 Mr. E. P. Menon is a veteran Gandhian. He has spent a long time in Bangalore. He is well known for undertaking a peace walk between 1962-1965, a walk for nuclear disarmament where he walked from here to Afghanistan, Iran, Moscow and Europe and eventually took a ship to the U.S and back to Japan. This interview was conducted on 9th May, 2026 in Chitrakala Parishath Bengaluru by the Intercivilizational Dialogue Project team. We wanted to get a wider view of his life, his experiences and his philosophy. We are publishing a shortened version of the interview below which is lightly edited for readability.
Q) Describe your childhood and early years. Where did you grow up, and what experiences from your early childhood stand out to you? A) I was born and brought up in Kerala. My father was a police officer serving the British Empire. By the time I became mature enough, he had retired. When I finished high school, I thought, what should I do? I should continue my studies. But he said he did not have enough money, so he told me to seek a job after SSLC. I had a cousin in Delhi. He told me, "Come to Delhi. You can study here and live here." So I decided to go to Delhi. I took the Grand Trunk Express from Thrissur to Madras and then to Delhi. But when I looked at the map, I saw a place called Wardha. I thought, Wardha and Gandhi—I should get out there. So I got off the train. I wanted to see Sevagram. I had read about it. When I saw Sevagram Ashram, I was inspired. This was the place where Gandhi had lived and worked. Such small huts, small houses. I went to the hut Gandhi had lived in. It was a very simple house: one bed, one bench, that's all. I sat there for an hour. I wondered, how did this man, living in this little hut, make history in India and throw out the British? How could he do that? After that, I started walking back to Wardha. On the way, I saw somebody eating. He asked me, "Young man, where are you going?" I said, "I am going to the station." He said, "Come, have coffee and then go." He was a householder. He asked me about myself. I said I had gone to Sevagram and was now going back to the railway station to take a train to Delhi. "Delhi for what?" he asked. "For higher studies," I replied. Then he said to me, "There are no higher studies anywhere in the world except Wardha." That inspired me. So I stayed there. This is what happened the first time. I simply stayed in Wardha. I forgot about Delhi. Q) When did you first meet Vinoba Bhave? A) While I was staying in Wardha and Sevagram, there was a man called Ravindra Verma. He said to me, "There is a Gandhi Peace Foundation Research Centre here. Why don't you join as a research student?" So he appointed me as a research student in the Gandhi Vichar Parishad. I heard about Vinoba and read about him. I stayed in Wardha for two years as a research student. I read a lot of books and learned thoroughly about Gandhi, Vinoba, and related ideas. Gandhi was no more, but Vinoba was still alive. I thought that one day I should go and meet him. In the meantime, Vinoba started the Bhoodan walk from Kanyakumari. That was when I wanted to go and meet him. So I told my friend Ravindra Verma that I wanted to meet Vinoba. He said, "Okay, do one thing. There is an office in Bihar called Sarva Seva Sangh. It organizes many of these activities. Meet the secretary, stay there for some time, and then they will arrange for you to meet Vinoba." So I went first to Gaya, to the Sarva Seva Sangh. There too, there was a lot of reading, writing, discussion, and seminars. Then I heard that a conference was going to be held in Orissa. It was called the Sarvodaya Sammelan. I went to Orissa and met Vinoba at the Sarvodaya Sammelan. Then I asked him, "Can I walk with you?" "Sure, you can," he said. So I started walking with him. He had only two sets of clothes and a small jhola. Every morning the walk would continue, village to village, village to village. Q) Can you describe your experience in the Bhoodan movement? A) In the Bhoodan movement, the daily routine was to get up at 4 a.m., leave by 6, and start walking. Every day, local people would arrange places for us to stay. The group was about ten people. Every morning we would walk for two or three hours. By 11 or 12 we would settle down. Then villagers would come, and discussions would continue throughout the afternoon. In the evening, every day, there would be a speech by Vinoba. He used to say, "Land belongs to the people." All people, not individuals. Individuals should not own land. Land belongs to human beings just as the world belongs to birds and other creatures. The problem, he said, is land ownership. Land ownership must change. That was the basic idea. Vinoba would explain this through stories from the Ramayana, Mahabharata, Quran, Gita, and other sources. He was a very good speaker, and people liked him very much. His whole idea was Bhoodan, and people started donating land to him. Q) How did Vinoba view religion, and how did you view religion? A) Vinoba was a systematic believer in all religions. That was his way of thinking and speaking. He emphasized Sarva Dharma Prarthana and developed the idea of Sarva Dharma Samanatva. In my case, personally, I would sit and participate, but I did not have much attachment to religion itself. Ideas are important to me. I like many of the ideas found in religions. Human society everywhere should depend on justice, equality, fraternity, unity, and sharing. These are ideas I value. Then I asked: sharing what? That is where the real problem starts. Vinoba's movement said land. Land should never be owned by individuals. Land is a public resource, and if any society can make that philosophy a reality, everybody will benefit from it. I think we would then have a better human society. That is my view. Q) Between 1962 and 1965, you undertook your peace walk. Can you describe this experience? A) In the meantime, I was reading a lot of books. One day I came across a book by Leo Tolstoy called What Then Must We Do? Then I read another short story, How Much Land Does a Man Need? These two works attracted me because Tolstoy believed that land is public property. At that time, I also read a very interesting statement by the philosopher Bertrand Russell in Britain. He organized young people for peace. Why should we kill each other? All wars are bad. Russell encouraged British youth to oppose war and fight for disarmament. He called it individual disobedience. The British government arrested him and put him in prison. From prison, he made a statement to the youth of the world. When I read it, I was deeply inspired. So I wrote a letter to Russell and also to Nehru. I received replies from both of them. Russell wrote to me, "You must act on your convictions." It was very simple, but I was inspired by it. Nehru also wrote in a similar spirit, though he said he was still not sure about certain things. But both letters were encouraging. Then I decided that I should walk to four places. At that time, nuclear weapons were possessed by only four countries: America, France, Britain, and Russia. No other countries had atomic bombs. So I thought I should go to Moscow, Paris, London, and Washington, meet the leaders there, and ask them a simple question: Who gives you the authority to make atomic bombs? So on June 1, 1962, I started walking from New Delhi. A young man named Satish Kumar joined me. We had no passports, no visas, nothing. We simply started walking. It took us about a month to reach the Pakistan border. Every day, the people of Punjab treated us very well. We said we did not need money. We would depend on people. We would live or die—that was all. Throughout the journey, people encouraged us. As we approached the Pakistan border, newspapers began asking us, "What will you do tomorrow? How will you enter Pakistan?" We replied, "We do not recognize the border. Who created the border? We did not create it. Nature did not create it. Somebody created it." We spoke in this way, and the newspapers would publish it. By the time we reached the border, there was only one day left. The next morning, somebody arrived from Delhi with our passports, and Pakistan Radio announced that visas had been granted without passports. That is the strength of human goodwill. Q) I want to ask you about Moscow and your trip to the Soviet Union. From what you describe in your book, you received a very friendly reception there. Yet there was so much propaganda about the Soviet Union—that it was behind the Iron Curtain and authoritarian. Many of us never saw the Soviet Union. What were your experiences there? What was it like as a place? A) The first thing is that during the six months of our walk through the Soviet Union, all the way to Moscow and then on to Europe, I never saw a beggar. Not a single beggar. I wondered why and how. There were no beggars because a certain level of social and economic justice was available to all. In the villages, everybody had a small house. Nobody was sleeping in the streets. This attracted me very much. If communism could provide that kind of justice, it was something worth thinking about. Those six months in the Soviet Union were a great education in themselves. When we reached Moscow, Khrushchev had already left the city and would be away for two weeks, so we could not meet him. But he left instructions that we should be invited to the Kremlin and given a reception. The Soviet government gave us a warm reception. From Moscow, we went to Poland. Throughout our journey from the Soviet Union into Poland, I still did not see a single beggar. For me, that was fundamental. No human being was begging in those countries. I began thinking more deeply about it and reading about it. Of course, there were collective farms and state farms. If you examine the details, there were also injustices there, as in every society. But the basic necessities—food, clothing, and shelter—were available to everybody. That is something I can never forget. Q) Could you describe your reception in Germany and France? A) It took us three months to reach France, passing through Poland, East Germany, and West Germany. All across Europe we carried a simple message: there should be no atomic bombs in the world, no more Hiroshima. People welcomed it. Teachers, students, government officials, and ordinary citizens responded very positively. When we reached France, we decided to go to the Palais de l'Élysée and submit a protest letter calling on France to support nuclear disarmament. We stood there holding signs that said, "No More Hiroshima" and "No More Atom Bombs." Within five minutes, about fifty policemen arrived, took both of us away, and put us in prison in Paris. We were placed in a room with two beds, and that was all. We were in prison simply for asking a question and submitting a written protest. The next day they brought breakfast. I said I would not eat. I told them that we had not come to Paris to live in prison, and we wished to register our protest. The people had treated us well and we were grateful for that, but we objected to being imprisoned. One day passed. Satish ate on the first day, but on the second day he also stopped eating. One day, two days, three days, four days passed. I took only water. Then the police came, took us away, and put us on a train at midnight from Paris to London. Q) Then you went to America, where you met Martin Luther King Jr.? A) From London, we walked for a week to Southampton. From Southampton, we took a ship to New York. We boarded the ship around noon, and after about two hours at sea, the radio on the Queen Mary announced that President Kennedy had been assassinated. You can imagine the atmosphere. What struck me was the unity of the people. On the entire ship, nobody ate after hearing the news. Nobody. That sense of human solidarity was remarkable. When we reached New York, I met a very famous African American leader, Bayard Rustin. He became one of our greatest supporters. A secretary representing President Johnson met us at the White House and told us, "You have walked here, and now you are going to Japan. If your movement succeeds, America will be the first country to sign a nuclear ban." We received that promise on behalf of Johnson. Whether it meant anything or not is another matter, but it was said. We then asked our friends how we might meet Martin Luther King Jr. Local people arranged for us to visit him at his home. We went there and met him. He was very pleasant and very simple. We spent one or two hours with him. He spoke at length about how Gandhi had inspired him. We told him that we had come from India and had heard of him as one of the greatest advocates of peace in America. We wanted to meet him for that reason. It was a very good interaction. Q) How do you see the difference between what was done in the Soviet Union through land collectivization and the Bhoodan movement? Were they similar or different? A) I think they were very different because the Bhoodan movement was based on voluntary contribution. Vinoba Bhave said that land belongs to everybody. Of course, he expressed it in religious terms in the Indian context: Sabhi Bhoomi Gopal Ki. All land belongs to Gopal, to the Lord, to God. You cannot own it. That appealed to people in a nonviolent way. Whereas in the Soviet Union, it was established by law that land could not be owned by individuals. There were collective farms and state farms. In state farms, you were a member of the state farm. In collective farms, people could keep a small plot, perhaps an acre; they made some adjustments. So voluntary donation, voluntary giving up of ownership, and compulsory surrender of ownership are different. Q) Did you see a contradiction between the ideas of Marx and Lenin and the ideas of Gandhi, or was there any meeting point? A) Of course there was one major difference. In Marxism-Leninism, there is a belief that violent change is a part of life, whereas Gandhi believed in the objective but not in the process of violence.Another difference is that Gandhi believed that through education, understanding, and awareness, people can learn to share rather than being forced at the point of a gun. That is the difference. I think that difference still exists between Gandhians and Marxists. Gandhians believe that you cannot bring about lasting change through the gun, whereas Marxists believe that revolution is necessary and that revolution cannot come freely. So that difference is still there. Q) But do you think what Gandhi did was a revolution? A) Of course. Gandhi insisted on nonviolent non-cooperation. Suppose I am a landlord and I have twenty slaves working for me. Gandhi would say that the workers should non-cooperate with the landlord. That is a nonviolent revolution. The other approach is to take over the land by force. There is a difference. So I believe the best way is a civilizational advance. That is nonviolent non-cooperation. Mere nonviolence will not do. Nonviolent non-cooperation against exploiting authority will succeed. Gandhi proved that during the independence movement. After that, I do not know what is happening. Q) When you came back at the end of 1964, what kinds of activities were you engaged in? A) After that, two different opportunities came to me. One was that a large group of people in America were experimenting with world education. They asked me whether I could take responsibility, and I said yes. I became a faculty member of an experiment called Friends World College. From 1965 all the way to 1991, for about twenty-five years, I was a faculty member there. The idea was that any student from anywhere in the world could join. It was a world college. There were faculty members from many countries, and we were a unique group of people. I was one of them in India. My responsibility was India and the neighbouring countries. I travelled extensively, helping young people. That was my work, and I spent twenty-five years doing it. After that, I left and set up an independent organization called the India Development Foundation. That was purely a personal initiative. Q) What about Indira Gandhi? Did you ever meet her? A) Oh yes, of course. And I will tell you about one very important meeting.I wanted to talk to her about world education. She was very happy about it. She said, "Well, if you are taking responsibility for these things, and if I can do anything, I will be very happy to help." So I told her, "Thank you very much." By that time, about half an hour had passed. Then I said, "Indira Ji, I have a fear in my mind." "What is that?" she asked. "You know, I follow Indian politics very closely. These days, my fear is that there are so many men in our country who are after your blood." I simply said that. She replied, "So what? They can only take my blood. My spirit is for India. Forget it. Forget them. You do your work. Young people should lead India. I am for that. Forget my blood and flesh. Do your work." That was the last thing she said to me. Q) This was in 1984? A) Yes. This was on October 19, 1984. So I left. Ten days later, when she was shot, I neither slept nor ate. I was in Bangalore. I kept thinking: why did I say that? Ten days earlier we had finished breakfast together in a very happy mood. She was happy, I was happy, the children were there, everything was good. Then suddenly I had said those words. Her response had been very powerful. And then, ten days later, what happened was something I could never forget. I wept that day. I kept asking myself, why did I say that? She lived her life totally committed to India. She was committed. Q) You also met Fidel Castro at one point. Can you describe that meeting? A) That was in an entirely different context. When I was a student leader, I was the president of Vidyarthi Jana Sabha and a member of AIPSO (All India Peace and Solidarity Organization). In 1966, I was invited to Havana as a participant. Romesh Chandra and AIPSO sponsored the visit. Romesh Chandra was the leader from Delhi. We all flew to Moscow and then on to Cuba. We stayed in a large hotel called the Havana Libre Hotel. One day, while we were having breakfast in the open, Fidel Castro suddenly appeared. He stood there and said, "Young fellows, I have a problem. Who will come with me to climb that mountain? I want to discuss something." I was the first to get up. There were ten other young people, and eventually the group grew to about twenty. We climbed for about an hour and reached a flat area under a huge tree. There were some stones there, and Fidel said, "Okay, let us sit here." So there we were: about twenty young people and Fidel, all sitting on stones under the tree. Then he said, speaking partly in English and partly in Spanish, "I have a problem and I want your advice." Imagine that—the Prime Minister of Cuba asking for our advice. "What is the problem?" we asked. He said, "Today in the world there is one country, Vietnam. The people are starving. They do not have enough food to eat. I have ordered fifty thousand tons of rice from China to Cuba. The ship is already on its way and will arrive in Havana next week. My problem is this: I think I can convince the Cuban people that we can survive with less food. Cuba has survived before. But today the Vietnamese are suffering. So my mind tells me that the rice should go to Vietnam instead of Cuba. Yet I do not know whether all my people will agree. That is my confusion. You young people have come from different countries. I need your advice." All of us gave the same answer. "Fidel, your feeling is correct. You have built trust with the Cuban people. If you believe the Vietnamese are suffering most and that the rice should go to Vietnam, then do it. Your people will understand." That evening there was a huge public gathering, perhaps fifty thousand people. Fidel spoke, and so did several foreign delegates. During his speech, Fidel told the crowd: "Today I am happy to tell my countrymen that twenty young people from around the world have advised me to send the rice to Vietnam." He then asked for their support. Immediately the crowd began shouting, "Send it to Vietnam! Send it to Vietnam!" The next day the government ordered it, and the ship went to Vietnam. What leader would do that today? That was the kind of leader he was. That kind of leadership. Indira Gandhi also had that kind of leadership. Q) How do you see your philosophy in the present time, when, as you say, the situation has changed so much and there is continuing war, poverty, and neocolonialism? How do you view your philosophy in today's circumstances? A) First, there is a great deal of confusion in the country—in every sense: political, economic, social, and cultural. India is going through a period of deep confusion. We may recognize that, but then what? We all have a responsibility. Who is responsible for the confusion? We are responsible. My feeling is that each individual should do whatever best they can. But that alone is not enough. We need people who understand one another. Such people should cooperate, collaborate, come together, meet together, discuss together, understand together, and write together. That, I think, is the path forward for India. But it is not easy. Our politicians today—and politicians in general—have a responsibility. There are some good individuals, of course. But I feel many are not nationalistic enough. When I say that, I mean they should think more as Indians. Instead, we often think of ourselves first as Hindus, Muslims, Kannadigas, Punjabis, and so on. That mentality is not changing easily, but it must change. A stronger sense of Indianness should come into our philosophy, our teaching, and our practice. That is the way forward. How to achieve it is a big question. It is our collective responsibility.
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by Archishman Raju  The disclosure of the Epstein files has offered a remarkable glimpse into the moral degradation of the Western elite, and the social networks that bind them together. The files include cultural icons, financial, tech and political elites as well as members of the European royalty. Jeffrey Epstein was clearly a node in the bourgeois social networks that are essential for Western power. One important set of connections to Epstein were academics and intellectuals, particularly in the natural sciences. It is important to understand that the academics connected to Epstein were not anomalies. Rather, they are some of the most influential and powerful personalities in the academic world. These individuals constituted connected and influential hubs setting the agenda and research direction for their fields. The institutes that hired them, including Harvard and MIT, still tend to dominate and heavily influence the agenda of scientific research. These institutes advertise themselves and are generally perceived as the peak of academic achievement. Students and researchers around the world labour to climb this peak which is now revealed to be one of moral depravity and rank opportunism. Hence, the revelations of the Epstein files are not only an indictment of a few individuals, but they are an indictment of the state of academic knowledge in the sciences. The role of scientists and academics in the Epstein files raises several questions. What were the fields of knowledge that Epstein was most interested in? What is the role they play in the thinking of the Western elite? What are the lessons to be learnt for countries and civilizations that seek to establish an independent scientific system? The revelations of the Epstein files are not a simple matter of some scientists’ bad choices. Rather, they expose a deep and systematic rot in the system itself. The ideological project that Epstein was connected with was transhumanist, neo-malthusian, Zionist and white supremacist. The project, of which he was one part, is attempting to transform the study of human behaviour away from sociology, history and political economy to neuroscience, evolutionary biology and analytic philosophy. The academic system that Epstein embedded himself in had existing weaknesses. For example, the scientific publishing industry is known to be super-exploitative. Ghislaine Maxwell, who was Epstein’s closest associate, had a family connection to this business through her father Robert Maxwell who played an important role in transforming this industry [1]. The work done in this industry is more or less all unpaid (i.e. writing articles and reviewing them is done for free). More so, scientists nowadays have to pay to publish their own work in journals leading to a system of predatory publishing. All sorts of ranking systems and indices have been established to judge “impact” and establish reputation. Scientists are incentivized to publish papers in “prestigious journals”. Much of this works like a social club where journal editors fraternize with scientists over dinner parties and social prestige is essential for careers. Academics are now mainly guided by money, celebrity and career. However, what emerges out of a study of the Epstein files is how deeply enmeshed top scientists were with a network of finance, tech and Zionism. One part of this network actively campaigned for transhumanism and for genetic engineering applied to human beings i.e. a revival of eugenics. The fields that Epstein was most strongly invested in are evolutionary biology, neuroscience and theoretical physics. One program he was very closely connected to is the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University. The former director of the program, Martin Nowak is likely one of the most cited mathematical biologists. His main work is in formulating the ideas of evolutionary theory in a mathematical language to address questions of biological importance including human behaviour. Nowak primarily used and developed ideas from evolutionary game theory. The ideas of game theory were originally promoted by the RAND corporation, a cold-war era military think tank which applied game theory to study military strategy [2]. Nowak was part of importing these ideas into evolutionary biology and hence offer an evolutionary explanation of human (and other organisms’) behaviour as an equilibrium solution of competing strategies. In many ways, Nowak was therefore an intellectual descendant of the sociobiological project which purported to explain human behaviour based on loose biological analogy. He shifted the methodology to mathematics and computation, thereby rendering it more abstract and giving it a veneer of scientific neutrality. It was not just professors who were in touch with Epstein. Nowak’s graduate student Corina Tarnita established contact with him soon after joining the lab and facilitated wire transfers that Epstein made to Romania purportedly for academic scholarships [3]. Epstein was not simply interested in mathematical abstraction, but also in practical action. He therefore established a relationship with geneticist George Church who is one of the pioneers of gene-editing technology. Church is very deeply connected to the biotech industry and has been a long time proponent of genetic enhancement of human beings, framing it as a “life and death” issue [4].. These genetic editing technologies are often framed as being important for curing diseases even though these researchers are well aware that the majority of diseases that cause illness and death among humans can not be explained by one or even a few genes. Church identifies as a transhumanist and strongly advocates for genetic engineering to enhance human beings [5]. He maintains a list on his website of possible genetic enhancements and their purported advantage to human beings. He is also connected to Peter Thiel, the financier who himself had very close connections with Epstein. Thiel along with others in Silicon Valley actively supported research on genetic testing and engineering [6]. Indeed, the attempts to reverse ageing and genetically engineer babies is something of an obsession for many in the tech world. Several new companies have been established including Orchid or more recently Herasight which claims to predict intelligence by screening embryos [7]. Typically the screening scores ask for racial ancestry. Ultimately, these ideas are a resurrected and sanitized version of eugenics and the belief in a genetic basis of racial superiority. While many in the western world hesitate from openly advocating for racist views, the white supremacist and racist views of the scientific and tech elite are not particularly hidden. Epstein’s emails expose the private minds of this elite, including an exchange with Noam Chomsky where Epstein emails him to write that Chomsky has encouraged him to look at the “facts” [8, 9]. He refers to the geneticist Watson’s views linking genetics and race with intelligence. Rather than being outraged by the views, Chomsky responds to this by doubting it but treating it as polite and interesting discussion. The view that genes are linked to intelligence (as measured by IQ tests) has always had a fascination for scientists. For example, Steven Pinker, a psychologist at Harvard who attended Epstein’s parties but has tried to minimize his connection to him, tried to defend the views that Ashkenazi Jews are innately more intelligent [10]. This view has always been directed and used against black people in the U.S. One of Epstein’s closest connections was with Marvin Minsky, known as the “father of AI”. Minsky is extremely influential in the computer science, AI and neuroscience academic community. He himself has been named by Virginia Giuffre as being one of the prominent personalities she was asked to serve [11]. His student and intellectual descendant Joscha Bach engaged in an email chain with Epstein where he explained why “black kids in the US have slower cognitive development (and never catch up)” [12, 13]. Bach offered his “theory” for why this happens, “I suspect this means their brains are slower at learning high-level concepts, because the low-level structures are optimized for a shorter time”. Interestingly, Bach keeps referring to Noam Chomsky in the emails who he refers to as “generous, patient, kind and humble on the personal level”. Chomsky appears in this network as another highly influential intellectual whose ideas on language are important for theories of cognition. Bach went on to discuss the importance of cultural factors “Jews tend be intellectually independent and anti-authoritarian, which might make them creative and inventive in ways that are hard to find in Asia.” In a separate email, he instead ascribes increased intelligence to the “Ashkenazi mutation” [14]. Another topic of discussion was overpopulation and whether climate change was a good way to deal with overpopulation. This kind of mediocre racist garbage characterizes the personal views of this elite. Leading thinkers of the “left” like Noam Chomsky may have intellectually disagreed with it, but they participated in and normalized this discourse. As the New York Times reported, Epstein confided his scheme of “seeding the human race with his DNA”, an old eugenic fantasy, to several scientists and had contributed to the World Transhumanist Association (now known as Humanity Plus) [15] This kind of race science and social Darwinism had been refuted and challenged by W.E.B Du Bois who studied race sociologically and historically. In 1929, Du Bois debated Lothrop Stoddard. Billed as the “One of the greatest debates ever held”, the topic was “Has the Negro the Same Intellectual Possibilities as Other Races?” [16]. Du Bois conclusively won the debate and pioneered the scientific study of race. Lothrop Stoddard was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Eugenics Society. Evidently, the intellectuals around Epstein are about as competent as Stoddard but more influential, powerful and dangerously connected. Theoretical physics was another field important to Epstein because it is treated, in this culture, as the domain of the super-intelligent. The theoretical physics community maintained close contact with Epstein. Murray Gell-Mann, a high profile physicist known for his role in establishing the standard model of particle physics, was among Epstein’s close contacts and received financial help [17]. The well known science popularizer, Brian Greene invited him to conferences and the physicist Lawrence Krauss was a close friend [18]. Krauss helped organize a scientific conference on Epstein’s island with several prominent physicists, defended him against accusations and asked him for advice on defending himself against sexual misconduct allegations [19]. The Harvard physicist Lisa Randall who attended this conference maintained close contact and engaged in banter with Epstein about getting “Jew Credit” [20]. Andrew Strominger, a string theorist at Harvard, was also in touch [21]. Many of these connections were facilitated by John Brockmann, a literary agent and founder of the Edge Foundation. This foundation sought to collect “extraordinary people”, almost exclusively white men from the American elite, who would take “the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are” [22]. Jeffrey Epstein was by far the largest donor to the Edge Foundation [23]. The foundation purported to present ideas at the frontier of “evolutionary biology, genetics, computer science, neurophysiology, psychology, and physics” all topics that were of great interest to Epstein [22]. Epstein’s connections to Mossad and Israel have been the subject of much scrutiny. He was in close contact with the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. His lawyer and close friend Alan Dershowitz is a well known Zionist. An FBI memo called him an active intelligence agent [24]. What is known is that the universities in which these academics operate are Zionist institutions, with close ties to the Israeli state. The horrific nature of Epstein’s crimes is that they targeted children with sexual abuse. The culture that normalized this also normalizes and defends Israel’s crimes. In fact, a study found that Israel accounts for 40% of deaths of children around the world from external attacks in the past thirty years [25]. The case of Jeffrey Epstein should not be treated as the life of a single individual convicted of crimes. Nor is it a simple matter of where scientists get their funding. Jeffrey Epstein was at the center of an ideological project, a technocratic resurgence of eugenics and racism with pseudo-scientific backing. None of the academics connected to Epstein have had to face any real consequences of their actions. Nobody believes their pathetic, bland, curated and retrospective apologies or their claims that they didn’t know. Everybody knew, and recognized the culture of these institutions. The files that have been opened to the public are only a small part of what exists. The ideas that Epstein was promoting continue to proliferate in the institutions that he was closely connected to. Dangerously, these institutions train scientists around the world. The culture in these institutions promotes a form of cognitive capture of those who are trained in them. They accept, propagate and implicitly legitimize these ideas under the guise of “scientific freedom”. This raises serious questions particularly for Asian scientists and Indian scientists in particular, who now constitute such a large part of this scientific establishment as graduate students, postdocs and faculty. These scientists are not exempt from the implications of the Epstein files. They often join in and perpetuate the culture of white supremacy. Many of these scientists who are trained in institutions like MIT and Harvard return to their own countries. They strut around their social connections and rely completely on Western fashions for legitimizing their work. For scientists around the world, this is a time to reject Western academic standards, to recognize their moral bankruptcy and to struggle for sovereignty of knowledge and a new kind of science. This will require reconnecting science to philosophy and history, so that the fundamental question of the purpose and moral center of scientific work can be discussed. Mahatma Gandhi had said, “It is my firm belief that Europe today represents not the spirit of God or Christianity but the spirit of Satan.” and that modern (or Western) civilization was satanic. The Epstein files show the inner workings of the elite who have fashioned this satanic civilization and purport to defend it in the name of science and technology. It is for the future of our children that we must fight against such a civilization that is fashioned on war and violence and build a new civilization. This new civilization must reject a mediocre elite that is drunk on its narcissism and technological achievements and wants to play at being God. References: [1]https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science [2] https://www.rand.org/topics/game-theory.html [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00388-0 [4] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/10/21/medical-professor-genome-editing/ [5] https://bigthink.com/health/harvard-geneticist-plan-for-redesigning-humans/ [6]https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/04/gene-editing-optimization-thiel-altman-armstrong-andreessen-ai-iq/ [7] https://www.herasight.com/ [8] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/02/epstein-emails-eugenics-chomsky-altruism-billionaires/ [9] https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02472774.pdf [10] https://newrepublic.com/article/77727/groups-and-genes [11] https://time.com/6552063/jeffrey-epsteins-unsealed-court-documents/ [12]https://bylinetimes.com/2025/12/05/how-epstein-channelled-race-science-and-climate-culling-into-silicon-valleys-ai-elite/ [13] https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00823256.pdf [14] https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02543158.pdf [15] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/business/jeffrey-epstein-eugenics.html [16] https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b160-i451 [17]https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/jeffrey-epstein-files-shed-light-on-ties-to-santa-fe-institute-scientists/article_03cb3e26-5c53-4ea3-a683-bc98e7013058.html [18]https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2026/02/04/brian-greene-frontiers-of-science-professor-invited-jeffrey-epstein-to-science-conferences-and-planned-to-attend-dinners-at-epsteins-home/ [19] https://www.npr.org/2026/03/09/nx-s1-5721150/epstein-scientists-physics-virgin-islands-conference [20] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/2/1/lisa-randall-epstein-ties/ [21] https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2010/EFTA01750209.pdf [22] https://www.edge.org/about-edgeorg [23] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/jeffrey-epstein-john-brockman-edge-foundation [24] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/9/what-were-jeffrey-epsteins-links-to-israel [25]https://www.thehindu.com/data/children-have-borne-the-brunt-of-israel-us-aggression/article70758803.ece Archishman Raju is an editor of Vishwabandhu Journal.
by Purba Chatterjee and Sambarta Chatterjee  More than a century back, Mahatma Gandhi had articulated the aim of our freedom struggle as not simply political independence from British rule, but the flowering of new ideals that could confront the unique challenges of a modern world. This marked a new stage in humanity’s march toward freedom from poverty, hunger, and war. Our freedom struggle furnished the moral authority to stand against injustice anywhere in the world. This freedom was earned at a terrible price, and it had to be preserved and breathed new meaning into, in tune with the changing world. Indira Gandhi was the last national leader who inherited and advanced this tradition. And yet, she is still to be fully grieved and understood by the generation that grew up after her time. In the decades after, there has been a second assassination, a concerted ideological attack against her legacy and the direction she was taking the Indian state in. The fact that she is lauded for her strong leadership during the Bangladesh war, while being vilified for declaring the Emergency, is a distortion of the historical truth that in both instances her stand was in defense of our freedom against the forces of imperialism, neocolonialism and white supremacy. The weak and seemingly paralysed Indian state that recent world events have brought to clear view, must be seen as a result of the triumph of these forces. In recent months, the US has threatened India with a humiliating trade deal aimed at destroying our textile industry. It has repeatedly coerced India to end trade with Russia, although it recently “allowed” us a limited window to purchase Russian oil, to stabilize global energy prices disrupted by the Iran war, a crisis of its own making. Days before the US and Israel launched this barbaric civilizational war on Iran, Modi addressed the Israeli Knesset, furthering a formal state relationship with Israel. The war began with the intentional murdering of hundreds of school children and the political and spiritual leader of Iran and the entire Shia Muslim world, The Indian government’s silence in the face of this unprovoked attack on an Asian nation we share ancient civilizational ties with is a break with history, and a reversal of India’s principled stand with the Palestinian cause in return for friendship with a genocidal state. Within the first week of the war, the US attacked an Iranian ship which was a guest of the Indian Navy, in the Indian Ocean, and killed close to a hundred crew members. All of this has catapulted the Indian people to demand answers: Are we a sovereign and independent nation any longer? Is the Indian state today incapable of standing up to the West, for all the talk of self-reliance and ancient civilization? The urgency of this moment cannot be overstated. South Asia today is going through profound shifts. Forces of destabilization and counter-revolution have made significant gains and threaten the stability and sovereignty of India. Bangladesh just saw a violent colour revolution in 2024, which directly attacked the legacy of its liberation struggle, and left a society in complete chaos. Nepal and Sri Lanka have seen violent upheavals and face an uncertain future. Pakistan continues to struggle against its military which most recently toppled the democratic government of Imran Khan and still holds him captive. It is clear to everyone that these are movements orchestrated by clandestine forces of US imperialism, which has always seen and continues to see a strong and united South Asia as a threat. To confront these forces today, we must know the last time they were confronted, and defeated. Indira Gandhi was the symbol of courage then, for Asia and the world, and her legacy and her time must be honestly assessed today for us to deal with the present. Advancing the unfinished revolution Indira Gandhi not only inherited the broad democratic and revolutionary ideals of the Indian freedom struggle, but also the formidable task of translating them into the building and defense of a strong, sovereign, and modern Indian state. She set the nation firmly on the path of socialism. She led India to food security, nationalized 14 of the largest banks, abolished the privy purses of princes and made provisions for homestead lands for landless Dalits. She was a tireless soldier in the struggle to remove poverty and inequality from Indian society—ideas that ultimately split the Congress party, with the part that stood with her growing steadily closer to the masses. For the poor she was Indira Amma, the embodiment of their strivings and aspirations. Indira Gandhi saw the world anticolonial struggle as an unfinished revolution, seeking completion in a new, moral world order. Amid the raging cold war and the global re-entrenchment of imperialist and neocolonial forces, she threw the weight of the Indian state towards nonalignment and the struggle for peace. She asserted that non-alignment was neither vague nor neutral—it was a defence of national independence and the right of the formerly colonized to determine their own political and economic destinies. Her resolute stand against the forces that sought to re-enslave Afro-Asia is epitomized in her heroic leadership during the Bangladesh war in 1971. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s historical electoral victory in 1970 put him in a position to end the military dictatorship and form a government for the whole of Pakistan. In response, Yahya Khan’s regime arrested Sheikh Mujib and unleashed a horrific genocide on East Pakistan, forcing multitudes to flee to neighboring India, which was confronted with the heavy economic burden of housing and feeding one crore refugees. Indira Gandhi responded by taking a moral stand with the Bangladeshi people. She helped train the mukti-bahini and rallied world opinion for the release of Sheikh Mujib. On 3rd December 1971, Pakistan launched a military attack on India with the political and military support of America. Sadly, China too came to Pakistan’s side. Indira Gandhi understood that this whole crisis was engineered to bring India to its knees and punish it for its anti-imperialist and nonaligned stand on the world stage. She knew that she was hated by Nixon and Kissinger because she would not let India be bought by the promise of aid or military support. In August 1971, she signed a historic Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union. When the US sent the seventh fleet to the Bay of Bengal to intimidate India in the Bangladesh war, they were blocked by naval units sent by the Soviet Union. Within 13 days, the Pakistani military surrendered, and India won the war. The Bangladesh liberation struggle must be seen as a singular moment in history, marking the high point of a peoples’ courage and moral commitment to the struggle for freedom and self-determination. The world had not seen this before, the successful and ignominious defeat of Western forces at the hands of a formerly colonized nation. While this made Indira Gandhi a symbol of courage for all people fighting for freedom, it also made her hated among the Western ruling class. She herself was well aware that what had shaken the West about the Bangladesh war was that a dark nation had refused to be bowed down and dared to stand up to the wealth and military might of US imperialism. It demonstrated to the world that the freedom struggle was not a thing of the past, it continued to be the democratic instrument with which the people could fight to shape the future. Counterrevolution At Home After the humiliation of Bangladesh, the forces of US imperialism were handed yet another crushing defeat at the hands of a poor Asian people, the Vietnamese. Many nations in Africa also gained their independence in this period of revolutionary upsurge in the 70s. This resolute march of the dark peoples of Afro-Asia towards freedom, self-determination and a statehood rooted in socialist and democratic principles, was unacceptable to their former masters, and imperialist and white-supremacist reaction raised its ugly head. In 1973, Salvador Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile, was assassinated and his socialist government overthrown by a CIA backed coup, to be replaced by the long and brutal military dictatorship of Pinochet. In 1975, the CIA orchestrated a military operation that assassinated Sheikh Mujib, the father of the Bangladesh nation, only three and a half years after it achieved its freedom. He was brutally murdered in his own home in Dhaka, along with family members and including his young son of 10 years. The day chosen for this heinous crime was 15th August, the day of India’s independence. Indira Gandhi was warned by many, including Fidel Castro, that she would be next. This was a time of strife in India. The Indian people were belaboured by the cumulative effect of successive droughts, the oil shock following the Arab-Israel war, and consequently rising inflation. The legitimate suffering of the Indian people was however exploited by the forces of counterrevolution—first through the Navnirman movement in Gujrat, and later by the Sampoorna Kranti Movement of Jayaprakash Narayan, which became synonymous with his name. These forces incited the youth and the middle classes to riots and violence, attacked the parliamentary democratic system through extra-constitutional methods, and demanded the resignation of Indira Gandhi. It is important to take stock of the disparate political and sectarian groups that came together to attack Indira Gandhi and the Indian state. They included the RSS and the Jana Sangh. The Congress syndicate joined hands with the liberal and anti-Congress Swatantra party. The Communists too were split, with the CPI(M) actively opposing the Indian state. Incredibly, a large swath of Gandhians also came under JP’s sway, breaking from Vinoba Bhave, the leader who had most advanced the Gandhian ideal of nonviolent revolution through the Bhoodan and Sarvodaya movement. Another crucial factor was the counterrevolutionary role of the middle and propertied classes just like in the coup that took down Allende in Chile. Mohit Sen, leader of the Communist Party of India (CPI) assessed the situation as such: “Indira Gandhi's Garibi Hatao! received widespread support until it became clear that she intended to push the Garib forward even at the cost of the middle class.” He emphasized that the Total Revolution was no liberal democratic protest against authoritarian rule because there was no authoritarian rule to overthrow. It is also important to understand the ideological mooring of JP himself, the so-called Lok Nayak. A participant of the freedom struggle, he was a founding member of the Congress Socialist Party in 1934. Aruna Asaf Ali, who was initially with the Socialist Party, assessed that it was a crude imitation of the British Labor Party—predisposed to social democracy and opposed to the Soviet Union. Although JP left the socialists to join Vinoba Bhave’s Sarvodaya movement in 1954, what is little known is that he was at the same time pushing for closer national ties with the US and Israel. He had links to CIA backed projects like the Congress for Cultural freedom, a propaganda outfit for anticommunist cultural and ideological penetration. He visited Israel in 1958, met with Ben Gurion and attempted to give Gandhian sanction to the Socialist International, a social imperialist organization with close ties to Zionism. He, along with others such as George Fernandes and Ram Manohar Lohia, had also established the Friends of Israel committee in 1967, breaking with the ideas of Gandhi, Nehru, and most of the freedom struggle leadership. Vinoba’s most trusted disciple, Nirmala Deshpande, found herself alone among a handful that stood firm of the fundamental teachings of Gandhi and Vinoba, while 99% of Sarvodaya Gandhians joined JP’s camp, accepting the rhetoric of violence without question and abusing Vinoba Bhave, as much as Indira Gandhi. She was attacked and sidelined by the Gandhians for her courageous ideological opposition of JP, and described this betrayal as one of the most painful experiences of her life. The Emergency—A great victory for Democracy At a time when the Indian state was threatened by US imperialism on the world stage, the JP movement represented a threat to the Indian state from within. JP’s call for the army and police to oppose Indira Gandhi’s government could have had devastating consequences for our nation. The splits within the Congress, the Gandhian movement, and the Communist movement all reflected the clear contradiction between the essence of our freedom struggle and imperialism in a new guise during the Cold War. They reveal ideological forces that were opposed to Indira Gandhi’s call for deepening the substance of our democracy. They were opposed to her Herculean effort to take the national revolution toward socialism and shift the balance of democracy toward the working poor. They were equally opposed to the policy of Non-Alignment and closeness with the Soviet Union. The CPI(M), which had taken an ultraleft position following the Sino-Soviet split, entrenched its opposition to the Indian state on the basis–that it was a bourgeois state. The CPI stood on shaky ground, with only Shripad Amrit Dange and his close associates supporting Indira Gandhi in her stand against the counterrevolutionary forces that threatened the Indian state. Indira Gandhi was still hesitant when the Allahabad High court judgement declared her election illegal on ridiculous technical grounds. Nirmala Deshpande recounted that Indira Gandhi was convinced by a message she delivered from Vinoba Bhave asking her not to resign. Mohit Sen echoed Dange’s opinion that while Indira Gandhi was hesitant in defending herself, she was “an aroused warrior when it came to defending India and the heritage bequeathed to her by Gandhi and her father.” On June 25, 1975, Indira Gandhi declared the Emergency, arrested agitators, and put curbs on the power of the judiciary and the press. She announced the twenty-point programme, which introduced sweeping land and agricultural reform, imposed an urban land ceiling, declared bonded labor illegal, and took resolute steps towards ending rural indebtedness, reducing prices and increasing production of essential commodities, among other radical measures. These measures, and Indira Gandhi herself, had the overwhelming support of the masses, especially the poor and working classes. Unlike the West, which criticized the Emergency as an attack on democracy, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, Cuba, and other Non-Aligned countries supported Indira Gandhi’s actions. Even before the Emergency, Dange had led the CPI into mobilizing national and working class support against the JP movement, and in negotiating an honorable end to the railway strike in Bihar in 1974, instigated by George Fernandes, a follower of JP. Dange and Romesh Chandra—a leader of the CPI and of the World Peace Council—were instrumental in organizing the International Conference against Fascism in Patna in 1975, which tied the attack on the Indian State to US imperialism, and asserted that fascism could not be seen as separate from empire, neocolonialism and white supremacy. This historic conference, attended by lakhs of people, was held in a massive tent city named after Lalit Narayan Mishra, the railway minister of Bihar who was assassinated earlier in the year— seen by many as a CIA backed operation. The conference put forward a declaration that pledged solidarity with Indira Gandhi and with all forces for democracy and peace in India. However, the progressive steps made under the emergency came under attack very soon. Sanjay Gandhi diluted the 20-point programme with his 5-point youth programme—focussed on family planning among other issues—which had little to no political substance. The people saw the excesses committed under his authority as an attack on their aspirations, and when Indira Gandhi lifted the emergency and declared elections in 1977, she lost. This electoral loss devastated the CPI, which apologized for supporting the Emergency. Dange however, stood firm on his assessment of the Emergency as a necessary step in the struggle against imperialism. For his ideological and moral consistency he was maligned and cast out from the very party he had helped found. The forces of Total Revolution did come to power, but not as total revolutionaries, as Mohit Sen put it. They had to work within the constitutional bounds of the same parliamentary democracy that they had tried to destroy. The lack of shared ideological principles and of a positive vision for the nation meant that they had very little to offer to the people. In less than three years, the Indian people brought back Indira Gandhi to power in an overwhelming majority. It has to be emphatically stated, especially for the generation which has grown up on lies, that far from the darkest period of Indian democracy, the Emergency represented a historic victory over forces of imperialism and counterrevolution. Far from the tragic figure of the 1977 electoral loss, Indira Gandhi stands tall as a national leader who defended and preserved the sovereignty and integrity of the Indian state as the sole democratic instrument of the people, fought for and won by the blood of our freedom fighters. She won a great victory for the Indian people by holding at bay the playbook of counterrevolutionary forces that took down the national states of Bangladesh, Chile, Ghana, Congo and countless others. We still benefit from her courageous stand. And it was precisely because she was victorious, that she had to be assassinated. Conclusion Our times are ripe with ideological and moral confusion. It is not enough to seek easy answers to the challenges we face, they have to be assessed in the context of India’s unfinished revolution, which Indira Gandhi sought to take to its completion. The period of the Emergency shows that the criteria to judge a political movement is not whether it claims the authority of the Left or the Right, but whether it carries the authority of the people and advances their aspirations. This history shows that to deal with the questions facing the Indian state today, we must see in them the culmination of forces that attacked the Indian state under Indira Gandhi’s leadership. The great fraud that the anti-Emergency movement perpetrated was to attack Indira Gandhi in the name of democracy, to portray her as the ultimate autocrat. In reality, the forces she was fighting were the true anti-democratic and anti-people forces, which are still around and threaten India’s sovereign future. At the same time, we live in times of great optimism, because reactionary forces the world over are at the mercy of a collapsing West. To be sure, these forces still have a hold on the Indian State because they represent the vested interests of sections of the Indian elite and the middle class, of those who see their future bound up with the West, those who are invested in securing the recently contested H1B work visas in the US, and those whose chief concerns over the Iran war lie in the price of gold and the safe passage to the US through the Gulf states. Their progress is not India’s progress. Indira Gandhi reminded us that “our freedom struggle is not tied to a doctrine but to a purpose” - of transforming society so that the poor have their voice heard in the shaping of our democracy, and of creating a new example for the world to take humanity forward and to make war obsolete. She inherited what Nehru called essentially the Indian approach to modern challenges, of an ancient civilization entering modernity without losing the Indian personality. It was the profound love that Gandhi and Nehru had for the Indian people, that she inherited and gave new substance to in shaping the Indian future. She reminded us of what Gandhi said, that there are no real rights that are not tied with responsibilities. The price we must pay to inherit her love and be transformed by it, is to rise to our responsibility and see ourselves in the Indian poor, and to excavate her legacy so that the people are armed with the truth in shaping the future. Purba Chatterjee is a researcher and peace activist based out of Bangalore.
Sambarta Chatterjee is a researcher and peace activist based out of Hyderabad. by Nandita Chaturvedi  The war of aggression on Iran has changed qualitatively the consciousness of people all over the world, and specially in Asia and India. Iran can be considered a sister civilization to India. Our relationship goes back not only to the time of Ghalib and Khusrau, but from the largely unknown beginnings of human life on the Indian subcontinent, the Indus Valley civilization. Our languages are tied together, as is our conceptualization of human life. Yet, actions of the Indian government in not unequivocally condemning the attack on Iranian civilization itself has betrayed this deep bond of brotherhood we share. Our present government has gone against an unbroken legacy of India-Iran trust, friendship and exchange. The fact that this was done in fear of consequences from American bullying only deepens our shame. Yet, the Indian people continue to feel love for Iran. This love found its most outward expression in the protests that were held in Delhi, Kashmir, Lucknow and Hyderabad to express indignation and anger at Ayatollah Khamenei’s barbaric assassination in March. Subsequently gifts and donations from the country poured into the Iranian embassy in New Delhi. A Kashmiri woman donated gold jewellery which she had kept as a memento from her husband who passed away 28 years ago. Posters of the Ayatollah were everywhere, in areas with Muslims and especially Shia populations. On the other hand, those who remember a time when Indian foreign policy stood for justice and peace, recognized in the Iranian population the pride of a people who have stood up for humanity. Indians of all sections were moved to see an exhibition of the kind of courage, fortitude, and principle that makes the best of human civilization. As a former government servant told me emotionally, “After Vietnam it is Iran that has made me proud to be an Asian.” The Western elite has misunderstood Iran. They have taken them to be cult-mad radicalized muslims that are more bark than bite. Yet Iran is not Iraq, and it is not Yemen. The Iranian leadership and state has managed to consolidate itself around a shared vision that is born out of their organic understanding of their own, and world history. The people and leadership of Iran hold the struggle for knowledge and the truth high in their worldview. They are examples of what Sun Yat Sen had called the rule of right over might. We in Asia must see Iran as an example of what civilization can achieve when it is set on the path of the search for truth. Asia must understand Iran on its own terms, as a civilization with a complex two fold identity which brings into confluence its roots in ancient Persian civilization with revolutionary Islam. A Persian People It is now well understood that the civilizational complex of the ancient world centered around the interconnectedness of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, and China. These represented the beginnings of human self awareness. Both Iran and India share in the fact that they are ancient civilizations unbroken in their trajectory. The people of both nations know this, and their self conceptualization goes back not decades or hundreds or years, but millenia. In an old society like India there is hardly a political debate in India that does not reference the ancient past of our people. Similarly, the Iranian people carry in their ways of being over 5,000 years of human experience. It is in this context that Donald Trump’s comments that “A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again” should be considered. Just as Iran shows the strength of an unbroken ancient civilization, in Trump’s personality can be seen the madness of a materialistic, while supremacist and decadent Western civilization in decline. Iranian leadership has long described the enemy as ‘Western civilization’. The war has made clear to the rest of the world the truth of this assessment. Since the genocide in Palestine, the Western elite as well as the Zionist leadership of Israel has openly declared that they were in a war to ‘defend Western civilization’. In Netanyahu’s words, "Israel is a defensive shield of Western civilization in the heart of the Middle East." In a speech earlier this year he declared, “America is fighting with Israel for a common goal: to protect our future, to protect civilization against these barbarians.” Not only that, in his comments at the Munich security conference, Marco Rubio clarified that Western civilization was but another way of describing the colonial and imperial vision of white supremacy. In his words, “But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it (Western civilization) was contracting. Europe was in ruins. Half of it lived behind an Iron Curtain and the rest looked like it would soon follow. The great Western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.” Thus, when the Ayatollah declared Western civilization to be the enemy, he was alluding to the Western elite’s own conceptualization of it. Indeed, America and Israel’s strategy of leadership assassination, and their bombing of a girl’s primary school shows that Western civilization may have become in our times the very antithesis of civilization itself. What the American elite does not understand is that they are dealing with in Iran a human quality nurtured over millenia that cannot be destroyed either through bombing or sanctions. As Indira Gandhi had said about the Indian people, “We have been here for thousands of years, over thousands of years we have developed our ability to withstand suffering.” Furthermore, Iranians are a people who love knowledge. Their leadership considers it their duty to study and know history and philosophy. That kind of quality cannot be so easily erased. Armed With Revolutionary Islam It would be wrong to try and understand the Iranian people without seriously considering their embracing of Islam. The history of the anticolonial movements in Asia have seen an emerging contradiction within; between secular nationalism that sought to oppose divisions created by colonial powers along religious lines, and anticolonial struggles fought in religious terms. In India too we saw this tension. Iran saw the rise of a secular Iranian nationalism with the government of Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh was subsequently removed in a coup when he nationalized Iranian oil. A government headed by the Shah was put in place by the West, and religious clergy led the movement against this puppet government leading to the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The two pillars of this revolution were Ali Shariati and Ayatollah Khomeini. Ali Shariati was a sociologist who studied in Europe and knew intimately the streams of Western thought, including existentialism and Marxism. He would tell the Iranian people that what was needed was ‘bazgasht beh khishtan’ or a "return to ourselves". He also deeply knew anticolonial thinkers and revolutionaries. Although he died before the revolution, his ideas had an impact on it. In Iran he is known as ‘mo'allem-e enqilab’, or mentor of the revolution. What is clear is that the thinkers of the Islamic revolution studied the experience of the anticolonial struggles deeply. The second Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei is known to have authored a book on the revolutionary muslim stream in the Indian anticolonial struggle and have gifted it to Ali Shariati. In attempting to understand Iranian Islam, I have found it helpful to understand their love for Muhammed Iqbal. Ali Shariati would write of Iqbal, “If one were to reconstruct the form of Islam which has been made to degenerate in the course of history, re-assemble it in such a way that the spirit could return to a total body, transform the present dazed elements into that spirit as if the trumpet of Israfil were to blow in the 20th century over a dead society and awaken its movement, power, spirit, and meaning, it is, then, that exemplary Muslim personalities will be reconstructed and reborn like Muhammad Iqbal.” Iqbal has been seen before as a symbol of unity between Iran and Pakistan. Yet the full implications of his thought for the anticolonial struggle have not been understood, and have been buried by the bracketing of his legacy into a narrow islamic nationalism. Iqbal must be put alongside Rabindranath Tagore as one of the great poets and philosophers produced by the Indian struggle for freedom. He is in and of India, yet his thought is enriched by streams of Islamic and European philosophy. It is striking that having been born in Sialkot, Punjab and never having visited Iran, Iqbal wrote a large section of his poetry in Persian. He would write in his most celebrated Secrets of the Self, ‘Although the language of Hind is sweet as sugar, Yet sweeter is the fashion of Persian speech, My mind was enchanted by its loveliness, My pen became a twig of the Burning Bush, Because of the loftiness of my thoughts, Persian alone is suitable for them.” Iqbal’s magnum opus philosophical work was a book titled “Reconstruction of Islamic Thought.” Indeed, the idea of reconstruction, of Asian and Islamic society and the colonized man was a central concern for Iqbal. He saw the degradation of humanity under colonialism, and sought to reinterpret the body of islamic thought in the face of the challenge of colonialism, as well as the enlightenment and Western progress in science. In India this was in parallel with a reconstruction of Hindu thought undertaken by figures such as Tilak, Gandhi and Tagore. The project of reconstructing Islam was also a big part of the ideological foundations of the Islamic revolution, where Shariati and others attempted to address the Western challenge from organic foundations. It is no surprise then that the leadership of the revolution had such an admiration and kinship for Iqbal. Ayatollah Khamenei would assert “Quran and Islam are to be made the basis of all revolutions and movements and Iran was exactly following the path that was shown to us by Iqbal." Iqbal’s own adoration of Iran led him to see Iran in some ways as the future of the Islamic resistance to colonial domination. He would say, “The conquest of Persia gave the Muslims what the conquest of Greece gave to the Romans; but for Persia, our culture would have been absolutely one-sided.” The finding of roots for Islam in a great and ancient civilization enriched Islamic thought. Further he would say, “If Tehran could become the Geneva of the Orient, The fortunes of this world might change.” (Jamiyat-e-Aqwam or League of Nations). Iqbal was a mystic and a modern sufi championing a revolutionary Islam. He rejected the orthodox interpretation of an absolute divine will, which led human beings to be passive in the face of suffering and injustice. Instead, he embraced khudi, the self, and placed the human being at the center of islamic philosophy. In strengthening the self, making one independent and strong in the face of an often hostile world, one could become a co-creator with God. One can even see resonances between Gandhi’s ideas of non-cooperation and sacrifice and Iqbal’s concepts of a revolutionary discipline. It is Iqbal’s revolutionary notion of Islam that one can see in operation in Iran today. People all over the world have noted the contrast of the Iranian people with the decadent Islam of the rich Arab nations that have stood silent before the genocide in Palestine, and layed prostrate before the wishes of the white man. As Shariati would say, “It is not enough to say we must return to Islam. We must specify which Islam: that of Abu Zarr or that of Marwan the Ruler. Both are called Islamic, but there is a huge difference between them. One is the Islam of the caliphate, of the palace and of the rulers. The other is the Islam of the people, of the exploited and of the poor.” The essence of Islamic thought has been reborn in Iran. The great last act of Ayatollah Khamenei, to die for the unity and peace of his people shows that the spirit of revolutionary Islam permeated his being. Sacrifice is the greatest virtue any civilization can foster. If there is a nation where the spirit of Iqbal and a revolutionary Islam resides today, it is Iran. The Future We can see now the huge tectonic shifts that will shape the world’s future. The West has been defeated by a small and determined nation once again, this time in a period when it was already in decline. Around one-fifth of the world’s supply of oil and liquefied natural gas moves through the strait of Hormuz. Iran has asserted control over the strait as a repercussion of the war, and this act could catapult it into becoming a global power alongside China, Russia and the US. On the other hand, India is set to hold the BRICS summit in New Delhi this year. We must push at this time for a more democratic world order where war, such as that waged on Iran, becomes an impossibility. We must take responsibility for humanity and struggle for a world where no children have to die as casualties in an unjust war. The Indian government has tried to play both sides in this crisis, and it is no longer a viable strategy. The West is declining, as is evident to all those who care to look. The future lies in Asia and Africa. We must work hard to rediscover our civilizational and revolutionary relationships with those in Asia: Iran, Iraq, Russia, China, Korea and Vietnam. This is a time when we must struggle to know one another so that a new world can be born. Nandita Chaturvedi is an editor of Vishwabandhu Journal.
by Benoy K. Behl Below is the transcript of an online lecture given at the event 'Ajanta and Modern Asian Art'. It has been lightly edited for readability.  It is a great pleasure to be with all of you to discuss this fascinating and important subject. My sincere thanks to all of you for the effort you have taken to bring this occasion together. I would also like to thank my wife, Sujata Chatterji, whose support makes possible much of the work that I do. In 1990, the Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India saw a series of photographs I had taken of Indian monuments using a technique that I had developed for photographing in extremely low light—almost in darkness. When he saw these photographs, he spoke to me about the paintings of Ajanta. He pointed out that these paintings are among the most important artistic achievements of India. They are widely recognized as the fountainhead of the classical tradition of painting in Asia and of the Buddhist painting tradition that spread across the continent. Yet, despite their importance, the paintings had never been clearly seen. The caves are dark, strong artificial lighting is not permitted, and visitors often struggle to appreciate the paintings in detail. The Director General suggested that perhaps my photographic technique could make it possible to capture their beauty and grace in a way that had not previously been achieved. In 1991, I spent many weeks in the Ajanta caves carefully photographing the murals. The response to the resulting images was extraordinary. Many people remarked that the colours of Ajanta had never before been seen so clearly. Soon afterwards, I was invited to speak about Ajanta and present these photographs at institutions including the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the University of London, the Smithsonian Institution, the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, and many other major museums and universities around the world. The response of leading art historians and critics was unanimous. Many felt that the paintings of Ajanta represented some of the finest artistic achievements of humankind. They pointed out that the paintings displayed extraordinary technical sophistication. Qualities that appeared in Western art only centuries later—during the Renaissance and beyond—could already be found in these fifth-century paintings. Some observers noted features comparable to developments associated with Impressionism, Expressionism, and even aspects of modern art. The technical accomplishments alone were remarkable. Yet what makes these paintings truly important is not merely their technical brilliance. Their enduring significance lies in the vision of life that they embody. The worldview expressed in the paintings sees a fundamental unity in all existence. Human beings, animals, birds, trees, flowers, and every living thing are understood as part of a larger whole. This vision imparts a profound sense of compassion to every line drawn by the painter. Every brushstroke is infused with an understanding of interconnectedness and a deep sympathy for all forms of life. It is this compassionate vision that makes the paintings not only beautiful but also among the most important works in the artistic heritage of the world. The Continuity of Indian Painting Towards the end of 1991, I photographed the tenth-century paintings of the Brihadisvara Temple at Thanjavur. The response of scholars was equally significant. Among those who commented on the work was Dr. Milo Beach, one of America's leading scholars of Indian painting, who later wrote the preface to my book on Ajanta. He remarked that he would have to revise his understanding of Indian painting. When I asked him why, he explained that although Ajanta was well known, scholars had often regarded it as an isolated artistic phenomenon—a brilliant but singular achievement. Paintings preceding Ajanta were not widely known, nor were paintings from many centuries after Ajanta. However, the tenth-century paintings of Thanjavur demonstrated the same artistic sophistication and technical mastery found at Ajanta. This suggested that Indian painting had not appeared suddenly and then disappeared. Rather, it was part of a continuous and living artistic tradition. In the years that followed, I had the good fortune to photograph paintings from the fifth through the thirteenth centuries. Through this work, it became increasingly clear that India possessed a continuous and highly developed tradition of painting extending from ancient times through the medieval period. Ajanta and Its Influence Across Asia The fame of Ajanta was never confined to India. Across Asia, the paintings were admired and revered. Artists from countries such as Japan and Sri Lanka spent considerable time at Ajanta studying the murals and attempting to reproduce them. The British administration also recognized the importance of the paintings. During the nineteenth century, several attempts were made to create painted reproductions of the murals. These efforts were monumental undertakings requiring years of labour. The reproductions were eventually displayed at the Crystal Palace in Sydenham, England. Tragically, the exhibition was destroyed by fire. I possess a newspaper clipping from 1876 describing how, in 1872, the British government sanctioned an enormous sum of money—equivalent today to many crores of rupees—to produce reproductions of the Ajanta paintings. The copies were completed and displayed at the Crystal Palace, only to be lost when the exhibition caught fire. When I later lectured in London and presented the Ajanta photographs, a joke circulated among audiences regarding which institution—the British Museum or the Victoria and Albert Museum—might catch fire next. Yet behind the humour lay a serious truth: throughout the world, these paintings have always been regarded as works of extraordinary importance. Following the destruction of the earlier reproductions, the British government commissioned Lady Christiana Herringham in the early twentieth century to create a new series of copies. She travelled to Ajanta with a group of assistants from Calcutta, among whom were Nandalal Bose and other young artists associated with what would later become the Bengal School. These students had largely been educated in the British academic style and had often been taught that India possessed no great tradition of painting. Their encounter with Ajanta transformed their understanding. Faced with the splendour of the murals, they realized that India had in fact produced one of the world's great artistic traditions. When they returned to Calcutta, this discovery helped inspire the Bengal School and a broader revival of Indian artistic traditions. Ajanta's influence extended beyond India as well. Solias Mendis, one of Sri Lanka's great mural painters, studied Ajanta before returning home to create magnificent Buddhist murals. George Keyt, often regarded as Sri Lanka's greatest modern painter, was also deeply influenced by Ajanta as well as by the later manuscript painting traditions of eastern India. Every artist who encountered these paintings was profoundly moved by them. Words often seemed inadequate to describe their qualities. Indian Philosophy of Aesthetics and the True Colours of Ajanta To understand the significance of Ajanta, one must also understand the philosophy of aesthetics that developed in India at a very early period. According to this tradition, the experience of beauty—whether encountered in nature through a sunrise or in art through a painting—is closely related to Brahmananda, the ultimate bliss associated with spiritual realization. In moments of profound aesthetic experience, the veils of maya, or illusion, are believed to fall away. One perceives, however briefly, the underlying grace that sustains existence. This understanding explains the importance accorded to art in Indian civilization. Art was not regarded merely as decoration or entertainment. It was considered a means of approaching deeper truths. The grace that underlies reality is made visible through artistic expression, and nowhere is this more evident than in the paintings of Ajanta. Before these photographs were taken, the paintings were usually viewed under dim orange lighting. Because only low-voltage illumination could be used within the caves, visitors saw the murals under conditions that distorted their colours. The blues and greens, in particular, were largely lost beneath the orange cast of the available lighting. By photographing under extremely low-light conditions and employing a specialized technique, it became possible to reveal the paintings much closer to their original appearance. For the first time, viewers could appreciate the full richness of the colour palette. Another challenge was graffiti. By the early twentieth century, many of the paintings had been heavily marked by visitors. Some murals were so covered with graffiti that their original forms were difficult to discern. Approximately twenty years ago, I undertook careful digital restoration of certain images, removing graffiti while altering the original paintings as little as possible. This allowed viewers to see the artworks with much greater clarity. One striking example comes from Cave 10, where paintings dating to the second century BCE survive. These are among the earliest surviving examples of the classical Indian painting tradition and are therefore of immense importance to world art history. When viewed clearly, these paintings reveal astonishing sophistication. One notices subtle exchanges of glances between figures, remarkable emotional depth, and a dancing girl whose inward-looking expression anticipates one of the defining characteristics of later Indian art. Already, in this early period, we encounter that contemplative inward gaze that would become a hallmark of the great artistic traditions of India and much of Asia. These paintings represent the beginnings of an idealized artistic vision whose later flowering can be seen at Ajanta. A Continuous Tradition When one considers Ajanta, Pitalkhora, Bagh, Badami, and the many other sites scattered across the subcontinent, a larger picture begins to emerge. For a long time, scholars often viewed Ajanta as an isolated achievement—a brilliant but singular flowering of artistic genius. Yet the evidence now points in a different direction. The paintings of India reveal a continuous tradition extending over many centuries. Techniques evolved, styles changed, and religious contexts varied, but certain fundamental qualities remained remarkably consistent. One finds throughout these traditions a concern with inner life rather than external display, a profound sensitivity to emotion, a compassionate vision of existence, and a commitment to portraying the interconnectedness of all living beings. These qualities are not confined to a single site or a single period. They constitute a shared artistic inheritance. What ultimately distinguishes this tradition is not simply technical skill, impressive though that skill undoubtedly is. The painters possessed a sophisticated understanding of form, colour, movement, perspective, and emotional expression. Their achievements compare favourably with the finest artistic traditions anywhere in the world. Yet the deeper significance of the paintings lies elsewhere. Again and again, they direct our attention toward an inner reality. Whether one looks at Padmapani lost in contemplation, Mahajanaka listening humbly to a hermit, Princess Maddi choosing loyalty and sacrifice, or even the patient buffalo of the Mahisha Jataka, one encounters a vision of life grounded in compassion and self-understanding. The world portrayed in these paintings is not divided sharply between human beings and animals, rulers and subjects, or the powerful and the weak. Instead, all forms of life participate in a shared moral and spiritual universe. This vision profoundly shaped the artistic traditions that spread from India across Asia. Indian theories of aesthetics regarded art as much more than visual pleasure. The experience of beauty was understood as a glimpse of a deeper reality. In moments of genuine aesthetic experience, one moves beyond the distractions and illusions of ordinary life and encounters something more fundamental. This is why art occupied such an important place in Indian civilization. A great work of art was not merely an object to be admired. It was an invitation to reflection, contemplation, and self-discovery. The finest paintings of Ajanta continue to perform this function today. More than fifteen hundred years after they were created, they still possess the power to quiet the mind, awaken compassion, and inspire wonder. Conclusion The paintings of Ajanta stand among the greatest achievements of world art. Their technical mastery, emotional depth, and spiritual insight have inspired artists, scholars, and viewers across generations and across continents. Yet they are not isolated masterpieces. They form part of a larger and continuous tradition of Indian painting that stretches across centuries and encompasses sites such as Pitalkhora, Bagh, Badami, and many others. What unites these works is a shared vision—a vision of compassion, harmony, and interconnectedness. It is a vision that sees all beings as part of a larger whole and that invites us to look beyond appearances toward deeper truths. Perhaps that is why these paintings continue to speak to us so powerfully today. They remind us not only of the artistic achievements of the past but also of enduring possibilities within human experience itself: humility, understanding, beauty, and compassion. These are the qualities that give Ajanta its lasting significance, and they are the reasons why these paintings remain among humanity's greatest cultural treasures. Benoy K Behl is a film-maker, art-historian and photographer who is known for his tireless and prolific output of work over the past 49 years. He has taken over 53,000 photographs of Asian monuments and art heritage and made 146 documentaries which are regularly screened at major cultural institutions worldwide. His photographic exhibitions have been warmly received in 74 countries around the world. These have been inaugurated by ministers of the governments of various countries, ambassadors, archbishops, HH the Dalai
Lama and others dignitaries. From 2001 till 2020 (when the last Lima Book of Records was published) he has held the Limca Book Record for being the most travelled photographer and art historian. His films, including 26 documentaries on ‘The Paintings of India’, 26 documentaries on ‘The Sculpture of India’ and 26 documentaries on ‘Spectacular India’ have been nationally telecast on prime time in India, as well as repeat telecasts. These have also been screened at scores of universities and museums in several countries around the world. Reflections on the Nai Taleem Documentary by Ram Mohan Rai Below is a review of a documentary presented by the Nai Talim Reading Circle. The documentary is available to view on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pazKS6o-JU At a time when the world is passing through an era of war, fanaticism, intolerance, and tension, and when imperialist powers seek to unilaterally control the global order, it has become increasingly important to recall and reaffirm the values of peace, non-alignment, and humanity. Unfortunately, neither a balancing force like the Soviet Union nor a global movement comparable to the Non-Aligned Movement exists today with the same degree of influence and effectiveness. In such circumstances, it is ultimately the people who remain the greatest and most decisive force capable of struggling to preserve world peace and human civilization. It is within this historical and ideological context that the documentary “Indira Gandhi: A Symbol of Courage” assumes great significance. Through this documentary, the entire Nai Taleem team has done far more than portray a political leader; they have vividly presented India’s modern consciousness, democratic struggles, socialist vision, and national identity. The documentary begins with scenes from Indira Gandhi’s final journey. The thousands of tearful eyes mourning before her mortal remains do not merely depict the death of a leader; they reveal the deep emotional bond she had forged with the people of India. From there, the documentary proceeds to explore the many dimensions of her life with remarkable sensitivity and coherence. Indira Gandhi’s childhood, her formative years under the influence of great figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Rabindranath Tagore, her education at Santiniketan, and her participation in the freedom struggle through the Vanar Sena are all presented in a manner that lends historical depth to the film. It becomes evident that Indira Priyadarshini was not simply the heir to a political family; her personality was forged in the heat of the national movement and in the company of some of the greatest thinkers of her age. One of the documentary’s important strengths is its effort to understand Indira Gandhi through the perspectives of her contemporaries. Through the reflections of thinkers and leaders such as Nirmala Deshpande, Shripad Amrit Dange, and Mohit Sen, new dimensions of her personality, ideological commitments, and political vision emerge. In particular, the documentary’s treatment of her commitment to socialism, secularism, and the Non-Aligned Movement appears especially relevant in the present moment. The documentary also sheds important light on India’s friendship with the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, as well as on alternative models of development. It offers a thoughtful examination of the concept of Indian socialism and the ways in which it was envisioned within India’s specific historical and social conditions. The inclusion of the terms “socialist” and “secular” in the Preamble to the Constitution through the 42nd Constitutional Amendment was not merely a constitutional change; it was a historic effort to institutionalize the values inherited from the freedom movement. It reflected Indira Gandhi’s foresight and ideological commitment. Today, it is ironic that even some institutions bearing Indira Gandhi’s name appear increasingly distant from her ideas and legacy. In such a context, Nai Taleem’s decision to produce and present a documentary that is both factually grounded and ideologically engaged is a courageous and welcome initiative. This is not merely a historical reappraisal; it is also an important intervention in contemporary intellectual and political discourse. I would like to extend my heartfelt congratulations to the entire Nai Taleem team for undertaking such an important project at a time when there is a growing tendency to conveniently forget history and ideological traditions. This documentary serves as a source of inspiration for all those who believe in the values of India’s unity, integrity, sovereignty, secularism, and social justice. Undoubtedly, the life and sacrifice of Indira Gandhi constitute not merely a political chapter but an integral part of the consciousness of modern India. This documentary is a serious and meaningful effort to revive that consciousness. Ram Mohan Rai is General Secretary of the Gandhi Global Family, an advocate and a member of the Nai Talim Reading Circle.
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