About the Speaker:

Dr. Paul Younger was first introduced to the Gandhian technique of Non-violent Action by a group of Afro-American women when as a teenager he offered to help challenge the rioting in Trenton, New Jersey. After studies in Banaras, India and Princeton, New Jersey he came to McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario in 1964. He has written eight books including most recently:

• The Home of Dancing Sivan – The Traditions of the Hindu Temple in Citamparam, Oxford 1995, and

• Playing Host to Deity – Festival Religion in the South Indian Tradition, Oxford 2002.

Synopsis of the Speech:

Newspaper readers have come to expect to see `Religion` and `Violence` linked together. Stories of terrorist bombings, oppression of women, and threats of one nation against another are regularly èxplained` by a superficial reference to sectarian or religious differences.

Gandhi grew up in a colonial era when a `Christian` empire ruled his homeland, and he spent his formative years in South Africa where his sensitive post-colonial mentality recognized that Muslim, Hindu and Christian Indians would have to live with an African majority.

What he recognized is that linking religion and communalism in the way people were starting to in his day was to misuse the category of `religion`. What he offered to do was to share his own experience of religion or èxperimenting with Truth` and show how that led him to Non-violent Action.

Is it too late to learn from Gandhi the true meaning of the category of `religion`?

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