MAHATMA GANDHI devoted his life to pioneering the path of non-violence in resisting injustice and social discrimination as well as advancing the cause of securing India’s freedom from oppressive colonial rule. He died in 1948.
Less than a decade after his death, Martin Luther King, the great civil rights leader of the black communities in the United States, made very effective use of Mahatma Gandhi’s views regarding the path of non-violence to initiate the struggles for equality and dignity. That approach captured the imagination of people far and wide and achieved significant success for justice.
In fact, Mahatma Gandhi had foreseen the potential of the methods he pioneered for these struggles. After giving a very warm welcome to a group of visitors from black American communities visiting his camp at Bardoli in 1936, Gandhi made them very happy with a message of hope. He told them, “It may be through the Negroes that the unadulterated message of non-violence will be delivered to the world.”
This proved substantially true when the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King achieved great success. Much later, too, the message of Mahatma Gandhi was used by an important peace worker inspired by Mahatma Gandhi to end the gang wars in his area of work in the US.
Martin Luther King, time and again, acknowledged the great influence of Mahatma Gandhi on his work and movements. He said, “Mahatma Gandhi has done more than any other person in history to reveal that social problems can be resolved without resorting to primitive methods of violence…In our struggle against racial segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, I came to see at a very early stage that a synthesis of Gandhi’s method of nonviolence and the Christian ethic of love is the best weapon available to Negroes for this struggle for freedom and human dignity.”
In a letter written in 1957, King wrote, “I firmly believe that the Gandhian philosophy of nonviolent resistance is the only logical and moral approach to the solution of the race problem in the United States.”
Later, after visiting India in 1959, King wrote in another letter, “I left India more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom and dignity. In fact, there is no other lasting way. I have returned to America with a greater determination to achieve freedom for my people through non-violent means.”
Many Americans, particularly from black communities, had been preparing the ground for spreading important learnings from Mahatma Gandhi’s struggles and experiments. As early as the 1920s, Marcus M Garvey of the Universal Negro Improvement Association presented struggles in India’s freedom movement as an example from which much can be learnt. Mahatma Gandhi’s struggles against untouchability were covered by several African-American newspapers and magazines. In 1929, the famous black philosopher W E B Dubois published a letter from Gandhi in The Crisis, a publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. This was widely reprinted and circulated, indicating the responsiveness of people.
Later, many other black leaders like Adam Clayton Powell, A Philip Randolph and E D Nixon, helped to establish the relevance of Gandhi-led movements for American situations.
There was considerable exchange of letters of black leaders from the US with associates of Mahatma Gandhi in India followed in some cases by visits and meetings. Morehouse College President Benjamin Mays, who had personally met Gandhi, introduced several of his ideas to young Martin Luther King. Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, the President of Howard University, visited India in1949 to meet several associates of Gandhi and proved to be an important link for carrying Gandhian ideas to the black communities in the US and more specifically to King himself.
Reverend James M Lawson was influenced by the ideas of non-violent resistance to injustice early in life and read Gandhi extensively. In 1952, he visited India and held discussions with several associates of Gandhi, including Jawaharlal Nehru. Back in the US, Lawson conducted workshops on non-violence attended enthusiastically by many civil rights activists including King.
Several other names can be added. what is clear is that many leading members of black communities in the US had been looking keenly at Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas and struggles regarding non-violent resistance, and the continuing contributions made by them to spreading this information and the ideas based on them helped to prepare the ground in which the subsequent non-violent struggles of the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King and his companions could grow their roots more easily.
It is particularly important in present times to remember this legacy, as the ideas and struggles of Mahatma Gandhi can again be of considerable importance in the present times. The ideas of Mahatma Gandhi are equally important for spreading the concept of non-violence as a way of life. This can be very crucial for strengthening the peace movement.
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Bharat Dogra writes extensively on environment, development and welfare issues. The views expressed here are the writer’s own, and Clarion India does not necessarily subscribe to them. He can be reached at:[email protected]
