Kashi Manthan is a citizens’ initiative to increase awareness about national security, foreign policy, strategic thought, leadership and social issues amongst the people of Varanasi, especially the youth. The initiative has been launched with the objective of preventing Kashi, the progenitor of ancient Indian traditions from losing its moorings. Kashi Manthan hopes add a new chapter to the philosophical, spiritual, religious and academic discourses prevailing in Varanasi since times immemorial. Since ancient times Kashi has been a melting pot of intellectuals with its acceptance of theories ranging from the prosaic to the mundane and Kashi Manthan hopes to carry this legacy.
The initiative is managed by the Kashi Manthan Trust, a Charitable Trust founded by a group of intellectuals of the city. Concerned about growing vacuum in social and intellectual responsibility in society Our approach is based on the 4E’s: Education, Engagement, Empowerment and Enlightenment. This approach is itself dependent on the 3D’s: Deliberation, Debate and Dialogue. The idea is to disseminate various nuances of the core subject’s viz national security, foreign policy, strategic culture, leadership, motivational and social issues amongst the youth. The focus is to create an empowered society, which uses information and knowledge as tools to build society and nation.
We at Kashi Manthan feel that the exposure the youth receive today will allow them to grow into enlightened individuals in the future building an empowered nation. Driven by the people Kashi Manthan epitomizes the spirit of democracy of “We the people, By the people, For the people.”
Kashi Manthan plans to become the nucleus of ideas for rebuilding India. For long, ideas have been straitjacketed in certain metro cities without an effort to create an atmosphere to takes these discourses outside these centers. We wish to be a platform which can serve for ideation, ensuring that knowledge reaches smaller cities and provides the youth in these centers with the information to empower themselves to be at par with their counterparts from the rest of the country.
