India pays tribute to Gandhi

AS much of the world marked September 11 by remembering the 2001 attacks on the United States, India celebrated it as a day of peace — the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas Gandhi’s philosophy of peaceful resistance.

Art exhibitions, charity events and tributes were staged to mark the 100th anniversary of the day Gandhi, then a lawyer working in South Africa, joined fellow Indians to protest a proposed law that would force Indians to carry identity documents and be fingerprinted.

On September 11, 1906, Gandhi called on his compatriots to use nonviolent means to disobey the law, and thousands of Indians were jailed, including Gandhi, for refusing to cooperate and burning their identity booklets. The government eventually relented and compromised with Gandhi.

Gandhi called his doctrine of preaching the use of nonviolent methods to strive for justice “Satyagraha,” and it eventually inspired Indians to throw off British colonial rule in 1947.

Satyagraha, which means “insistence on truth,” is cited as an inspiration for Martin Luther King Jr in his use of nonviolence to achieve equality for black Americans and South Africa’s peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy.

South Africa’s deputy president, Phumzile Mlambo-Nckuka, placed a wreath at Gandhi’s main New Delhi memorial yesterday.

Gandhi earned him the honorific ‘Mahatma’ or ‘Great Soul,’ after returning to India to campaign for home rule and the reconciliation of all classes and religious groups.

His greatest achievement, said Pran Chopra, a New Delhi-based political analyst, was bringing India’s masses into the struggle for independence.