pollywood
books
book talk
GANDhI REACHES CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS Mary King’s new book tells how the U.S. civil rights movement was influenced by the principles of Gandhian nonviolent action onviolent protest is something that the U.S. civil rights movement is known for using to effect change (think of student sit-ins and bus boycotts). As the 50th anniversary of the game-changing Voting Rights Act of 1965 approaches, we look at a new book that explores a historical influence on the movement that is often left out of the discussion. In “Gandhian Nonviolent Struggle and Untouchability in South India: The 1924–25 Vykom Satyagraha and the Mechanisms of Change” (Oxford University Press), lauded nonviolent studies scholar Mary King explains the extent that civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr. were influenced by Gandhian principles of nonviolence. WL: How did this book project come about? Mary King: It was suggested to me by Gene Sharp, the world’s foremost scholar on nonviolent civil resistance. He told me 15 years ago that somebody needed to revisit the struggle at Vykom, so I embarked on a 15-year process to work out exactly what happened. “That the U.S. civil rights movement unequivocally borrowed from the Indian struggles is evident in the way it analyzed power and consent, organized campaigns, stressed strategy, sequenced methods from persuasion to noncooperation to more disruptive measures, and emphasized communications and getting out the news.” WL: You write about the influence of Gandhian nonviolent struggle on the civil rights movement. How did this originate? MK: The background story is that there were four decades of black leaders traveling from the U.S. to India in order to learn how the Gandhian struggles took place
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“Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, hunger for knowledge about the Indian struggles were growing in African American communities, which had themselves for generations felt fear and dread. By the 1920s, they were seeing in their own experiences of collective exclusion a form of casteism and were coming to believe that Gandhian strategies of resistance to oppression might be applicable in their situation.”
and trying to learn lessons they thought would be applicable to their situation. When they arrived in India, the thing that was most compelling to them was that they considered the untouchability of the Hindu caste system to be very like the circumstances in which they were living. Long before Martin Luther King, particularly in the 1930s, there were African American college presidents, university professors, editors and newsmen traveling by steamer ship to learn about Gandhi, trying to figure out what was applicable to their circumstances. There was an interchange between India and the black community from 1919 to 1955. That’s where the stunning connection comes from.
WL: What is your opinion of nonviolence, if you can sum it up? MK: A nonviolent movement always has to be a sustained action and has to be collective or it will not work. Gandhi had figured out something crucial: that no system can function or stand if the ruled refuse to obey, and he had figured this out by 1905. This insight — that if people stop obeying, the system can’t cooperate, also known as consent theory — was very influential on civil rights leaders. “In retrospect it is possible to see that a diffuse black leadership was preparing for the emergence of Martin Luther King Jr, as expressed in the phrase ‘raising up a prophet.’ As the leaders traveled to India, they forged personal bonds with individuals working alongside Gandhi, and prominent Indians visited the United States to lecture and create connections with the nascent civil rights movement. Benjamin Mays, some ten years after meeting with Gandhi at Wardha, in India in 1936, would in his regular chapel lectures as president of Atlanta’s Morehouse College open the eyes of a seventeen-year-old student named Martin Luther King Jr.”
WA S H I N G T O N L I F E
| m ay
2015
| washingtonlife.com
au t h o r P h oto co u rt e sy m ary ki n g. bo o k i m ag e co u rt e sy ox fo rd u n i v e rs i t y pr e s s
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By Erica Moody