[Vision2020] Gandhi and King: Saints of Non-Violence

[nickgier at roadrunner.com]

Dear Visionaries:

This is my radio commentary/column for the MLK holiday.  Most of the chapters from my book "The Virtue of Non-Violence: From Gautama to Gandhi" can be read at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/vnv.htm.

With the Tucson tragedy in our minds, let's all try to embrace Gandhi's ethics of non-violence (violent words included), which had such a profound influence on King's thought and action.  The civil rights movement might have turned very violent without Gandhi and King.

My thoughts are with Rep. Giffords, those still recovering, and the families of those killed in this senseless act.

Ever since Gov. Ronald Reagan emptied the mental hospitals in California, the mental health services in this country have got downhill, and Arizona ranks second to last in offering proper mental health treatments.  Sadly, yet another area where we lag behind the industrial world. You expect India's mentally ill to be living on the streets (I encountered hundreds of them), but not in our "great" country. Shame. Shame. And Shame!

I will keep repeating my prediction: the GOP mantra "No New Taxes" will spell the end of American civilization in the 21st Century.

Nick


GANDHI AND KING: SAINTS OF NON-VIOLENCE

Christ furnished the spirit and motivation, while Gandhi furnished the method.

—Martin Luther King, Jr. 

In a 1921 sermon Unitarian minister John H. Holmes declared that Mohandas K. Gandhi was “the greatest Indian since Gautama Buddha and the greatest man since Jesus Christ.” Do I dare propose that Martin Luther King, Jr. was the greatest person since Gandhi and, and even more daringly, suggest that he was the greatest American ever? 

George Washington is usually considered the greatest American, overcoming incredible odds against the British army and successfully leading the nation through its first 8 years. But what is more commendable: a violent overthrow of colonial rule or liberating former slaves—long denied their full rights—without ever firing a shot?  Revolutionary soldiers were certainly brave, but were they as brave as unarmed people facing police dogs in the streets of Southern citieds? 

An apocryphal story tells of a meeting between Gandhi and Pasthun warriors in the Punjab. He had only one question for them: “Who is the most fearless among us? You, armed to the teeth, or me in a loincloth and walking stick?” Abdul Gaffar Khan, the Pasthun leader, had to admit that Gandhi was the most fearless. He went on to form a nonviolent army called the “Servants of God,” which numbered over 80,000 by 1930.

Both King and Gandhi combined spirituality and political action in a way never experienced before.  Previously, religious banners flew at the head of invading armies.  Religion was usually used to deny people their rights and it was also used to exclude competing faiths and/or denominations. King and Gandhi were inclusive in their visions and actions as they brought religious factions together rather than seeking to keep them apart. 

It was Gandhi the guru of non-violence that came first and then the disciple King. King was first introduced to Gandhi’s ideas while he was attending Morehouse College in the late 1940s. The young Martin, however, was more interested in Henry David Thoreau, and he read and re-read On Civil Disobedience. Both Gandhi and King would take Thoreau’s one night in jail against a poll tax far beyond what Thoreau would have had the courage to do.

Some people have called Thoreau an anarchist, but King and Gandhi never rejected the authority of the state. Both King and Gandhi became revolutionaries for justice, but they never rejected, as anarchists do, the rule of law. 

It was at Crozer Theological Seminary that King studied Gandhi in depth.  After hearing a “profound and electrifying” sermon on the Mahatma by Mordecai Johnson in 1950, King went out and bought six of his books and started his “intellectual odyssey to non-violence.” 

At this time Gandhi’s philosophy was only a theory for him, and the 21-year-old King was not sure how it would combine with his Christian faith or whether it would work to solve the problems his people faced.

The solution finally came to him: “Gandhi was probably the first person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful and effective force on a large scale.  Love for Gandhi was a potent instrument for social and collective transformation.”

The Buddha and Christ are clearly our foremost ancient practitioners of nonviolence.  Christ’s message that we are to love even those who hate us is essentially the message of the Buddha.  Both knew very well that hate figuratively burns a hole in the heart. Equally remarkable, particularly because we know their personal histories and weaknesses so well, are the lives of Gandhi and King. 

With the tragedy in Tucson in mind, and taking Gandhi and King as our models, let us all try to develop the virtue of nonviolence until it becomes as natural as taking a breath.

Nick Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years. 

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