154th Birthday Anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi
The members of the Gandhi Memorial Foundation, in Chicago, celebrated Mahatma Gandhi’s life on Gandhi Jayanti where the life-size monument of Gandhiji was in the Heritage Park, Skokie, Illinois on 10/2/23. Dr. Santosh Kumar, the President of Gandhi Memorial Foundation, Dr. Shriram Sonty, Vice President, Mr. Suresh Bodiwala, the Chairman, and Mrs. Dipti Shah, the treasurer of Gandhi Memorial Foundation along with guests, Somnath Ghosh, the Counsel General of India, George Van Dusen, the Mayor of Skokie and State Senator Ram Villivalam, Dist. 8, Mr. Prayag Raj, Vedic Acharya and over fifty elderly seniors and staff members from Metropolitan Asian Family Services, Chicago, Niles, and Schaumburg sites got together there to honor and to pay homage to the Father of our Country Mahatma Gandhiji, Bapu, with great love, enthusiasm, and joy. In his opening remarks, Counsel Gosh recognized Gandhiji as a political ethicist who had an enormous impact all over India and the world. He proudly talked about Bapu’s impact on Martin Luther King, Jr. when he visited India in 1959. He stated that Gandhiji greatly inspired King, Jr., who accepted Gandhiji as his spiritual Guru, and acknowledged that Gandhiji was one of the rare people who could say, “My life is my message.” Counsel also mentioned a book, “A Promised Land” written by Mr. Barack Obama when he was the President of the US. In the book, he emphasized that President Obama talked about someone who asked him that in the entire sweep of human history if he were to meet one person, who would he like to meet? President Barack Obama’s answer was Mahatma Gandhi.