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Mohandas Karamchand “Mahatma” Gandhi (1869-1948)

Gandhi has been chosen by the people of India, England, and by countless citizens throughout the globe as the greatest world leader of the past 1,000 years. Through the use of nonviolence, fasting, and religious tolerance, he developed and tested the means for ending an era of colonial domination and imperialism. He elevated the love ethic of Jesus to the level of international diplomacy. Using his insightful and thorough reading of John Ruskin, Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Bible, the Koran, and the philosophies and scriptures of other world religions, he instituted a form of universal worship and promoted a love for truth, regardless of its source. This reading further encouraged him to remain by pain or pleasure, victory or defeat, and to work without promise of success or fear of failure. He spent a total of 10 years imprisoned by the British, a period that witnessed the proliferation of his writings, which now fill 100 volumes, each over 500 pages in length.

Gandhi’s civil disobedience and nonviolent demonstrations in South Africa and India won greater freedom and ultimately, independence for 400 million Indians after three centuries of British rule. It also inspired the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Albert Luthuli, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Mother Teresa, Aung San Suu Kyi, Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, the Dalai Lama, and Thich Nhat Hanh.

It is because of his selfless devotion to service and scholarship for the dispossessed—dressing like them, speaking their language, and living among them—that billions today continue to grant Gandhi the title “Mahatma “ and to regard him as a Christian, Judaic, Buddhist, Islamic, and Hindu saint.

The Mahatma was the catalyst, if not the initiator, of five of the major revolutions of the twentieth century: the revolutions against colonialism, racism, violence, and sexism, and for ecology. According to Albert Einstein, “Gandhi organized the people of India into a mass movement on a scale without precedent or parallel. He was the greatest political genius in human history. Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon the earth.”

Gandhi’s life and achievements also caused Martin Luther King Jr. to say, “Gandhi was inevitable. If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable. He lived, thought, and acted, inspired by the vision of humanity evolving toward a world of peace and harmony. We may ignore him at our own risk .... He is the Christian of the century.”

The world does not realize, however, that the Mahatma was not always nonviolent. Gandhi acknowledged many times that his wife of 62 years, Kasturbai Kapadia Gandhi, in her natural unassuming Hindu manner, taught him the art, practice, and science of nonviolence. Her temperament caused Gandhi to publicly declare that he believed women to have a natural predisposition to nonviolent leadership. While Gandhi was in prison, his wife spoke on his behalf and fasted on the same strict vegetarian diet he used. Gandhi himself acknowledged and documented Kasturbai’s courage and bravery to be greater than his own.

Officials of the government of India have informed us that nowhere outside of India have Mahatma and Kasturbai, whose name means “the great mother,” been honored together as perhaps the most influential family of the 20th century. This joint recognition is long overdue and greatly needed, not only to recognize the role of women but also to complete the humanity of all of us.

Six related Morehouse personalities have Gandhi connections which have facilitated the development of this nation. These six persons are Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, Howard Washington Thurman, Benjamin Elijah Mays, Samuel Woodrow Williams, Martin Luther King Jr., Floyd McKissick, and Charles Radford Lawrence. All of these gentlemen must be credited with midwifing Gandhian nonviolence into the American body politic. Martin Luther King Jr. claimed Gandhi, Johnson, Thurman, Mays, Williams, and Lawrence as his mentors. Floyd McKissick, who attended Morehouse, succeeded James Farmer as the head of the Congress of Racial Equality, which was founded on the principles of Gandhian nonviolence. The awarding of honorary degrees to the Gandhis symbolized Morehouse’s continued recognition of the transforming role of nonviolence in the sound construction and healthy maintenance of our ever-emerging world house. The Mahatma is indeed the greatest world leader of the 20th century.

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