Our Work
Shanti
An initiative for Justice, Peace and Communal Harmony
Ahmedabad city in Gujarat State is the land of the Mahatma Gandhi - the apostle of peace and 'ahimsa' (non-violence). It is from here that he led the Satyagraha (the Force of Truth) march. Gandhiji founded his famous Ashram here on the banks of the river Sabarmati.
However, ever since Independence, Ahmedabad and some other parts of Gujarat have seen communal clashes between the two communities of Hindus and Muslims. Many people of Ahmedabad today live in fear, suspicion and disharmony. The poor, living in slums, suffer much from the tense atmosphere. Moreover, the slums suffer from many other problems related to health, education, lack of primary facilities and socio-economic securities. There is no real "peace" in their life. What is Peace? As we understand, peace is not merely absence of war. But peace is related to every aspect of human life.
SHANTI (Society for Harmony and Transformation) is an important initiative of the organization for conflict prevention, communal harmony, justice and peace. The term SHANTI assumes the following meaning: S (Spirituality), HAN (Harmony), T (Transformation), I (Integrity) which is essentials for peace. On 30 January 1999 (the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination) Shanti was formally launched. SHANTI means PEACE in most Indian languages.
Under this programme we make efforts to educate people about the importance of peace for development of a society and build an environment of peace and harmony at a grassroots level in concrete ways. It has produced a number of publications which have proved to be important documents narrating our efforts in this direction.
Read our published articles here.