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Bangladeshi writer to set up unique Gandhi memorial centre
By Farid Ahmed, Indo-Asian News Service

Dhaka, Oct 24 (IANS) A Bangladeshi journalist-turned- writer plans to establish a Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Home here to project the ideology of the legendary apostle of peace.

Syed Abul Moksud, an editor of a local Bengali daily, told IANS he had been collecting documents on Gandhi for the last three decades and has now begun work on the memorial house to display rare documents and artefacts related to Gandhi.

This is the first private initiative to set up a memorial house on Gandhi in Bangladesh.

"The objective of this memorial is to portray Gandhi's work and philosophy to the new generation and to research on Gandhi," he said, adding that this was entirely his private initiative, using his own funds.

"Initially I'll set up the office at my residence in Dhaka, but I'm planning to set up the memorial home separately at a bigger place on the outskirts of Dhaka," he said.

The memorial house would include a library and a school for children, said Moksud, who is now working on two books -- one in Bengali and the other in English -- on Mahatma Gandhi. "I'm about to complete the books and they will be published from India," he said.

"I extensively travelled and talked to the people who were close to Gandhi and initially started collecting documents from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan for my writings. Later I decided to put the documents on display to teach future generations about Gandhi," said Moksud, who has written at least 25 books and won the prestigious Bangla Academy Award.

"Gandhi is indeed a leader of the subcontinent, but people, mostly the new generations here have very little knowledge about him and my objective is to preach about Gandhi's life and philosophy," said Moksud, who adopted Gandhi's Satyagraha and started wearing a homespun loincloth a couple of years ago.

He said he had so far collected about 2500 documents on Gandhi, comprising mainly letters, books and other documents.

Moksud said he planned to teach young children about Gandhi's way of life, his philosophy and his spinning programme. 

"As a part of preaching Gandhi's philosophy, from now on I'll publish a four-page bulletin every month," he said.

Apart from the new move by Moksud, there is a Gandhi Ashram Trust in Bangladesh's southern Noakhali district, which Mahatma Gandhi visited in 1946 after an incident of communal violence. 

The ashram established a couple years before Gandhi's assassination, mainly provides micro credit to poor villagers.