CommentsVIEW FROM HERE-Today, a memorial marks the spot in Birla House, New Delhi, where Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated at 5:17 p.m. on January 30, 1948.
The assassin was an extremist Hindu named Nathuram Godse. The weapon was a gun, shot three times at point blank range.
Gandhi died ingloriously enough, but the principles he lived for were some of the finest ideals ever burnished in the holy furnace of the human soul. In his words, “I am not a visionary. I claim to be a practical idealist. The religion of nonviolence is not meant merely for the rishis and saints. It is meant for the common people as well. Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute.”
As someone who spent half a decade studying and teaching nonviolence at the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence in Rochester, NY, to see Mr. Trump, on his recent official visit to India, make a mockery of Gandhi’s legacy was painful to watch -- even from thousands of miles away. Not only did he shamelessly bribe India with military helicopters and other weapons, he explicitly called for Hindus to combat “radical Islamic terrorism.”
This line may generate applause at his campaign rallies, but in India they have immediate and deadly ramifications for millions of innocent Muslims. At the urging of the conservative Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, India's Parliament recently passed the Citizenship Amendment Bill to allow any Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Christian or Parsi immigrant who came into India from Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan before 2015 to legally become a citizen. The religion left out was Islam -- with over 200 million followers in India. Tensions between the two communities are at a boiling point.
Contrasted with Trump’s racist and irresponsible provocations, Gandhi preached reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims and a call for complete and total commitment to nonviolence. He famously said, “An eye for an eye ends up making the whole world blind.” Gandhi believed that unification was necessary in order for India to become a great nation. And he believed in the equality of all major religions. “The Allah of Islam,” he declared, “is the same as the God of the Christians, and the Ishra of Hindus.” As he saw it, violence is the failure to acknowledge the intrinsic dignity of others.
One last point. It should be said that Trump had no right to visit one of Gandhi’s ashrams. It was not a trip paid out of respect for a revolutionary world figure, but a photo op intended to make use of the Mahatma’s legacy. At any rate, it distorted his message, making for an embarrassing moment during an embarrassing trip.
(George Cassidy Payne is a former peace and justice educator at the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence at the University of Rochester (2009-14). He is currently a social worker and adjunct instructor of philosophy.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
