International Lunar Society Designates Moon Crater To Honor Mohandas K Gandhi

June 15, 2010 - PRLog -- The International Lunar Geographic Society has announced that a crater on Luna, Earth’s Moon, has been renamed to honor Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (મોહનદાસ કરમચંદ ગાંધી in Gujarati).

The crater, which is located in the Moon’s Sinus Iridum (“Bay of Rainbows”) district, has been given the honorary designation as the Mohandas K Gandhi Peace Crater to commemorate his lifelong struggle for the freedom of his people and to mark the eightieth anniversary of Bapu's historic Satyagraha March in 1930. The march was a significant event in the civil disobendience movement that led to the independence of India.

Mahatma Gandhiji (2 October 1869-30 January 1948) pioneered satyagraha — "truth and love with firmness," the non-violent resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience — which helped India to gain its independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.

Gandhi first employed non-violent civil disobedience while working as a lawyer in South Africa, during the resident Indian community's struggle there for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he organized protests by peasants, farmers and urban laborers against excessive land-tax and discrimination.

Upon assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns to ease poverty, expand women's rights, build religious and ethnic amity, end untouchability, and increase economic self-reliance. Above all, he aimed to achieve Swaraj, or the independence of India from foreign domination. As a result of his efforts, Gandhi spent nearly ten years of his life in jail in both South Africa and India.

In 1930, Gandhi led thousands of his followers on the nearly 400-kilometer Dandi Salt March (the Salt Satyagraha, or Satyagraha March) from Ahmedabad to the sea in protest of the British-imposed salt. In 1942, he launched the "Quit India" civil disobedience movement demanding immediate independence for India.

Gandhi employed non-cooperation, non-violence and peaceful resistance as his weapons in the struggle against the British Raj. In Punjab, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of civilians by British troops (also known as the Amritsar Massacre) caused deep trauma to the nation, leading to increased public anger and acts of violence.

Gandhi criticized both the actions of the British Raj and the retaliatory violence of Indians. It was after the massacre and subsequent violence that Gandhi's mind focused upon obtaining complete self-government and control of all Indian government institutions, maturing soon into Swaraj or complete individual, spiritual and political independence.

In December 1921, Gandhi was invested with executive authority on behalf of the Indian National Congress. Under his leadership, the Congress was reorganized with a new constitution, with the goal of Swaraj.

Gandhi expanded his non-violence platform to include the swadeshi policy — the boycott of foreign-made goods, especially British goods; linked to this was his advocacy that khadi (homespun cloth) be worn by all Indians instead of British-made textiles. Gandhi exhorted Indian men and women, rich and poor, to spend time each day spinning khadi in support of the independence movement. This was a strategy to instill discipline and dedication, and to include women in the movement at a time when many thought that such activities were not respectable activities for women.

Gandhi and the entire Congress Working Committee were arrested in Bombay by the British on 9 August 1942, and Gandhi was incarcerated for two years in the Aga Khan Palace in Pune. After suffering a severe malaria attack, Gandhi was released from custody on 6 May 1944 because of his failing health. At the end of World War II, the British gave clear indications that power would be transferred to Indian hands. At this point Gandhi called off the struggle, and an estimated 100,000 political prisoners were released, including the Congress's leadership.

Mohandas K Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948 at Birla Bhavan (now Gandhi Smriti) in Pune.

The crater designated to honor Mahatma Gandhi was previously known as Laplace A, and is located at 43.7º North (latitude) and 26.8º West (longitude) on the so-called Earthside of the Moon. It measures approximately nine kilometers in diameter, with a depth of about 1000 meters.

The Mohandas K Gandhi Peace Crater is part of the Laplace crater group, named for Pierre-Simon, the Marquis de Laplace  (1749-1827), a French mathemetician and astronomer who authored the landmark five-volume Mécanique Céleste. Gandhi is the largest of seven satellite craters to Promontorium Laplace, and rests at the mouth of the Moon’s magnificent Bay of Rainbows.

The official designation of a Lunar crater is a singular honor bestowed upon only a select few public figures. Among those receiving this rare tribute over the past century are Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Columbus, Sir Isaac Newton, Julius Caesar and Jules Verne.

The International Luna Society, previously known as the Lunar Republic Society, is the world’s largest and most prominent group advocating privatized exploration, settlement and development of Earth’s Moon. The centerpiece of the Society’s effort is a ten-year, $3.8-billion (USD) program to return humans to the Moon and establish permanent bases there.

The Society has also developed the most successful commercially-available lunar photomap software ever released to the public, the Full Moon Atlas (http://www.fullmoonatlas.com), which is used by astronomers and in classrooms around the world.

The Society successfully advocated the removal of a crater named for an accused Nazi war criminal, Dr. Hans Eppinger, Jr., by the International Astronomical Union, and was the prime mover behind the draft proposal to designate a group of Lunar craters as a memorial to the seven crew members who perished in the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-107) tragedy. (See http://lunargeographic.com/news/columbia_region.shtml)

Website: http://www.lunargeographic.org/gandhi/

New York USA 15 July 2010 LT

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