In keeping with its mandate of spreading the message of Mahatma Gandhi, the Chair of the UK based Gandhi Statue Memorial Trust, Lord Meghnad Desai, has announced that the Trust will donate a sum of £100,000 as an endowment towards Mahatma Gandhi scholarships to be set up at the London School of Economics. This is the seed money which then others would add to, so that a large corpus could be built up in time.
This would enable deserving Indian students to study at the LSE. This endowment coincides with the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi , and has been welcomed by the Director of the LSE, Minouche Shafik, who is at present on a visit to India.
The Director also pointed out that the LSE has a very strong India connection, and in fact Dr Ambedkar had also studied there. Mahatma Gandhi had also delivered a very well attended lecture at the LSE in the Old Theatre in the 1931 .
The Gandhi Statue Memorial Trust was set up in 2015, to place the Mahatma Gandhi statue at a prime location at Westminster Square. The inaugural ceremony had been attended at the time by David Cameron, the then Prime Minister, late Arun Jaitley, India’s then Finance Minister, Amitabh Bachchan, Lord Meghnad Desai and other members of the Trust, as well as donors . India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi also paid his respects at the Gandhi Statue on a subsequent visit.
In the past four years, the Gandhi Statue Memorial Trust has also supported three other charities in the UK, which are working on themes close to the vision and legacy of Mahatma Gandhi.
This year the Trust is specially commemorating the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.
