Published: April 04, 2008 11:48 am      

Gandhi, King defied unjust law to force change

Credit is due to my alma mater, Frostburg State University, and the numerous sponsors who helped bring Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas K. Gandhi - although often better known as Mahatma (meaning "Great Soul") Gandhi, to the school in time for the anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination, which occurred on this date in 1968.

The event found me particularly grateful because learning about Gandhi changed my life since actually having begun to understand the importance of his lessons myself. It afforded me the opportunity to hear first-hand what those same lessons meant to his grandson at the "Lessons Learned from my Grandfather" presentation.

The 1982 Richard Attenborough film "Gandhi," starring Ben Kingsley, seems like an often unmarked milestone in the life of many a middle- or high-schooler. I must admit that I slept through the movie myself at the time it was presented to me in sixth-grade history class, and of course, I awoke with bed-head to credits and unanticipated attention.

It wasn't until a college literature class that I really recognized how important Gandhi's message is. Unlike King, Gandhi hadn't been a hero ingrained early in life for me. But as I continue to learn, King and Gandhi - whose lives were dedicated to fellow man and woman spanning different colors, faiths and continents - are not different, and millions are better off because of that.

The Pealer Recital Hall in FSU's Performing Arts Center filled up Monday evening and books sold out as Arun Gandhi, who spent 18 months living with his Grandfather not long before he was assassinated January 30, 1948, took the stage.

Arun Gandhi founded the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, located at the University of Rochester in New York, and spoke clearly and rationally on the subject the institute stands for. He put passive resistance, or civil disobedience, directly into terms one finds studying his Grandfather's life - terms that lead to the most logical and unified end to a conflict situation, peacefully. Although, the logic is found down the high road less taken.

Like electricity applied beneficially, the energy summoned in anger can be channeled to a nonviolent solution. The metaphor is difficult to dispute. Generally, there is no anger management class in one's life until the problem itself gets out of hand.

Learning to control anger, as Arun Gandhi did through dedication and his grandfather's influence, is very obviously no easy task, particularly during time periods when that control is proven, painfully, to be effective. Restraint, tied self-consciously to what is right, yet in defiance of what one knows as a human being to be inherently wrong, peacefully makes a point. It's as if a lady, believing in the difference between right and wrong, simply refused to move to the back of a bus.

Following the arrest of Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Ala., on December 1, 1955, Martin Luther King joined the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Twenty-five years earlier, in protest of a British law, Gandhi marched 240 miles to the ocean to make salt himself, defying an unjust law imposed by imperialist Britain, peacefully. Also, in support of Indian independence, Gandhi learned to spin his own cloth and taught others to do so as well, effectively boycotting the British empire by refusing to invest in goods manufactured in England.

Neither Gandhi nor his grandson met King in person. But in 1959, King visited Gandhi's small home in Bombay.

Arun Gandhi's story on this occasion is unforgettable - for me at least. The small residence Gandhi maintained while living in Bombay was then, and is now, a geographical icon in India.

King's notoriety gained him access to Gandhi's personal room, which contained only a bed and desk, and was almost completely off-limits, Arun Gandhi said. When it was time for the caretaker of the historic site to close down, King emotionally refused to head back to his room in the Taj Mahal, arguing that if this room was good enough for Gandhi, it was good enough for him.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed in Gandhi's ideas. Gandhi was of the Hindu faith since birth, yet in perpetuating the concept of nonviolence till his death, we can be forever encouraged to turn the other cheek. At one point, Gandhi was asked if he was Hindu, prompting him to answer, "Yes I am. I am also a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist and a Jew."

On the subject of this influential figure, King said, "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 Gandhi at our own risk."

As cultural tensions and protests continue to escalate worldwide ahead of the Beijing Olympics, images of protesters arrive from a distance so great the phrase, "Out of sight, out of mind" actually comes to mind. Although, the world watches as a Nobel Laureate leader is being called a "wolf in monk's robes" by a communist government.

The Dalai Lama is a pack-hunting dog? I should've known.

For me, the question of what a true "uniter" would do under such circumstances comes to mind like the weight of a headache.

One man's teachings and actions can only be fully appreciated for so long on the international stage. But, as individuals living in a time of what is often very distant turmoil, the most important question may be: "What would I do?"

Justin Christopher Dyke is a copy editor for the Cumberland Times-News.