The International Congress on Gandhian Activities (ICGA), which has centres at San Jose, London, New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai, is organising a conference from from August 1, 2011 to January 30, 2012.

The structure of the conference

It is not just a conference, it compiles 1,000 talks, 100 events, five workshops and one international conference. Travelling far and reaching millions is the only agenda of ICGA, to work with people in safeguarding their rights. More than 10,000 people are expected to participate in the 100 events of ICGA. About 1,000 organisations are selected for invitation. About 1,00,000 youth are expected to contribute towards ICGA charity activities. There are 1,000 talk programmes by eminent scholars of the world in the field of peace, truth and non-violence.

There are a few technical workshops which can help non-profit organisations to grow their network for free. We have special weekly sessions to teach beginners and in association with Samgha Foundation, we have a programme on preparing students to work on free open source software.

The chief guest of ICGA will release three books: (1) gt2.0 – altered version of Gandhian thoughts, (2) Sarvodaya of My Dreams and (3) Mr. Clean.

ICGA starts with an eye donation programme – “Mahatma Gandhi eye programme”, to collect pledges for 1,000 eye donations to support the team Lakshya of Bangalore in their eye donation campaign.

All the 100 worldwide events are based on the idea of re-building the society with truth and non-violence as the foundation values. We organise events in villages, towns and cities. Everybody can participate in ICGA. The details of almost all the events will be published in the ICGA official website on August 15.

Themes of the conference:

1. Youth to power,  power to youth,
2. Child and women rights,
3. Marketing the village products,
4. Developing nature cure centres,
5. Policymaking sessions to safeguard human rights,
6. Free open source technologies for non-profits.
7. Religious peace

Conceptual part of ICGA

Gandhi was holding all the responsibilities of world for free. Nobody paid him to work for freedom struggles of nations. He is the original man of the masses. After his assassination, there is no other person who can replace his position as the symbol of non-violence. It’s not an easy task to complete the works that he left behind. He also said that India is not completely independent. We consider ourselves as global citizens, holding the responsibilities to rebuild the society with the foundations of truth and non-violence. We make the Bapu’s purna swaraj (complete independence) come true.

The only question here arises is: can it be possible to rebuild the society without Gandhi? The answer can be “yes”. The reason is: we don’t consider him as a physical body, but a soul with eternal love. We don’t consider him as a public figure. He had already given his solutions to all the present day problems, in his writings, in a seed form. The seed form of Gandhian thoughts can become a tree only when they are altered according to the present day lifestyle of the people. We alter his thoughts as per the present day society. And these collections of all the altered thoughts are to be implemented all around the world.

Even though India is an independent country, the women are still in a struggle to protect their basic rights. Through ICGA, we formulate policies to safeguard women rights. India is a developed nation only when Indian women are respected. Policy making session to safeguard women’s rights is the most featured event of ICGA.

Two main objectives of ICGA are:
• Altering the Gandhian thoughts
• Safeguard women rights

The third most important agenda of ICGA: youth to power, power to youth. The basic idea behind ICGA is to raise the margin of involvement of the youth in building a value based system. At ICGA, we organise “Mahatma Gandhi Students Forum (MGSF)” to discuss, debate and prepare a plan of action to spread the altered version of Gandhian thoughts among the youngsters.