Gandhi warned us long ago that when citizens are turned into consumers by a modern industrial state intent on centralising power, erosion of democratic liberties follows.

For Gandhi, real globalism lay in sacrificing oneself for anyone in distress anywhere, not in the notion that the world was one’s oyster for economic reward and exploitation.

There was nothing conventional about Gandhi, and the fundamental questions he raised will not be wished away by conventional wisdom.

Khusrau (1253-1325) was a Renaissance Man long in advance of the Renaissance.

When Gandhi critiqued the notion of western civilisation in ‘Hind Swaraj’, at a time when the West was the beacon of the world, he was branded a throwback to an earlier age. Hundred years on, the world is discovering how prophetic he was.

Gandhi believed that real swaraj would come “not by the acquisition of authority by a few, but by the acquisition of the capacity by all to resist authority when abused”.