External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar to meet his Israeli counterpart Yair Lapid today
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Monday unveiled the “Bhoodan Grove” plaque in Jerusalem Forest, bringing to the fore lesser-known aspects of India-Israel ties ahead of the establishment of full diplomatic ties between the two countries.
With the aim of keeping Mahatma Gandhi’s concept of the village as the basic unit of development, Indian leaders who were exploring ways to implement the socialist ideals of the Sarvodaya movement, namely ‘Bhudan and Gramdan’, founded Israel for Social Studies. Made many trips to Structure of the various forms of sectarian and cooperative institutions of Israel – ‘Kibbutzim and Moshavim’.
Jayaprakash Narayan, leader of the Sarvodaya movement, visited Israel as a guest of the Israel Federation of Labor Histadrut on a nine-day visit in September 1958.
His visit attracted widespread attention in the Israeli media, which gave him a warm welcome and published lengthy biographical articles. He met with the then Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and during his stay visited Kfar Sabah in central Israel and kibbutz Afikim near the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel.
Narayan’s visit was followed by the 27-member Sarvodaya Dal, which spent time in Tel Aviv and Kefer Giladi in northern Israel during their six-month study tour in Israel in February–August 1960.
On his way back to India, he planted a “Bhudan Grove” in the Jerusalem Forest on May 22, 1960.
Mr Jaishankar described the visit of Narayan and the Bhoodan activists as “an aspect of our shared history that has not been given the attention it deserved”.
Mr. Jaishankar also called the unveiling of the plaque “on time” as last year was the 125th birth anniversary of Acharya Vinoba Bhave.
“But there’s also a bigger message in what we’re doing today. It’s partly a message that our relationship is very human-centered … about the importance of being green and most of all I think it’s us.” A reminder to all that between India and Israel we need to find new ways, better ways, deeper social engagement and that is at the heart of the progress of our relationship,” the minister said.
Mr. Jaishankar also shared this shared historical connection with the Indian Jewish community in his address on Sunday evening.
“In post-independence modern times, there are also relatively lesser-known aspects of the prominent socialist political leaders and currents in India feeling kinship with the kibbutz movement in Israel. And, the Gandhian view of the ashram or village as a self-sustaining unit of development. Looking to build on the concept,” he said.
“Jayaprakash Narayan, one of our foremost political leaders and theorists associated with our freedom struggle, visited Israel in 1958, and many followers of Vinoba Bhave, another great leader of our independence movement, came here to understand the kibbutz movement. Visited Israel in 1960,” said Mr. Jaishankar.
The details of the intense collaboration between the Sarva Seva Sangh, the group that was accused of carrying forward Gandhi’s “constructive program” of social uplift, and the Israeli Moshavim and the kibbutzim were also published last year in an article “The Kibbutz and the Ashram: Sarvodaya”. Agriculture” was published. Israeli aid, and global visions of Indian development, by Benjamin Siegel in the American Historical Review.
The All-Service Federation hosted Benjamin Helevi, a Ukrainian-born agronomist recruited from the Kfer Yehoshua Moshav (or Cooperative Agricultural Settlement) in Israel’s Jezreel Valley, after reporting for two years cohabiting with Helevi basalt soils. Was doing.
“The kibbutz in Gandhi’s ashram would not simply be an Israeli model adapted to Indian contexts. For members of the Sarvodaya movement, India’s hugely popular program dedicated to Gandhian practice after his death, the agreement was strongly opposed to supporters of socialist agriculture and modernization theory. Will serve as a living rebuke to him,” the author wrote in the article.
“An Israeli-designed collective agricultural settlement in the spiritual home of the late Mahatma would show that a popular program of cooperative regeneration was not inappropriate for the economic and social realities of colonial India, evidence that Gandhian economics was on par with the age of Courageous political experiment,” he added.
The foreign minister also laid a wreath at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum, to pay tribute to the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust.
Mr. Jaishankar will visit the Indian Dharamsala in the Old City of Jerusalem, besides meeting his Israeli counterpart Yair Lapid during the day.
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