Abida Begum takes Gandhi’s ideals to students across Karnataka

Large group of students attending a lecture or seminar in an indoor setting.

Bengaluru: At a time when technology and artificial intelligence are rapidly transforming society, a senior physical education lecturer in Bengaluru is working to ensure that Mahatma Gandhi’s principles of truth, non-violence, self-reliance and honesty remain relevant to the younger generation.

Abida Begum, senior lecturer in the Physical Education Department at Government First Grade College in T. Dasarahalli, has been conducting free workshops on Gandhi’s life and philosophy for the past decade. Without charging any fee, she has travelled across all 31 districts of Karnataka and conducted programmes at more than 400 government and private colleges.

Begum said her interest in Gandhi’s philosophy was inspired by her father, Aftab Ahmed Khan, who was a follower of Gandhian principles. She began conducting the workshops in 2016 at a college in Ramanagara and gradually expanded the initiative to institutions across the state.

Her primary objective is to encourage students to develop values such as punctuality, honesty, self-reliance and non-violence. She also focuses on helping young people distinguish between factual information and misinformation about Gandhi circulating on social media.

“Many youngsters develop misconceptions about Gandhi after believing false information circulated on social media. I try to clear their doubts by explaining the facts and recommending appropriate books for further reading,” Begum said.

In association with the Karnataka Gandhi Memorial Fund and the National Service Scheme (NSS), she also organises seven-day state-level youth camps on the theme ‘Human Values through Gandhian Thoughts’. Students attending these camps receive training in leadership, communication skills and spinning yarn on the charkha.

The initiative also extends beyond workshops. Begum serves as the Karnataka state coordinator for the ‘Gandhi Vichara Samskara Parikshe’, organised by the Gandhi Research Foundation in Jalgaon, Maharashtra.

The examination is held every year in February, with free study material provided to participating students. This year, around 8,000 students registered for the examination, of whom 325 successfully cleared it.

Through her sustained efforts, Begum hopes to introduce Gandhi’s ideas to students in a contemporary context and encourage them to apply values of truth, discipline, compassion and non-violence in their everyday lives.

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