The Mahatma Gandhi Foundation

The Mahatma Gandhi Foundation was established, as a public charitable trust in 1997 by Tushar A. Gandhi, a great grandson of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Kasturba.

The aims and objectives of the Foundations were to help in initiatives to provide rural development and poverty alleviation programmes, rural education and medical facilities and disaster aid programmes.

The Foundation was active in providing aid after the devastating earthquake in Gujarat. The Foundation has also been active in providing relief to the victims of the communal riots which ripped apart the social fabric of Gujarat and widened the rift between the Hindu and Muslim population of India.

One of the premier projects which the Foundation has been diligently pursuing is the creation of a digital archive dedicated to the Life of Mahatma Gandhi. All information pertaining to Mahatma Gandhi his writings, writings on him, photographs, cartoons featuring him, his genealogy, recordings of his speeches, film footage featuring him has all been painstakingly gathered, digitised, digitally corrected and made available on the World Wide Web via the Website www.mahatmagandhi.org.in & www.mahatma.org.in . The digital archiving project of the Foundation has been working since the year 1999 and we still have lots to do. The Foundation was fortunate to have found financial support from Two USA based Indian entrepreneurs Kanval Rekhi and B. V. Jagadish who each donated US$250,000/- in the year 2000, Harish Mehta India based IT industry leader also donated Rs.2,500,000/ which ensured that the Foundation was able to execute the Mahatma On the World Wide Web Project on a very professional basis.

Initially the Foundation was fortunate to receive advise guidance and technical support from Meeheer Mafatlal, Kanakasabahpathy Pandyan, Vijay Mukhi and Shammi Kapoor people who were Internet pioneers in India.

The Foundation hired a young team of Software professionals and Web designers, Nipun Mapara, Sameer Menon, Amol Tatkare and Anoop Menon the original Software team have now moved on to more challenging jobs. Sudhir Gattawar and Deepankar Sadekar the two Web designers are still working on the Websites, both the Mahatma Gandhi as well as the Salt March sites are upgraded and maintained by the two of them. After the original team left for some time Arvind Sharma stepped in unfortunately the association did not last long. Nishant Nagre took over the technical aspect of maintenance and upgrading of the web site, he left us after sixteen months for a more challenging job. Sagar Budkewar has joined the team since the past three months he aims to soon join business school and become a ‘Manager’. In this quest we must mention the help and assistance provided to us by Venkatnarsimhan, being the senior most member of the staff, Venkat has worked harder than any of the youngsters. Venkat has the unenviable job of looking after the administration of the Foundation. Last but not the least our office help and certainly the most helpful person has been Mahesh Baikar who does literally everything for us be it arranging our lunch to data entry, designing, scanning or running around all over the city taking care of the ‘Outside’ work.

The Foundation is young and small in size. But the enthusiasm of all the members who contribute to its existence is vast and gives us hope that we will achieve much more.

The Salt March commemorative event has been conceived and planned by this small band of dedicated persons. Believe us, we will succeed, no matter what.