2nd Annual Interfaith Heroes Month No. 18: Mohandas Gandhi

THIS IS THE FIRST OF 4 PROFILES that demonstrate the transformative power that can flow from cross-cultural, interreligious, globe-circling connections. This series and dozens of other profiles all are within the book “Interfaith Heroes 2.” Please, support our ongoing work by purchasing a copy of “Interfaith Heroes 2”!

• Part 1: Focuses on Gandhi
• Part 2: Martin Luther King Jr.
• Part 3: Aung San Suu Kyi
• Part 4: E. Stanley Jones

MOHANDAS GANDHI
(1869-1948)

“The way of nonviolence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.”
    The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was influenced by Gandhi.

Throughout the the 20th Century and into the 21st Century a movement developed that has changed the political maps of the world. It is a movement that has touched every continent. The movement is focused around the principles of nonviolent struggle to bring justice and freedom to people who have been experiencing oppression. The thread weaving together the center of this movement is people acting passionately and explicitly out of their religious beliefs, yet at the same time learning at their very core from people of other faiths.
    The three people who most clearly embody this tradition through history are Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Aung San Suu Kyi, a Hindu, a Christian and a Buddhist. This trio of heroes are known for their dramatic actions and leadership in situations of great oppression, but here we will look deeper at how they learned from believers and practitioners of other religions in the shaping of their own beliefs and actions.

    Mohandas Gandhi, also known by his honorific title “Mahatma,” was a Hindu Indian. Gandhi’s ideas were initially shaped while he was a law student in London. He came across Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You, which Gandhi said, “overwhelmed me.” This book came out of Tolstoy’s own spiritual revolution in his 50s when the Christian writer looked to the transformation of all of society through the inner moral revolution that came from following the teachings of Jesus. Confronting the failure of Christians to acknowledge “the law of non-resistance to evil by violence” was at the center of Tolstoy’s work. Tolstoy believed the Church had perverted the teachings of Jesus. Instead, Christians should follow the law of love and reject violence. The Kingdom of God is Within You was banned by the Russian censors, but it was published in other countries in Europe. As Gandhi read it, he said, “Before the independent thinking, profound morality, and the truthfulness of this book, all the books given me … paled into insignificance.”
    Tolstoy’s writing helped Gandhi crystallize his own thinking. He wrote about Tolstoy’s book, “It’s reading cured me of my skepticism and made me a firm believer in ahimsa (nonviolence).” Furthermore, while reading this Christian’s treatment of nonviolence Gandhi was liberated from a narrow orthodoxy in Hinduism, including the injustices of untouchability, even as Tolstoy had been from narrow views of Christianity. Tolstoy rooted his nonviolence in the law of love, which Gandhi recognized in every religion, including his own Hindu faith. Gandhi initiated a correspondence with Tolstoy which continued until the latter’s death in 1910. In his last lett er to Gandhi, Tolstoy wrote, “Your activity is the most essential work, the most important of all the work now being done in the world.”
    While influenced and inspired by Tolstoy’s Christian nonresistance, Gandhi took the teachings further in both theory and practice. Gandhi did not teach nonresistance to evil but rather nonviolent resistance. He also thought more positively about the state than Tolstoy did. Gandhi engaged in political struggle that brought about political change and social reformation, whereas Tolstoy had withdrawn to his farm and the private practice of his morality.
    After Gandhi’s nonviolent campaigns with the Indians in South Africa and against the British Empire in his native India, independence was finally achieved for India in 1947.

TOMORROW: CELEBRATE KING’S HOLIDAY IN THE U.S. by reading the second in this series of 4 heroic profiles. Learn how King’s life and work was shaped by Gandhi. Then, in the third and fourth stories in this series, learn about two other famous religious activists whose lives also were connected to Gandhi and King.

EXPLORE THE LINKS, ABOVE, TO LEARN HOW GANDHI’S LIFE IS RELATED TO KING, AUNG SAN SOO KYI AND JONES! AND, please, support our ongoing peacemaking work by purchasing a copy of “Interfaith Heroes 2”!
    (Originally published at http://www.ReadTheSpirit.com/)