To commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, and to celebrate how his ideas and teachings have shaped the lives of people in India and around the world, UNESCO New Delhi and Doordarshan Television jointly organized a one-hour programme called ‘The Mahatma Lives’ / ‘Bapu Zinda Hai’. It was telecasted on 1 October (10 pm onwards) and 2 October 2019 (5 pm onwards) across India on Doordarshan News.
The programme was a bilingual programme (Hindi and English). Rarely heard audio clips of the Mahatma were shown to remind us vividly of his thoughts and philosophy, focusing specifically on education, culture and the sciences. 11 speakers from different walks of life, age and background were invited from the audience to share their personal experiences and achievements, and how they have integrated the Mahatma’s vision and applied his principles into their work and daily lives.
The programme was jointly hosted by UNESCO New Delhi Director, Eric Falt, and renowned Indian academician and historian, Prof. Pushpesh Pant.
“Bapu, as he is so affectionately called in India, is perhaps the most influential person of the twentieth century, and still inspiring the old and the young today, as we saw in the programme”, said Eric Falt.
The program will lead you to discover or rediscover the Mahatma’s teachings about different themes, and contemplate how aspects of Gandhi’s legacy remains relevant in today’s times, not just to India, but to the world.
UNESCO New Delhi is a Cluster Office for Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka. It constitutes a regional platform for delivery of activities in all areas of UNESCO’s competence, namely, education, the sciences, culture, communication and information.
Doordarshan, a Government of India autonomous public service broadcaster, is among the largest terrestrial television networks in the world, and India’s largest broadcasting organizations in studio and transmitter infrastructure, established in 1959. As per the latest data of the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), total viewership of all Doordarshan channels across India is 596 million.