India’s 75th Independence Anniversary: The World Needs Gandhi’s Non-Violent Direct Action

Aug. 20—In honor of the 75th Anniversary of India’s Independence on August 15, 1947, Helga Zepp-LaRouche today addressed a Schiller Institute forum in tribute to that Anniversary.

She reviewed her many meetings, together with her late husband Lyndon LaRouche, with Indian political leaders, intellectuals, scientists, and students, including Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, President K.R. Narayanan, philologist experts who discussed the role of Sanskrit genius Panini and independence leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and many more. She discussed the role of Mahatma Gandhi in bringing down the unspeakable evil of the British Raj through non-violent direct action. That method is essential today, she insisted, for resolving the existential crisis facing mankind today, if we are to prevent the current descent into global war and economic disintegration.

You are encouraged to watch that full special broadcast Manhattan Project Meeting, including the participation of Sam Pitroda, an innovator, entrepreneur, and policymaker who has been a Cabinet Minister and advisor serving seven Indian prime ministers over the years; and Diane Sare, the LaRouche independent candidate for the U.S. Senate from New York.

The British policies toward India today, followed by their “dumb giant” forces in the United States, have not changed since their forced division of India into warring camps—Hindu vs. Muslim, India vs. Pakistan—before allowing the Independence to take place. The continuing animosity between Islamabad and Delhi is still carefully nurtured, while efforts to turn India against China are even higher on the agenda for “Global Britain” and “Global NATO.” The “Quad”—the “Quadrilateral Security Dialogue” between the U.S., Japan, India and Australia—was created in 2007 under the guiding hand of neocon fanatic Dick Cheney, then the “President of Vice” in the Bush Administration, with a primary focus of drawing India into an anti-China military bloc (sometimes called the “Asian NATO”) under the guise of defending “democracies” against “autocracies.”

But India has to a great extent maintained the “Spirit of Bandung,” based on the concept of non-alignment developed at the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, co-organized by Burma, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The Conference adopted the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence first developed by China’s Premier Zhou Enlai and India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. While maintaining friendly relations with the West, India has maintained close relations with the Soviet Union and Russia, and despite occasional crises in relations with China, mostly related to border disputes, they have increasingly improved those relations as well.

Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, speaking during a visit to Thailand on Aug. 18, said that an “Asian Century” could happen only if China and India came together, but it would be difficult for this to happen if India and China could not come together. This was most welcome in Beijing, where the reference recalled the famous meeting between Chairman Deng Xiaoping and Rajiv Gandhi in 1988, where they agreed that an “Asian Century” depended on China and India cooperating in developing their economies.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) 2022 Summit will take place on September 15-16 in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, bringing together the leaders of Russia, China and India, as well as those of Pakistan, the Central Asian nations and others. The nations of the Global South are increasingly turning to the association of nations in the SCO, both because the Western nations have abandoned development altogether, preferring permanent warfare—both economic warfare through sanctions and military warfare directly and through proxies—as well as the cultish allegiance to Green fantasies about global warming. The SCO meeting will be the scene of extremely serious discussions on countering the NATO war plans against Russia and China, formulating new global financial agreements to escape the evil sanctions regimes imposed by the U.S. and Europe, and extending the “peace through development” concept of the Belt and Road Initiative to restore development in the midst of the global hyperinflationary collapse of the dollar-based financial system.

These issues will also be discussed at the upcoming Schiller Institute Conference on September 10-11, under the theme: “Inspiring Humanity To Survive the Greatest Crisis in World History.” The conference will honor the life and the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche, whose 100th anniversary of his birth falls on September 8.