The deep ties between Gandhi and the American civil rights movement | Eye News, The Indian Express

The deep ties between Gandhi and the American civil rights movement | Eye News, The Indian Express

Written by Vinay Lal |Updated: September 29, 2019 9:16:22 am

The deep ties between Gandhi and the American civil rights movement

Mahatma Gandhi 150th Birth Anniversary: How the American civil rights movement adapted Gandhian ideas for their struggle.

Martin Luther King Jr and wife Coretta Scott King with Jawaharlal Nehru on their visit to India in 1959.

Though Martin Luther King Jr has long been recognised as the public face of the American civil rights movement, and, in modern times, has been linked to Gandhi and Nelson Mandela to constitute something like a triumvirate of “prophets of non-violence”, this genealogy is not without problems. In South Africa, Mandela, among the founders of the Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), had a highly ambivalent relationship with Gandhi and the larger question of non-violence. He was primarily responsible for adopting the position, as stated in the manifesto of Umkhonto we Sizwe, that “we felt that without violence there would be no way open to the African people to succeed in their struggle against the principle of white supremacy.” But nothing one might say in this regard mitigates Mandela’s magnanimous resolve, which truly signifies the Gandhian phase in his life, to forgo revenge against the architects of Apartheid and his people’s tormentors.