The latest edition of FashMash Pioneers saw us reimagining sustainable leadership with Bandana Tewari talking people, planet and philosophy.
The huge benefit of our Pioneers speaker series currently being virtual, is that we get to host people from all around the world. Cue the inimitable Bandana Tewari, activist, journalist and thought leader, joining us live from her home in Bali last week. And wow, what an inspirational interview she delivered.
As the former Editor-At-Large for Vogue India, Bandana has experienced the heady highs of the fashion world, but now finds her grounding in both her life in the jungle and the learnings of her own provenance. In this discussion, we explored everything from sustainability and economics through the work of Gandhi to the personal responsibility we all have to drive change.
You can watch the full interview via YouTube above (and we genuinely would recommend finding the hour to do so!). Here are some highlights of our favourite moments in the meantime:
ON PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
“Activism is a personal act of descent. We have a choice, when there is any policy or law against things we believe in, either you accept it, change it, or you can fight against it. As consumers and ordinary human beings and citizens, it is our moral duty now to become activists in our own rights. Being an activist is not a choice, it is a birthright.”
ON INTERCONNECTEDNESS
“For far too long humans have thought of themselves as being the only species that were elevated - so the animals and forests don’t matter so much. Deep ecology (as opposed to shallow ecology), is about how we need to co-exist and allow every other species to flourish as we do... This is allowing nature to exist in harmony without being pillaged… That interconnectivity is what I am pursuing when I speak about sustainability now.”
ON BUDDHIST ECONOMICS
“Gandhi had a very profound way of looking at economics. EF Schumacher called him the ‘economist of the common man’, and now that has morphed into Buddhist economics. The reason was because Gandhi, like a lot of freedom fighters, empowered from the roots… Now we need more men, and hopefully more women, sitting at decision making tables, that believe in this philosophy.”