Comprehensive Internet Archive on Mahatma Gandhi Launched

March 31, 2012 - PRLog -- GandhiServe, a Germany based enterprise has launched GandhiMedia (www.gandhimedia.org) with the aim to virtually “bringing Mahatma Gandhi to life”. GandhiMedia is an authentic and comprehensive online archive created after 30 years of research and contributions from scholars, associates and family members of Gandhi. The user is able to view and download rare photographs, films, footage (film clips), letters, cartoons, newspaper clippings, documents and art work on Gandhi and India's independence movement.

Mahatma Gandhi's youngest son Devadas had a dream: to visually document his father's life day-by-day. In the 1950's he contributed to it by putting together the first major collection of film footage and photographs on his father for the Gandhi Films Committee, which made for the later production of Vithalbhai Jhaveri's cinematographic venture MAHATMA and Richard Attenborough's film Gandhi. 

Today, it is GandhiServe's mission to carry on and complete the task of Devadas Gandhi and Vithalbhai Jhaveri. Over the past decades audio visual material on Gandhi has been gathered from over 600 sources all over the world with the help and support of many, many friends and well-wishers. Kanu Gandhi, grand-nephew of Gandhi, was with the Mahatma for the last 12 years of his life. He was the only one allowed to take Gandhi's photograph at any time. He was thus able to capture the Apostle of Nonviolence in all his moods and moments. His entire collection, incl. films and documents, can now be viewed and downloaded for the first time, and so can the works and collections of Jagan Mehta, Datta Khopker, Vithalbhai Jhaveri, Counsic Brothers and many others. 

GandhiMedia operates as agency for people who own material and media on and by Mahatma Gandhi and India's freedom struggle. It also offers an affiliate system to website and blog owners who help to promote GandhiMedia. 

In an interdisciplinary project Gandhi scholars, historians, photo experts and graphic designers joined hands in order to turn black and white photographs into colour images, thus making them true documents of history. After scanning, all photographs have been cleaned digitally and colourised by skilled hands according to the historic settings. The actual colourful scenes were reduced to black and white photographs due to technical limitations of those days. Now in a complex process experts try to add the missing colours. With this GandhiServe's intention is not to manipulate or adulterate pictures but to bring them closer to the colourful image the photograph documents. The family of Mahatma Gandhi has contributed to it as well as Gandhi's associates, archives, museums and leading researchers in India and abroad. 

GandhiMedia's images can be used to create custom products, such as t-shirts, business cards, invitations, in addition to a variety of custom gifts. 

As Indian freedom fighters made precious and rare material available as well as journalists, Gandhi's associates, followers and common people, GandhiMedia forms the specific legacy of the generation of India's independence movement to the present and coming generations. GandhiServe has dedicated its prime service, GandhiMedia, to the conscience of humanity with the hope to help alleviate conflicts and the conviction that the ethics of nonviolence, as practiced and cultivated by Mahatma Gandhi, live on, regardless of national or political boundaries. 

About GandhiServe 
GandhiServe (www.gandhiserve.com) has been established in Berlin, Germany, in 1998 with the aim to help promoting Gandhian values throughout the world. GandhiServe offers products and services relating to Mahatma Gandhi and India's independence movement. It is GandhiServe's policy that all surpluses are to be used to further the promotion of Gandhian values. Practically, it serves as the commercial wing of the charitable GandhiServe Foundation (www.gandhiserve.org). The foundation funds its educational and research activities largely by the financial support of GandhiServe. One of the foundations prime web activities is the Gandhian social network GandhiTopia (www.gandhitopia.org). CEO of GandhiServe and also the founder and acting chairperson of GandhiServe Foundation and web admin of GandhiTopia is Peter Ruhe (peter.ruehe.org), a Gandhi scholar, who has been working in this field for the past 30 years. 

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GandhiServe helps promoting Gandhian values throughout the world. GandhiServe offers products and services relating to Mahatma Gandhi and India's independence movement. It mainly operates through its webportal GandhiMedia – www.gandhimedia.org.