Thiruvananthapuram: From 1919 to 1954, African leaders travelled 12,000 miles in steamer ships to India and met people participating in various satyagrahas.
One of them was the head of the Morehouse College in Atlanta where Martin Luther King Jr was then a student. As a 16-year-old, he first heard of Gandhi from the principal and would be influenced by his methods of non-violent resistance. Years later, Mary Elizabeth King, one of his disciples, would visit India, study the non-violent struggles and understand the influence they had on the US civil rights movement.
Fifteen years ago, inspired by a scholar called Dr Gene Sharp, she started studying what really happened at the Vaikom Satyagraha, and wrote a book that she came to Thiruvananthapuram to release on Wednesday – Gandhian Non-violent Struggle and Untouchability in South India.
King said Mahatma Gandhi had insisted that the struggle initiated by T.K. Madhavan be executed only by upper caste Hindus so that they could make penance for the cruelties dealt on dalits for years.
He had almost a blind faith in converting the mind of the oppressors. But after 604 days, what it resulted in was what Mary called a debatable settlement.
“There was an additional road so the temple officials could still walk without seeing, hearing or looking upon the untouchables,” she said.
Having said this, she stated that it was Gandhi’s idea of non-violent struggle that formed the basis for the theory and practice of all the peaceful movements in the world.
CPM politburo member M. A. Baby who presided over the function, released her book, and Vani Kaushal’s The Recession Groom.
