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Book: Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr: The Power of Nonviolent Action
BACK
01 April 2003
Location: New Delhi: ICCR/Mehta Publishers, 2002.Orig. Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 1999.
Mahatma Gandhi started his adult life as a shy law student, yet he went on to provide dynamic leadership for eight historic struggles—including the independence of India from British colonialism, against the caste system, and to counter the maltreatment of women. Through his grasp of the power of Truth, Gandhi experimented with building justice, human rights, and democracy in a manner that would leave no bitterness—always the legacy of violence. Martin Luther King, Jr., neither seeking nor wanting leadership, had to be cajoled into becoming the leader of a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, that would change the face of the United States. The success of the Gandhian strategies that King adopted made him, ultimately, the moral leader of his country and resulted in one of the world’s foremost documents on nonviolent struggle. For decades prior to King’s emergence, however, African-American leaders had traveled to India to meet with Gandhi and learn his techniques for wielding the power that left no thirst for revenge. Tutors schooled in the Indian independence campaigns went to Montgomery, persuaded King to put down his gun, and taught him Gandhi’s insights into revolutionary nonviolence. Transmitted mostly by word of mouth, the wisdom of Gandhi and King has been employed by any number of peoples and recent popular movements—including the Poles, East German, Czechs and Slovaks, the Burmese, Palestinians, Guatemalans, and Thais. Nonviolent struggle places in effective balance both ethics and practicality, and as a result of its contemporary use, military manuals, political lexicons, and world maps have had to be revised. This book looks at nonviolent political strategy and change in the twentieth century by chronicling some of its theorists, their strategies, and their struggles, and in one section, by comparing the words of Gandhi and King.
The book may be ordered from the New Delhi publishers by air mailing a Banker’s Cheque in favour of Mehta Publisher, for US$29, which includes the hardback book: US$20, less discount US$2, plus US$11 (air mail charges), for a total of US$29. The book will be delivered in a maximum of ten days from receipt of the order. The cheque may be air mailed to: Mehta Publisher Mehta House A-16, Naraina II New Delhi 110 028, India e-mail: mopl@vsnl.co
About the Author:
Author Mary King covers nine contemporary nonviolent political movements in which Gandhian principles were influential. In 1988, she won a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement (1987), an account of her four years working in the U.S. civil rights movement alongside the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr (no relation). Now Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University for Peace of the UN, King is also Distinguished Scholar at the American University Center for Global Peace, in Washington, D.C. During the Carter administration, King had responsibility for the Peace Corps―then in sixty countries―and remains a special adviser to President Carter. King, an expert on nonviolent strategic action in political conflicts, holds a Ph.D. in international politics from the University of Wales at Aberystwyth. Beginning in January 2004, she will be a Visiting Research Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, England.
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