The National Institute of Naturopathy(NIN), Pune in association with the Regional Outreach Bureau Maharashtra and Goa of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, is organizing a 48 day- long series of Webinars starting on Gandhi Jayanti (2nd October 2020) and ending on Naturopathy Day (18^th November 2020). The webinar will be held from 11AM to 12 noon every day, and can be viewed on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/punenin. No prior registration required to join it. Some of the events will also be hosted on the Ayush Virtual Convention Centre (AVCC), links to which will be announced by the Ministry of AYUSH separately.

The webinars will be on the theme “Mahatma Gandhi- The Healer” and are intended to propagate the relevance of GandhiJi’s thoughts on Health and Nutrition in the 21^st century among people of all walks of life. In particular, they aim to promote the benefits of Naturopathy. The seminars shall culminate with a Finale – which will also be a virtual event – on 18^th November 2020.

A galaxy of reputed academicians, clinicians, experts on Gandhian thought and naturopaths will handle these sessions. This will include personalities such as Dr Mark Lindley from United Sates, Dr. Gambhi Watts from Australia, Dr Gita Dharampal, renowned Gandhian historian, Prof. Shambhu Prasad, Management Guru, Prof. Srinath Reddy, Director, Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), Dr Arvind Kulkarni renowned Oncologist and Smt. Leena Mehendale, IAS. There will also be Gandhi katha, display of rare film footage on Mahatma Gandhi and Gandhi bhajans, along with this webinar.

This mega-series of webinars are expected to take the message of Mahatma Gandhi on the need to master one’s own health to the 21^st century audience.

One of Mahatma Gandhi's lesser known passions was the study of food and nutrition. The Ministry of AYUSH hopes to re-kindle public interest in his thoughts on these subjects – which are as relevant today as they were in his times –through a series of 48 webinars starting on Gandhi Jayanti, the 2^nd of October 2020.

As the sesquicentennial celebrations of the birth of Gandhi Ji draws towards its conclusion, the country remembers him in the spirit of gratitude and inspiration. The basic human values such as courage, universal love, non-violence, nature cure, sanitation and health are perennially relevant.

The NIN, Pune established in the year in 1986 by Government of India to follow and strengthen the movement of Nature Cure in India joined these celebrations by taking up a series of activities spread over a year on the theme ‘Self Reliance through Self Health Reliance’. NIN considers itself as the institutional inheritor of Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy in the area of Health and Nutrition, as it is in this very campus in Pune (which at that point in time housed the Nature Cure Clinic and Sanatorium) that he founded the All India Nature Cure Foundation trust on November 18, 1945. This is one of the few institutions where he held a formal position - the deed of the Nature Cure Trust was signed by Gandhi Ji. In the trust deed, the objects of making this charitable trust have been specified as spreading the knowledge of the science of nature cure in all its aspects and expanding the activity of nature cure therapeutics so as to make its benefits available to all classes of people and especially the poor, putting said institution on a permanent basis, with the ultimate object of creating from it a Nature Cure University. NIN, an Autonomous Body under the Ministry of AYUSH keeps these objectives alive through its educational and healthcare activities.

Government of India has declared November 18 as Naturopathy Day in commemoration of the commitment made by Mahatma Gandhi to Nature Cure on that day in 1945. The Day is celebrated by all Naturopaths and Naturopathy enthusiasts all over the country and across the globe.

MV/SK