Lighting a candle in the dark

Retired Indian diplomat P. A. Nazareth comes to China to promote the Chinese edition of his book and exchange views with scholars and students about seeking change without violence. Photos provided to China Daily

Spreading Gandhi's message of tolerance and harmony is a labor of love for P.A. Nazareth, Mike Peters reports.

The retired Indian diplomat P. A. Nazareth, back in Beijing for the first time in decades, has been taken aback at the changes.

"Amazing," he says. "It's a completely different place."

But if times and places change, other things don't, Nazareth tells an audience at Peking University. One constant, he says, is the relevance of the father of modern India, Mohandas K. Gandhi.

Nazareth's trip to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou was designed not just to promote the Chinese edition of his book, Gandhi's Outstanding Leadership, published by the Beijing-based Commercial Press, but also to exchange views with scholars and students about seeking change without violence.

Now, he says, "Shanghai University has made a formal proposal to our consul general in Shanghai to set up a Center for Gandhian Studies. The South China Normal University and Sun Yat-sen University at Guangzhou have also shown interest in jointly setting up such a center. Professor Quanyu Shang of SCNU, who translated my book into Chinese, and professor Huan Yinghong of SYSU are now jointly translating the Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi into Chinese, which Yunnan Publishing House has undertaken to publish."