Berhampur: Aryabhatta Foundation in association with Forum For Ganjam celebrated the 100th anniversary of the visit of Mahatma Gandhi to Berhampur. The week-long celebration ended on Monday.
A padyatra was taken out from different places of the Silk City every morning during the week. The volunteers conducted Prabhat Pheri and Padyatra while singing gandhiji’s bhajan ‘Vaishnva janato’ and appealed people to follow cleanliness, maintain peace and communal harmony and abjure violence.
Several scholars on Gandhian thoughts including Green Nobel laureate Prafulla Samantara, former Press secretary of President of India Satya Narayan Sahu, convenor FFG Sudhir Rout and many others participated.
After the Padyatra, the volunteers used to sit near Bapu’s statue at Gandhi Nagar with prayers for world peace, communal harmony and reading the book ‘The Stories of My Experiment with Truth’.
Informing about the padayatra, a participant Sudhir Rout said March 29, the date and time at which Mahatma arrived in Berhampur we started the Padyayra from railway station to Bapu’s statue and the place where Mahatma had addressed the people through the streets of Gosain Nuagam which is inhabited by Dalits.
A competition on Gandhiji’s life and philosophy and Gandhi’s bhajan Vaishnava janato was organised on March 28. Successful students were awarded on the day, said Sudhir Rout.