Of Gandhi and the power of non-violence
NEW FILM EXPLORES INDIAN ICON’S INFLUENCE FROM THE US TO AFRICA
A DOCUMENTARY on Mahatma Gandhi, shown last month at the London Indian Film Festival and which is now going to be distributed worldwide, suggests that he anticipated Black Lives Matter decades before the movement was conceived.
Written and directed by the Indian filmmaker Ramesh Sharma, the 92-minute film is called Ahimsa: Gandhi – The Power of the Powerless.
Ahimsa in Sanskrit means non-violence, the strategy Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi used against British rule in India.
Sharma interviewed many prominent figures during his three trips to America. Among them was the Democratic Congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis before the latter’s death, aged 80, in July last year.
Lewis is quoted as saying: “I said to president Barack Obama on one occasion, ‘Mr President, if it hadn’t been for Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jnr, you wouldn’t be president of the United States of America.’”
He told Sharma: “Gandhi’s teaching spoke to us, said in effect, when you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something, to say something.”
The documentary uses the voice and words of Martin Luther King Jnr: “Many years ago when Abraham Lincoln was shot; and incidentally, he was shot for the same reason that Mahatma Gandhi was shot – namely for committing the crime of wanting to heal the wounds of a divided nation – and when he was shot, secretary [Edwin] Stanton stood by the dead body of the great leader and said these words: ‘Now he belongs to the ages.’ In a real sense, we can say the same thing about Mahatma Gandhi and even in stronger times. Now he belongs to the ages.”
The civil rights leader also adopted Gandhi’s policy of non-violence: “We must continue to delve deeper into the philosophy of non-violent resistance. There is something about this method that has power. It has morality with it because it gives us the opportunity to work to secure moral ends through moral means. We go in to the jails of Jackson, Mississippi, and transform these jails from dungeons of shame to havens of freedom and human dignity.”
His eldest son, Martin Luther King III, 63, himself a human rights activist, reveals: “I believe my father’s passion for non-violence came about the time that he was in graduate school. It may have been even in college.
“He used to say, ‘I got my inspiration from Christ, but my technique from Gandhi.’ Perhaps the first incident of him using the philosophy of non-violence was in 1955 when Miss Rosa Parks sat down on a bus, refusing to give up her seat. She sat there with dignity and she was arrested. My father became the chief spokesperson and he and his team called for a boycott of the Montgomery buses. And for 381 days, people chose not to ride those buses.”
Sharma also spoke to Rev James Lawson, 92, an American activist and university professor who has been a leading theoretician and tactician of non-violence within the civil rights movement.
Lawson recalls a conversation that Gandhi had with Dr Howard Thurman, a black theologian from the US in 1935.
“He actually says non-violence is love in practice, love in action and it cannot be taught. It has to be lived.”
He explains how Gandhi’s ideas took root among African Americans: “You had a whole political party primarily lodged in the south that had pushed for a segregated society based on race and sexism, I should also add. So, from my perspective, Gandhi became for me a major teacher because of his political efforts that he sought to do, within the context of truth and justice.
“So I was one of the handful of people in the United States that recognised the power of what Gandhi had done with non-violence in South Africa and India. So I shook hands then with Martin Luther King Jnr on February 6, 1957.
“We had an immediate moral and character contact and relationship. So I moved south in 1958 in Nashville and began working with him and others in Nashville and elsewhere, teaching and counselling on non-violent struggle, nonviolent theory and practice.”
The documentary includes the views of Dr Mary Elizabeth King (no relation), a professor of peace and conflict studies: “When he (Martin Luther King Jnr) went to seminary, he heard one day from one of the great black pastors-clergymen who preached about his own meetings with Gandhi. And after that he went out immediately to the store and bought six books on Gandhi. He had realised that there is no system that can stand if the people refuse to cooperate with it.
“Gandhian struggles were being avidly reported in New York, Ohio, Illinois, Atlanta. There was tremendous following of Gandhi. African Americans owned these newspapers and they were reporting what was going on in India and they were reporting it avidly. There was a lot of nonviolent civil resistance used by slaves.”
‘In a way, he foresaw Black Lives Matter’
Gandhi’s grandson, Rajmohan Gandhi, 85, says his grandfather “in a way had predicted this in 1936 when some African-Americans had met him in India. He had said that he had thought that the unadulterated power of non-violence would be demonstrated to the world by the African-Americans.”
In Poland, Sharma met the country’s former president and legendary trade union leader Lech Walesa, who spoke of his country’s struggle and ultimately victory against its one-time communist, pro-Soviet rulers: “It was a similar battle. We also took an example of Gandhi, fighting similarly, peacefully, without violence. However, we had additional concerns as there were over 200,000 Soviet soldiers within Poland, a million soldiers around Poland and forces with nuclear weapons.”
The Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, says Gandhi “carried freedom struggle but according to 1,000-year-old India’s tradition – non-violence. Ahimsa.”
From the Indian historian Ramachandra Guha, there is analysis of how Gandhi used non-violence against British rule: “Gandhi launches three major all-India movements against British rule. Of these, the Salt March of 1930 has become the most famous because of the symbolism of the march.”
And former Labour cabinet minister Lord Peter Hain establishes how Nelson Mandela was influenced by Gandhi: “In the late 1940s and the early 50s, when apartheid started to be enforced, Nelson Mandela and his comrades started to say, ‘Look, this [militant tactics] is getting us nowhere. We’ve been doing this for generations, and it is getting worse.’
“That is when they drew on Gandhi’s non-violent, direct-action philosophy and started to organise ‘stay-at-homes’ by black workers who used to commute into the city every day to serve their white masters or rent strikes or bus boycotts, those kinds of tactics which are in the Gandhian tradition.”
Sharma told Eastern Eye: “This has been one of the most difficult films I have produced and directed. For me this has been a work of passion, as I truly believe that ahimsa – non-violence – is the only tool which can redeem us and redeem humanity. It is the only ideology that is full of compassion and empathy.
“While I do deal with Black Lives Matter in my film, the documentary is about the relevance of non-violence as a tool for conflict resolution,” he went on.
“The seminal movements of the 20th century, whether the civil rights movement in the US, the Mandela and [Desmond] Tutu led ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ in South Africa, the Solidarity Movement in Poland and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, these were all impacted and influenced by the power of ahimsa and satyagraha, first articulated on September 11, 1906, in South Africa by Gandhi.
“I have just received news that the film has won the Best Documentary award at the 21st New York Indian Film Festival.”