Sri Lanka’s Little Gandhi

2018-08-07

What do you do when an army major arrives at your door, salutes and says: "Sir, I have orders to kill you."? What do you do when your village water supply fails and the government does nothing? It's sixty years since the man they call 'the little Gandhi', Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne, affectionaly known as Ari, started the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement in Sri Lanka - putting people in 10,000 villages on the front line of social change. It's based on principles of non-violence and what he calls 'Buddhist e...

What do you do when an army major arrives at your door, salutes and says: "Sir, I have orders to kill you."?

What do you do when your village water supply fails and the government does nothing?

It's sixty years since the man they call 'the little Gandhi', Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne, affectionaly known as Ari, started the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement in Sri Lanka - putting people in 10,000 villages on the front line of social change. It's based on principles of non-violence and what he calls 'Buddhist economics'.

When they met, Anuradha Vittachi started by asking about the background to the movement he founded.

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