landless people. It took 14 years for him to walk across the country and collect a little more than 4 million acres of land. This was a very radical approach based on his philosophy of 'change of heart'.

During the month of February (2011) I visited India. Why India? People go to India for different reasons, many are attracted by its cultural and natural diversity, or for a spiritual journey, with the aim of getting a new yoga certificate, etc. Last year I also visited India, that time organising the International Conference - “Nonviolent Livelihood Struggle and Global Militarism: Links & Strategies” - where I had the opportunity of working together with the people who would again host me, this time for a full month, and open their doors for me to live and follow them around wherever they went. Initially my hosts were my dearest friends Anand, Michael and Swati, but it got extended to the whole Mozda collective, Daniel, Krishnakant, Lakhanbhai and many others. Last year I was very impressed by the work of Anand, Michael and Swati (in short “trouble makers”) that I decided that it would be good to use my sabbatical month with them. I was particular interested in how you combine doing resistance work with constructive programme and all these within a day-to-day life reflecting this ethos.

Opening speech by Arundhati Roy at the WRI conference on the 22 of January 2010 in Gujarat Vidyapith, Ahmedabad, India

Conférence de l'Internationale des résistant/e/s à la guerre (IRG), à Ahmedabad (Inde), du 22 au 25 janvier 2010

C'était la troisième Conférence internationale de l'IRG qui se tenait en Inde, les deux précédentes s'y étant déroulée en 1960 et 1985. Les hôtes locaux de la conférence étaient des organisations bien ancrées dans l'histoire du mouvement social indien, avec lesquelles l'IRG entretient une tradition de coopération fructueuse.