Martin Luther King on Mahatma Gandhi: "My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence", September 1958

By Dilip -
NB: Since the Black Lives Matter movement, some intellectuals have begun (yet again) their campaign to slander Gandhiji as a 'racist'. An interview published in The Caravan in January 2019 reiterated this. Much can be said about the prejudices of this or that leader, and I have appended some comments beneath that interview. Leaving India aside however, here are some observations on Gandhi by a great American fighter against racism. DS

Extract from Martin Luther King: My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence
"Like most people, I had heard of Gandhi, but I had never studied him seriously. As I read I became deeply fascinated by his campaigns of nonviolent resistance.... The whole concept of Satyagraha was profoundly significant to me...  Perhaps my faith in love was temporarily shaken by the philosophy of Nietzsche. I had been reading parts of The Genealogy of Morals and the whole of The Will to Power. 

 B. R. Ambedkar on Pakistan

Nietzsche’s glorification of power - in his theory all life expressed the will to power - was an outgrowth of his contempt for ordinary morals. He attacked the whole of the Hebraic-Christian morality - with its virtues of piety and humility, its other worldliness and its attitude toward suffering - as the glorification of weakness, as making virtues out of necessity and impotence. He looked to the development of a superman who would surpass man as man surpassed the ape.
Then one Sunday afternoon I traveled to Philadelphia to hear a sermon by Dr. Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University. He was there to preach for the Fellowship House of Philadelphia. Dr. Johnson had just returned from a trip to India, and, to my great interest, he spoke of the life and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. His message was so profound and electrifying that I left the meeting and bought a half-dozen books on Gandhi’s life and works.

Like most people, I had heard of Gandhi, but I had never studied him seriously. As I read I became deeply fascinated by his campaigns of nonviolent resistance. I was particularly moved by the Salt March to the Sea and his numerous fasts. The whole concept of “Satyagraha” (Satya is truth which equals love, and agraha is force: “Satyagraha,” therefore, means truth-force or love force) was profoundly significant to me. As I delved deeper into the philosophy of Gandhi my skepticism concerning the power of love gradually diminished, and I came to see for the first time its potency in the area of social reform. Prior to reading Gandhi, I had about concluded that the ethics of Jesus were only effective in individual relationship. The “turn the other cheek” philosophy and the “love your enemies” philosophy were only valid, I felt, when individuals were in conflict with other individuals; when racial groups and nations were in conflict a more realistic approach seemed necessary. But after reading Gandhi, I saw how utterly mistaken I was.

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 social force on a large scale. Love, for Gandhi, was a potent instrument for social and collective transformation. It was in this Gandhian emphasis on love and nonviolence that I discovered the method for social reform that I had been seeking for so many months. The intellectual and moral satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social-contracts theory of Hobbes, the “back to nature” optimism of Rousseau, the superman philosophy of Nietzsche, I found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi. I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom...
Read the full text here: My Pilgrimage to Non-violence, September 1958
Simi Mehta - Martin Luther King: Changing The World With Love
Vinay Lal - Martin Luther King and the commitment to non-violence
HARRY BLAIN: America’s Wars always Come Home
AdamLusher - Story of the last survivor of the last slave ship to travel fromAfrica to US
Nishikant Kolge: Understanding the Life and Philosophy of Gandhi
Do our leaders want to certify political assassination?
ANIL NAURIYA: Manufacturing Memory
The Supreme Court, Gandhi and the RSS
The Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi: Inquiry Commission Report (1969)
The Abolition of truth
Bapu tujhko salaam
Ayush Chaturvedi: Main Gandhi ke saath hun // Samar Halarnkar: In the time of Godse, a search for Hindus who will stand with Gandhi
Rabindranath Tagore's essay on the cult of the nation



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