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Cecil Ramnaraine
Publication Date: Not Available
Note:Can be adapted for grades 7-11. Sponsored by: Minnesota Veterans For Peace, Chapter #27. Also by Cecil Ramnaraine is Peace and Non-Violence Curriculum: Education for Peaceful Living for Grades 1-6
After looking at the research on Peace Education, the present writer has concluded that it is time for school administrators and teachers to implement a curriculum for Peace Education. This means not just teaching about peace and not just providing information on peace problems. It. means implementing the methods and means whereby peace can be practiced in the classroom. Peace must be openly espoused and taught to our students. We cannot depend on subliminal, incidental learning or the hidden curriculum. Peace must be actively pursued by both teachers and students in all parts of the educational system. Peace must become an inter-disciplinary exercise in order to be integrated into our attitude and daily behavior.
Peace is defined here as far more than a personal calm in mind and body. Peace is defined here as racial equality rather than racial discrimination, equality among all peoples rather than social and economic hierarchy, equality between the sexes rather than male dominance over females, co-operation rather than competition, sharing our food and other world resources rather than wasting and hoarding, preserving Nature rather than exploiting her, self-mastery and self-understanding rather than control and power over others, and the use of the skills and the talents of every human being for the love and care of all things.
This is violence prevention curriculum. It attempts to introduce the student to the great ideas and philosophies of civilized human beings. The course is holistic, gender fair, racially neutral, interdisciplinary and very diverse. It encourages student participation, co-operative learning and community service.
Although the differences among cultures will be examined, an attempt will be made to stress the similarities in all of them. Non-violent dispute resolution and peer mediation will be studied and practiced. The lives and works of twelve peacemakers of the twentieth century will serve as role models.
DIRECTIONS: Read each statement carefully. Then mark the letter that most closely indicates your response: (a) agree strongly, (b) agree (c) not formed an opinion yet (d) disagree, or (e) disagree strongly.
| Question | (a) agree strongly | (b) agree | (c) not formed an opinion yet | (d) disagree | (e) disagree strongly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rich nations have a strict obligation to help poor. | |||||
| When war or conflict break out in a foreign country (e.g. Afghanistan, El Salvador. Poland), the security of the United States is in danger. | |||||
| Reducing the number of nuclear weapons should be an important goal for our modern world | |||||
| I believe that military combat is the only way to solve some major differences between countries. | |||||
| All nations should be equal in status before the law. | |||||
| If the United States declares war on another country, it is my duty to join the military and enter armed combat. | |||||
| I have some idea how military spending (in the nations budget) affects the United States economy and society. | |||||
| I have thought about my position on serving in the military. | |||||
| Every individual has the right to choose to right in a war or not. | |||||
| Voluntary armed service is not a good way to protect our country. | |||||
| I fear the possibility of a nuclear war in my lifetime. | |||||
| I know what a conscientious objector is. | |||||
| A strong United States Military policy is a good way to keep peace in the world. | |||||
| The commandment of Christian love is not violated in the case of war. | |||||
| If there is a draft, women should be included in it. | |||||
| I have a clear understanding of how to register for the draft and of what will happen if I am drafted or someone I know is drafted. | |||||
| If individuals are drafted, they should choose the type of national service they can offer (e.g. military, combat, office worker, work with the handicapped, peace corps, etc.) | |||||
| I know what it means to be patriotic. | |||||
| I would fight in any war that the United States declared. | |||||
| I understand what my Church says about peace. |
The following sentences will help you learn about yourself. Score your answer by checking 3, 2, 1, or 0. Score 3 if you always do what the statement says, 2 if you often, 1 if you sometimes and 0 (zero) if you never do what the statement says.
| Question | 3: Always | 2: Often | 1: Sometimes | 0: Never |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Awake each morning feeling refreshed | ||||
| 2. Body is a source of Pleasure | ||||
| 3. Think clearly and effectively | ||||
| 4. Memory is good | ||||
| 5. Enjoy regular exercise | ||||
| 6. Eat nutritious well-balanced meals | ||||
| 7. Don't smoke | ||||
| 8. Don't use drugs | ||||
| 9. Take good care of your teeth and body | ||||
| 10. Take time to relax and revitalize yourself | ||||
| 11. Happy with your family | ||||
| 12. Enjoy your work (or school) | ||||
| 13. Good reliable friends are around you | ||||
| 14. There are people in whom you can confide | ||||
| 15. You contribute to the happiness of others | ||||
| 16. You are satisfied with your financial situation | ||||
| 17. You feel you can get what you want from life | ||||
| 18. You feel responsible for your life | ||||
| 19. You exercise control over important aspects of your life | ||||
| 20. You are working towards your goals | ||||
| 21. You are living up to your expectation | ||||
| 22. You are content with what you have | ||||
| 23. You can see how your work contributes to society | ||||
| 24. You are pleased with your success and achievement | ||||
| 25. You are satisfied with your personal growth | ||||
| 26. You enjoy your life | ||||
| 27. You look forward to a happy future | ||||
| 28. You never feel bored | ||||
| 29. You can express your creativity | ||||
| 30. You have something to live for | ||||
| 31. You are satisfied with your spiritual development | ||||
| 32. You are tolerant of other people's belief | ||||
| 33. You do not compromise your moral ethical standards |
Score of 75+ is good.
Score of 50 - 75 is average.
Score of 25 - 50 is poor.
Score of 0 - 25 is you need help.
| abandoned | accepted | affectionate | afraid | alarmed |
| amazed | angry | annoyed | anxious | appreciative |
| apprehensive | approval | ashamed | balmy | belittled |
| belligerent | bitter | bored | bottled up | calm |
| capable | competent | confident | conflicted | confused |
| contented | crushed | defeated | depressed | desolate |
| desperate | despondent | discouraged | disinterested | disparate |
| dissatisfied | dispassionate | distressed | ecstatic | elated |
| embarrassed | empty | enthusiastic | envious | euphoric |
| excited | exhilarated | fearful | friendly | frustrated |
| furious | futile | grateful | guilty | happy |
| hateful | helpless | hopeless | horny | humble |
| humiliated | hurt | identification | Inadequate | Incompetent |
| inflamed | insecure | insignificant | jazzed | Jealous |
| Joyful | Longing | lonely | Loved | loving |
| miserable | misunderstood | needed | negative | neglected |
| nervous | passionate | pleased | pressured | proud |
| putdown | puzzled | reborn | regretful | rejected |
| rejecting | rejuvenated | relaxed | relieved | resentful |
| Sad | satisfied | serene | shocked | startled |
| surprised | tearful | tense | terrified | threatened |
| thrilled | transcendent | trusting | uncertain | uncooperative |
| understood | uneasy | unhappy | unloved | upset |
| uptight | vengeful | vindictive | wanted | warmhearted |
| worthless | worthy | yearning |
Mother Teresa of Calcutta was one small woman who made a big difference in the lives of thousands and possibly millions of people. She was a nun of the Roman Catholic Church who founded a society called the Missionaries of Charity. They began by taking care of the sick, dying, orphans, widows, lepers and the abandoned and neglected poor of the city of Calcutta, India. Soon they expanded their work to other cities of India and subsequently to many other countries of the world.
Mother Teresa's family name is Agnes Gouxha Bojaxhiu. She was born in Skopje Yugoslavia on August 27, 1910. She was one of three children born to a grocer and his wife, a family in poor circumstances. She attended the local schools and was greatly influenced by the Jesuit Missionaries of her district who had worked in far away India. At the age of 18 she decided to become a nun. She said, "When I was eighteen I decided to leave my home and become a nun, and since then I've never doubted that I have done the right thing. It was the will of God. It was His choice" (Spink.19).
She was sent to a convent in Ireland to learn English and from there to Darjeeling, India to teach in a convent -school for high school girls. She completed her novitiate, and took her first vows as a nun on March 24, 1931. She also received a new name, Teresa, after St. Therese of Lisieux, a French Carmelite nun, patroness of missionaries.
Mother Teresa then went to Entally, Calcutta to teach in a high school for daughters of wealthy European and Indian families. She taught school there from 1931-1948, finishing her career in Entally as principal. The school was under the control of the Loreto Congregation of which Mother Teresa was a member. Mother Teresa was also in charge of the Daughters of St. Anne, a group of Indian nuns who worked with students of the local secondary school, an adjunct to the Catholic high school for girls. There also was a Sodality of the Blessed Virgin in Entally. Members of these groups and their students regularly visited patients of Nilratan Sarkar hospital. They also worked among the poor in the neighboring slum district of Motijhil.
On September 10, 1946 Mother Teresa who was principal of the Loreto Convents School in Calcutta was traveling by train to Darjeeling, India. While on the journey Mother Teresa received her second call to serve. These were days of great turmoil and unrest in India. India was on the verge of freedom from British rule. The Muslim League was clamoring for an independent country of Pakistan to be carved out of the west and east wings of undivided India. Mohamed Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League had just called for and successfully executed "Direct Action Day" [started on August 16th, 1946]. With Jinnah's approval, the Moslems started violent action and riots against their Hindu neighbors and the civilian authorities to prove that Indians of different religions could not live together peacefully. These beliefs and actions contradicted what Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party were teaching.
Rioting and bloodshed continued until the Congress Party relented giving Mohammed Ali Jinnah Pakistan. It was if they had determined that it was better to have emergency surgery to remove the affected parts and thus save the main body of India. It was on one of those hectic days that Mother Teresa received the call from God as she herself described. "I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. It was an order. To fail it would have been to break the faith. It was God's will. This is what I want to do for God" (Spink.21). September 10, has since been known as "Inspiration Day" by the sisters of Missionaries of Charity.
She explained her call to live and work among the poor to the Archbishop of Calcutta, who supported her. She applied for permission to live outside the convent while still keeping her vows as a nun, known in the Catholic faith as exclaustration. She was permitted to do so on August 16, 1948. When leaving the protection of the Loreto convent, her stated purpose was "to -spend herself in the service of the poor and needy in the slums of Calcutta, and to gather around her some companions ready to undertake the same work" (Spink.22).
Thus Mother Teresa decided to live like and among the poor people of Calcutta. She wore a simple, cheap, white sari (Indian full flowing dress with a head cover) with a narrow blue border, a cross on her left shoulder and a pair of sandals on her feet. Mother Teresa further prepared herself for service by undertaking a nursing course under the tutelage of Mother Dengel of the Medical Missionary Hospital in Patna. Mother Dengel gave good advice to Mother Teresa. One piece of advice, which ran contrary to Mother Teresa's idea of poverty, was to feed the sisters well. Mother Dengel argued that good nutrition would keep the sisters strong and healthy for work, prevent malnutrition, tuberculosis and early death. Mother Teresa later wisely heeded this counsel, and often forced her novitiates to eat heartily.
In December 1948, with Indian citizenship papers in hand, Mother Teresa returned to Calcutta, by then teeming with even more refugees from Pakistan. She rented a room in the slums of Motijhil for five rupees [about $1.00] a month and started a school for children using the mud floor as a blackboard and sticks as pointers. At first there were only a few students. As attendance grew, former students and colleagues came to help teach. Mother Teresa encouraged her pupils by giving them milk for food and bars of soap for hygiene. This was the humble start of the work of Mother Teresa in the slums of Calcutta. Mother Teresa realized that she needed more than voluntary arid temporary help to carry on her work. She decided that the best thing to do was to start a new religious order of nuns who would dedicate themselves full time to serving the poor. Mother Teresa wrote the constitution for the new order. In addition to the three routine vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, a fourth vow mandated free voluntary service to the poor.
Michael Gomes, an Indian Christian, gave Mother Teresa the use of the second story of his home (the Creek -Lane House) overlooking the Motijhil slums. On the feast of St. Joseph, March 19, 1949 Subhasini Das, a former student of Mother. Teresa's became Mother Teresa's first discipline. Subhasini Das took the name Agnes, Mother Teresa's first name. It is of interest to record that the first 10 women to join Mother Teresa were former students.
In 1949, three sisters worked with Mother Teresa in the slums of Calcutta. By 1950 the number had grown to eight. On the feast of the Most Holy Rosary in October 1950, Mother Teresa was given permission to start a new congregation called the Missionary Sisters of Charity.
By 1952, the Creek Lane house was filled to capacity with 28 sisters in residence. The sisters followed a routine full of work, study and service to the poor. Their day began at 4:30 AM with time for prayers, devotions, mass and breakfast. By 8 AM the sisters were out in the slums teaching the children and caring for the sick, crippled and abandoned men, women and children. They also helped the orphans and widows, and in general, dispensed aid wherever needed. The sisters returned home for lunch and a short rest, then back to toil in the "bustees" (slum houses), until dinner time at 6 PM. After dinner, there was free time, rest, prayers, classes and instruction from Mother Teresa. After a long hard day, they finally retired.
Their great faith and unselfish love for others helped Mother Teresa and her sisters do the most menial tasks joyfully. Mother taught her nuns to serve everyone as if he or she were Jesus, and to work with joy and happiness in their hearts. It seemed that the poor and abandoned men, women and children whom the sisters of the Missionary of Charity served knew the complete sincerity and unconditional acceptance with which they were treated. Mother Teresa herself set the pace by declaring "the poor deserve not only service and dedication but also the joy that belongs to human love" (Spink.35).
Mother Teresa, looking for more space to house her growing congregation, finally bought a big house in the center of Calcutta. This home has served as the Mother House and center of operations. City Fathers of Calcutta - gave to Mother Teresa the unused dormitories attached to the Kalighat Hindu Temple. Calcutta hospitals did not have space to house the destitute dying, whose bodies were beyond medial salvation, and were often left to die in the streets. Mother Teresa's organization took people off the streets to afford them a decent death. As she said `What is a beautiful death? A beautiful death is for people who lived like animals, to die like angels--loved and wanted" (Spink.43). She called this home for the dying Nirmal Hirday place of the Immaculate Heart. The upper rooms of this facility also became a home for the growing number of novitiates.
The children of Calcutta had great needs. There were the unwed mothers, and their orphaned offspring; the crippled, abandoned, unwanted, beggars and retarded children as well as babies. In 1955, Mother Teresa started a home for the children which she called Sishu Bahavan. It was a two story dwelling located a few blocks from the Mother House. Children were cared for, fed, housed, clothed, taught and placed for adoption. Older children were sent to regular schools or taught a trade. Some were even married - married from the family of Mother Teresa and the sisters in the traditional custom of matchmaking.
The leprosy problem of India gained the attention of Mother Teresa and her nuns. The lepers were outcasts and the pariahs of society. They were ostracized. Some lepers committed suicide -in order to allow the unaffected members of their family to live within the society. Others could not stand the pain of separation causing entire families to live on the fringe of society, begging for a living and often existing off the city refuse. Dr. Sen, a leprosy specialist, offered his volunteer services to Mother Teresa. Using new Sulphur drugs, he successfully treated many of the patients.
In September, 1957 Mother Teresa started her mobile clinics for the treatment of lepers. She soon founded a leprosarium village outside Calcutta city limits consisting of a hospital, a convent, a chapel, thirty family homes, and a cottage industry school. She called it Shanti Nagar, "The Place of Peace." The leprosarium provided free medical treatment for the patients and also taught them useful trades, such as carpentry, shoe-making and cloth weaving etc. These skills helped the lepers make a useful living and restored their human dignity.
Many volunteers came to the assistance of Mother Teresa and her sisters in carrying forth their work. Thousands of volunteers including medical people, teachers, social workers, housewives and their families have contributed. Ann Blaikie, who had organized the co-workers when she lived in Calcutta, bas expanded the organization froth England, sending money and materials to the missionary sisters of Charity. Jacqueline de Decker organized the Link for the Sick and Suffering Co-Workers, whose members spiritually adopt a missionary sister to lend support by prayers and communication. Father Georges Gorree coordinates the -link between the contemplative communities and the home bases from which the Missionary Sisters of Charity operate. His congregations send prayers and positive conscious thoughts to assist the sisters who are actively working with the needy of the world. Brother Andrew heads up the Missionary Brothers of Charity, a parallel organization to Mother Teresa's group. The brothers had fourteen houses in 1975 with a staff of one hundred-fifty volunteers. Thus Mother Teresa influenced thousands of people while helping the poor.
In 1960, after ten years in Calcutta, Mother- Teresa was allowed to expand her work for the poor and needy beyond the diocese of Calcutta. She went to the larger cities of India and opened charitable houses. When Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, attended a ceremony dedicating a home for the needy children in Delhi, Mother Teresa asked him "Sir, shall I tell you about our work?", to which the Prime Minister replied very simply, "No, Mother, you need not tell me about your work. I know about it. That is why I have come".
In 1965, Mother Teresa sent a group of her nuns to Venezuela to start the first minion outside of India. Peru, Australia, Italy, Brazil, Jordan, Yemen, England, U.S.A. and other countries soon invited her to send nuns to start their particular missionary work.
Mother Teresa and her sisters do not try to convert people to the Roman Catholic religion. They try to make people better in the religion to which they profess. The lives and actions of the Missionary Sisters of Charity reflect the love of God. They are holy, generous, and eager to make sacrifices, joyful, and submissive to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Twenty-five years after the Pope approved the society of the Missionaries of Charity, there were one thousand, -one hundred and thirty-three sisters working in over eighty houses located all over the world.
Malcolm Muggeridge said of Mother Teresa, "I only say of her that in a dark time she is a burning and shining light; in a cruel time, a living embodiment of Christ's gospel of love; in a godless time, the Word dwelling among us, full of grace and truth. For this, all who have the inestimable privilege of knowing her, or knowing of her, must be eternally grateful" (Muggeridge.146).
And so she lived in Calcutta, working with the poor and supervising those who work for the poor. Though she looks frail and age has etched its mark on her face, she lives on, indomitable and full of love and devotion for the lowliest and most unfortunate of her children. When death finally takes her, her spirit will still live in Calcutta and in all the world where needy people look longingly for an angel of mercy to love and succor them in their suffering in this life; to love and succor them with a love that respects their dignity as human beings.
Mother Teresa died in 1997.
WORLD HUNGER
EFFECTIVE ACTION TOGETHER
ALL SAINTS CHURCH April 2,1989
All Saints Church
132 North Euclid Ave.
Pasadena. CA 91101
First world population is declining in numbers while third world numbers soar. More than 90% of world population growth this year will be in the third world, says Donella H. Meadows in "A World Divided on Population" in the Los Angeles Times of March 19 excerpts from the article follow:
Why is rapid population growth so devastatingly correlated with poverty?
One theory has it that people are poor because they go reproducing and dividing their land, their food, their everything over too many children. Population growth makes poverty. Another theory reverses the causation; Poverty makes population growth. Poor people have many children because children are needed to work and to support their elders -- and because children don't cost much if you don't have to buy them Reeboks and send them to college. Having children is one of the few powers the .poor can exert over their own lives, and one of the few hopes of getting ahead.
There is a third theory. World fertility surveys indicate that anywhere from one third to one half of the babies born in the Third World would not be if their mothers had access to cheap, reliable family planning, had enough personal empowerment to stand up to their husbands and relatives, and could choose their own family size. Economic development brings lower birth rates because it brings to women the pill, literacy and self determination.
All three theories are probably right. Poverty plus un-empowerment plus population growth make a consistent set and a formidable trap. The only way out is economic and personal advancement. The rich, one fifth of the world is living testimony to the fact that some mixture of opportunity, health and family planning does bring population growths down. When non-European people like the Japanese, Singaporeans and Taiwanese experienced economic development, their fertility went down.
Social services, not wealth per se, seems to be the key to lower birth rates. The Chinese, although among the poorest peoples of the world, have brought their fertility rate down, partly by Social coercion, but mostly by broadly available education, health care and family planning.
Similar populations in the developed countries will be a help in solving many problems from unemployment to solid waste to acid rain. In crowded, polluted Europe and in the United States it is hard to argue that more people are needed.
What can be done (about increased impoverishment due to increased population)? Anything that will help provide basic needs, equal opportunity and family planning to every person on earth. That can include Third World debt relief, fair trade, a foreign aid program truly aimed at the poorest of the poor, full support of the United Nations development and population program and real support for Third World self -determination. Any action will help if it comes out of true concern for the welfare of poor people, based not on condescension but on partnership with those people.
An old Chinese proverb says, "If we don't change our direction, we'll end up where we're headed". Where we are headed is toward another doubling of world population, nearly all of it in Third World countries. We're headed for greenhouse climate change, for desertification and deforestation, for a world ever more desperate and turbulent. The demographic consequences of our current divided, unequal and unjust world are clear. We don't have to end up there. We do have to change direction.
Mahatma (The Great Soul) Gandhi was born Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on October 2, 1869 in the port city of Porbandar, Gujarat, a western state of India bordering the Arabian Sea. His mother was Putlibai, a very religious woman, who fasted and observed all the disciplines of her Hindu religion. Young Mohan used to go with her to the temple. He also served as watchman for her to look for the sun on cloudy days so that she could break her fast. Her goodness and devout nature made a lasting impression on the young Gandhi. Mohandas' father Kaba was adviser to the Prime Minister of the small princely state of Porbandar and later served as Prime Minister to the Prince of the neighboring state of Rajkot. He was strictly honest, beyond corruption, and dealt skillfully and efficiently with the many problems of arbitration presented to him. He was able to make a comfortable living for his family according to the Indian middle class standards of the day. People of various religious groups - Muslims, Jams, Parsees, Sikhs and Christians had free access to the Gandhi house, and they discussed religion and other matters in a tolerant atmosphere with the host.
Being not especially bright or motivated, the boy Mohandas plodded through grade school. However, he was deeply moved by the legends and dramatic plays of his culture. Those that; dealt with the triumph of truth and duty were his favorites, like the story of Shravana's devotion to his parent, and King Harischandra's stand for uprightness and truth in spite of great difficulty and suffering. Mohandas, himself, opted early for truth and honesty and proved it by his refusal to cheat at a spelling test when prompted to do so by his teacher at the periodic school inspection examination.
At the age of 13, Mohandas fell victim to one of the curses of Indian society of that era, the curse of child marriage. In 1882 he was married to a 13 year old girl named Kasturbai. Many years later he admitted his debt to Kasturbai. Her patience, loyalty and non-violent resistance to his physical ardor did make a difference of him. Her virtue and forbearance taught him many things.
In 1885, Kaba Gandhi fell ill and Mohandas took turns with other members of the family nursing him. Kasturbai was pregnant at the time. One night Mohandas Left his father in his uncle's care and retired to his own bedroom to be with his wife. A servant interrupted him with the news that his father was dying. Mohandas hurried back, too late to be with Kaba at his death. Kasturbai's baby also died soon after birth, and Mohandas blamed himself for both tragedies.
The teen-age Gandhi began studying religion. Tulsidas's Ramayana was read to him and he decided early that "Truth is the foundation of all merit and virtue" (Ashe. 12). He also read religious poetry and was impressed by the morality expressed by the poet Shamal Bhatt in this poem:
"For a bowl of water give a goodly meal For a kindly greeting bow down with zeal For a simple penny pay thou back with gold If thy life be rescued, life do not withhold But the truly nobly knows all men as one And return with gladness good for evil done" (Ashe. 13).
After passing the entrance examination for Bombay University, Mohandas decided to study law in England. Gandhi's mother was loath to let him go, although the family was preparing Mohandas to take his father's ancestral job. Putlibai made him swear an oath not to eat meat, or drink liquor, or get involved with women while abroad. He satisfied his mother. So on September 4, 1888 he sailed from Bombay for England.
He enrolled at the Inner Temple in London in November 1888. His vegetarian diet presented a problem in meat-eating London, where he would have starved to death had he not found a vegetarian restaurant. The British vegetarians were an elite group of progressive intellectuals. They wrote books about health and diet, about socialism and about the simple life. Some of them belonged to the Fabian Society. Others were Theosophists. The latter group got Gandhi interested in reading the Bhagavad-Gita as translated into English by Sir Edwin Arnold and also Arnold's poem, "The Light of Asia". Thus Gandhi began to learn of the greatness of his own culture through the eyes of Englishmen. "The Light of Asia" dealt with Gautama, an Indian prince, who gave up a kingdom, luxury and his family to search for enlightenment. After intense meditation, the prince formulated his Eightfold Path to Nirvana, and taught it to his disciples. They gave him the title Buddha (the Enlightened One) upon his death. The Bhagavad-Gita is the most important book in the Mahabharata Epic. In it Prince Arjuna is depressed aver the thought of the killings in the forthcoming battle with his relatives. Krishna, an incarnation of God, appears as Arjun's charioteer and admonishes him to do his duty irrespective of the consequences. It reinforces the concept of Karma yoga (right action). In this philosophy a person acts without looking for reward or punishment as a result of his action. There is a constant search for the meaning of self and a constant search for the meaning of truth. The vegetarian society did yeoman duty and educated not only Gandhi but also G.K. Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw, among others.
In 1890, Gandhi passed the University of London matriculation examination and continued studying law in the Inner Temple. Gandhi passed the bar exams and was called to the Bar on June 10, 1891. Gandhi enrolled in the high court the next day and left England on the 12th of June 1891, after a sojourn of nearly three years.
On his arrival in India, he was informed of his mother's demise. He was shocked and grieved but accepted his loss bravely. It was difficult finding a job to his liking. His father's former position was neither attainable nor worth seeking. Things had changed a great deal. After a year of floundering in Bombay courts, he finally accepted the offer of Dada Abdullah, a prosperous merchant from South Africa, who needed an attorney. And so in April 1893 he set out for Durban South Africa. From Durban he was to proceed to Pretoria where the lawsuit was pending.
His employer provided hint with a first-class railway ticket, but toward evening at Maritzburg, a white passenger entered Gandhi's compartment and asked him to move out When Gandhi refused, the railway officials and police bodily removed him from the train, since first class was reserved for whites only.
He was left shivering in the dark, cold night. It was winter in the southern hemisphere. He wired the railway manager and Abdullah in the morning. Several Indian passengers told him of similar bad treatment from the railroad company. The railway manager instructed that Gandhi be sent on his way, and so another train took him to Charlestown where he was booked on a stagecoach to Standerton.
The coach conductor forced Gandhi to sit outside with the driver. When he needed a smoke-break he came out and tried to push Gandhi onto the running board. Gandhi resisted and was severely beaten until his fellow passengers came to his rescue. This was the way the white Boers treated nonwhites in South Africa.
Gandhi, with the help of Tyeb Sheth, Abdullah's rival, brought the Indians of Pretoria together to discuss their problems and their complaints against their Boer rulers. He started teaching them English. He advised them on good behavior and clean habits.
Once while walking by the footpath near the President's house, Gandhi was kicked in the gutter by the police on guard duty. Later he remarked, "It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow-beings" (Ashe. 57).
Gandhi successfully negotiated a settlement out of court between Abdullah Sheth and Tyeb Sheth. Tyeb was to pay what he owed Abdullah in easy installments. Having completed the job for which he was hired, Gandhi was preparing to leave Durban in April 1894 when by chance, Mohandas happened to read in the Natal newspaper about a bill before the legislature which would deny voting rights to Indians. Gandhi rallied the Natal Indians of every group and religion, and they started to work against the bill. Gandhi wired the Colonial Governor and the Speaker of the Assembly. He then collected signatures of 10,000 people against the bill and sent the petition to the Colonial Secretary Lord Ripon in London. The Times of London and The Times of India supported the petition. Lord Ripon disallowed the Natal Sill when it reached him. The Natal Assembly had to send him another bill.
In the meantime, Gandhi formed a permanent organization of the Indians in Natal called the Natal Indian Congress. He organized it at the grass roots level, forming education and social welfare committees to take charge of providing teachers and welfare helpers, respectively. He started reading widely. Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You impressed him and he pondered on its call for "inward perfection, truth and Love, in self-abnegating closeness to God, the source of life" (Ashe. 65).
By 1896 Gandhi was a successful lawyer whose retainer fees from the Muslim merchants had put him on his feet financially. He therefore went to India to bring his family to South Africa. In India he met Gokhale and Tilak, two of the leaders of the India National Congress, and be visited Allahabad, Madras and Calcutta. He wrote about his activities in Natal, which Reuter News picked up and published in South Africa. Gandhi's article enraged the people of Durban. When the ship with his family and 800 indentured Indian laborers tried to land in Durban in December 1896, it was delayed for 23 days. The mob wanted to hang Gandhi. Only the quick thinking of the Police Inspector saved Gandhi's neck.
In 1899 the Boer War broke out and Gandhi, as a loyal subject of the British Empire, raised an Ambulance Corps of over 1,000 Indians. He helped evacuate the wounded, the dead, and the dying from the battlefields.
The newspapers in England and South Africa praised his efforts. The Punch of London called his ambulance corps "sons of the Empire."
The War with the Boers finally came to a halt. Gandhi visited India in 1901. He attended the Calcutta Session of the Indian National Congress and served as an assistant to its president, G.K. Gokhale. He learned about this peak organization, its faults and its strengths, and about the personality of its great leaders. Before the year 1901 ended, the Natal Indians requested Gandhi's return to South Africa in order to parley with the Colonial Secretary Neville Chamberlain, who was en route for a visit to South Africa.
Gandhi returned to Durban and met with Chamberlain. The latter promised nothing. Meanwhile in the Transvaal, things got worse for the Indians. Gandhi decided to stay and work there. He practiced law, and tried to improve the plight of his people. He also started to publish a weekly newspaper called "Indian Opinion", whose first edition came out on June 4, 1903 in English and Gujarati.
On a journey from the Transvaal to Durban he read Ruskin's Unto This I fist, and immediately put its precepts into practice. Gandhi moved the printing press and its workers to a site 14 miles from Durban and started a new settlement in 1904, which he called Phoenix. Two British, Alan West and Henry Polaic, joined him. About six families lived there, more or less permanently, in a self-help communal style. They produced craftwork, food stuff, and of course the weekly paper "Indian Opinion". It was an experiment in simple and independent living.
In 1906 a Zulu chief refused to pay taxes and ran his spear through the tax collector. This started a series of atrocities against the Zulus, many of whom were whipped, beaten, or shot. Often they suffered wrongfully and indiscriminately. The cruelty continued however, as a means of quelling the rebellion. Gandhi volunteered to help. He headed a party of stretcher-bearers and rescued and nursed the wounded Zulus, marching forty miles some days. On this tour of duty Gandhi resolved to become a Bhramacharya. Bhramacharya is a person who practices sexual abstinence and sublimates the sex drive into other forms of energy. On returning to Phoenix, he informed his companions and Kasturbai of his decision. Kasturbai, as usual, went along with her husband loyally, without argument or complaint.
Upon returning to his office in Johannesburg he found a new ordinance had been created against Indians. It stated that every Indian above the age of eight years, male and female, must be fully finger printed (ten fingers) and registered with the government and carry a pass for identification. Anyone who failed to do so would be punished by a jail term, a fine, or deportation. The pass must be carried by everyone at all times, and produced for inspection, on call, by any policeman. Gandhi concluded that this law would either expel the Indians or enslave them.
Gandhi arranged a meeting for 2 p.m. on September 11th, 1906 in the Empire Johannesburg. Gandhi explained the new rule to them through interpreters speaking in Gujarati, Hindu, Tamil and Telugu. The majority voted to disobey the ordinance, but an Indian Muslim named Habib got up and said they should also swear a solemn oath not to submit. Gandhi was very cognizant of the power of a vow and so he explained, "It is quite possible that some of those who pledge themselves may weaken at the very first trial. We may have to remain hungry and suffer from extreme heat and cold. Hard labor is likely to be imposed upon us in prison. We may even be flogged by the wardens.
Or we may not be imprisoned, but fined heavily and our property attached and held up to auction for non-payment. Though some of us are wealthy today, we may be reduced to poverty tomorrow. We may even be deported from South Africa for good" (Ashe. 98).
Thus personal suffering was clearly spelled out in this new method of combating evil and unjust laws. The other principles of non-violent resistance were (1) non-violence towards the oppressor no matter what the provocation, (2) love and forgiveness towards him or her, and (3) no intent to humiliate or harm the oppressor, but a desire to convert and/or reconcile him/her to the opposite view point (Condensed Ashe. 98-101). Thus non-cooperation without violence was born. It was called Satyagraha or truth force firmness in truth.
Gandhi went to England to try to influence the British Government to veto the act. Because South Africa was about to become an independent dominion however, his efforts failed. The ordinance became law in~ 1907 and Indians who did not comply were put in prison. Gandhi himself was imprisoned in January 1908, the first of many (eight) years in British prisons. General Smuts agreed to repeal the law and free prisoners if all Indians would first comply. Gandhi promised that they would and proceeded to register as he had promised General Jan Smuts. Several Pathans followed Gandhi as he walked to the Asiatic Department to register. The Pathans beat him because they believed neither Gandhi nor General Smuts. Gandhi signed nevertheless. However, the law was not removed from the books as promised. General Smuts had reneged.
On August 16, 1908 the Indians of Johannesburg burned their registration cards. They were put into prison. At one time 2,500 Indians out of a total of 13,000 were in jail. Gandhi himself was again put behind bars. A shipload of Indians was slated for deportation, halted only by court action.
Imprisonment was weakening their community and imposing hardships on their families. Gandhi's friend Kallenbach gave the Satyagrah's (adherents to Satyagraha) the use of his 1,100-acre farm, 21 miles from Johannesburg, and. in June 1910, the poor but happy Indians settled there. They called it Tolstoy Farm. They engaged in simple community living. Gandhi became teacher to the children at Tolstoy Farm. He also experimented with home remedies and various vegetarian diets.
At this time the Indian leader Gokhale came on a visit to South Africa and extracted a verbal promise of relief for the Indians from the government. Although the law vanished from the books, conditions got worse. The South African courts decreed that all Muslim, Hindu and Parsee marriages were invalid. This insult aroused the tigress in the Indian women. Thus enraged, the women Joined the men and Satyagraha started up again. Gandhi proclaimed tile beauty of non-violence, is that women can play the same part in it as men" (Ashe. 122). A group of women Satyagrahis encouraged their men working in the coalfields to strike, which they did. Gandhi also led a band of over 2,000 men, women and children from Durban across the Transvaal and headed for Tolstoy Farm. He and the other leaders, Polak and Kallenbach, were soon arrested. More mineworkers went on strike. The jails were filled with women, men and children~ All suffered while some died. Thousands were flogged and forced back to work to no avail.
In January 1914, Gandhi was preparing for another effort when the white railway workers went on strike.
In keeping with one of the four principles of Satyagraha, that of not taking advantage of or harming your opponent, Gandhi called off his people. This moral act won him great admiration all over the world. The Smuts government finally gave in to the Indian's demands. All marriages were recognized, the three-pound poll tax was abolished, immigration and residence laws were eased, and indentured labor from India to South Africa was gradually phased out.
On July 18, 1914 Gandhi left South Africa for the last time after sending General Smuts a gift. The gift was a pair of sandals he had made in prison.
When World War I broke out in 1914, Gandhi was in Britain. As usual, Gandhi raised a volunteer ambulance corps to help the British; He became sick however, with an attack of pleurisy. The damp English weather aggravated his illness, and his doctors advised him to go to a warmer climate. Gandhi then left for India. He visited Rabindranath Tagore in March 1915 in Shantiniketan. Tagore had just received the Nobel Prize for Literature, and was reviving the ancient culture of India at his college in Shantiniketan. Tagore described Gandhi as `The Great Soul in a beggar's garb", and called him Mahatma. The movement of Mahatma Gandhi had begun. The mass of the Indian people began to know Gandhi as the great religious leader, the Mahatma, and obeyed and followed him as one who had attained the supreme connection with the Absolute, and had become a Karma Yogi (Holy Person).
Gandhi established an ashram (religious house) outside the city limits of Ahemdabad and adopted the life and dress of a poor, simple Indian peasant. In June 1915, he spoke before a crowd of notables (including the Viceroy) at the opening of the University Central College in Benaras. Gandhi shocked them by calling for a moral regeneration of all Indians, for trust and love among the various groups, and for them to work and deserve freedom from Britain rather than waiting for freedom as a gift. This sort of blunt talk did not sit well with the powerful and opulent Indian rajahs who lived off millions of poor wretched peasants and workers. Neither did it please the British Viceroy.
The first confrontation between the British rulers of India and Gandhi occurred in Champaran in April 1917. Champaran, with a population of two million people, was a rural area of about 3,500 square miles nestled against the Himalayas in the state of Bihar. The main cash crop was indigo. Synthetic dye was pushing indigo dye off the market The landlords (mainly British) knew this and so allowed the illiterate peasants to keep their unwanted indigo in exchange for higher rent This ruined the already poverty-stricken farmers. Gandhi and some volunteer lawyers painstakingly took 10,000 depositions from the peasants and built up a case based on the facts of the situation. As a British civil servant recorded "They credit him (Gandhi) with extraordinary powers. He moves about in the villages asking them to lay their grievances before him, and he is transfiguring the imaginations of masses of ignorant men with visions of an early millennium" (Ashe. 163).
Gandhi was repeatedly harassed and asked to leave by the British authorities. He refused to yield. Finally, the Viceroy ordered a commission to investigate. The commission backed the peasant's case against the landlords and ordered compensation to be paid. Gandhi's intervention was successful. He set up schools, dispensaries, sanitation-health centers and 4K-type projects before he left.
In February 1918, Anasuya Sarabhai, leader of the Textile Union in Ahemdabad, asked Gandhi to intervene in a labor dispute with the mill owners headed by Anasuya brother -- Ambalal Sarabhai.
Things went from bad to worse for labor, and a worker remarked that he and his family were starving while Gandhi was eating. This prompted Gandhi to fast and vow not to eat again until the strike was amicably settled. `The hearts of the mill-owners were touched," he said. After a few days, the strike was settled. This was his first and last interference in labor management disputes.
India had supplied about 500,000 armed men to assist Britain and her allies in World War I and had contributed money and materials to the detriment of her own people. India had suffered approximately 13 million dead in the world influenza epidemic of 1917. The economy was bad and millions were suffering. Yet the British rulers extended their near martial law control over the country even after the end of World War I, by passing the restrictive Rowlatt Bill. Among other things the bill prohibited public meetings.
In Punjab, 10,000 people gathered in an enclosed garden for a protest meeting. The British general in the area, General Dyer, ordered his troops to fire on the unarmed crowd for ten minutes and inflicted 1500 casualties including 379 dead. The British reacted to the non-existing rebellion with atrocities such as this. The British House of Lords and friends of General Dyer awarded the general a sword of honor and 20,000 pounds when he retired. After the Punjab massacre, Gandhi gradually changed his stand as a loyal British subject.
In 1920, Gandhi decided that non-cooperation should be used against the British and that the objective be Swaraj-Home Rule (Independence) for India. Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League, made a speech against India quitting the British Empire. But his views were not heeded. Satyagraha was launched.
On January 29, 1922, the district of Bardoli decided not to pay taxes. This, if followed by the other towns and villages in India, could have led to the fall of British rule. The two most populous groups, the Hindus and Muslims, were united at this time and ready to follow Gandhi who said, "When the Swaraj (freedom) flag floats victoriously at Bardoli, then the people of the district next to Bardoli, following in the steps of Bardoli, should seek to plant the flag of Swaraj in their midst. Thus in district after district, in regular succession, throughout the length and breadth of India should the Swaraj flag be hoisted" (Ashe. 229).
This was not to be. In a place called Charui-Charua, a thousand miles from Bardoli, a mob of non-cooperators cornered the local constabulary in the town hall, started it on fire and hacked 22 fleeing policemen to death as they tried to escape the flames. News of this crushed Mahatma and he called off the whole political movement for freedom. The peaceful movement had become violent. Truth force had become brute force. The means must justify the end in Gandhi's philosophy. He did not want to gain freedom through violence. He wrote, "Satan's invitation was to deny truth and therefore religion...to deny God. The drastic reversal of practically the whole of the aggressive program may be politically unsound and unwise, but there is no doubt that it is religiously sound...I must undergo personal cleansing...." (Ashe.229).
And so he became the Mahatma. This act proved his morality. He threw away his chances to achieve immediately his objective of freedom for India because he felt personally guilty of the death of the 22 policemen at the hands of his fellow citizens. He admitted failure because his people did not adhere to the principles of Satyagraha. He stood by Truth-force and resisted the temptation to rush to victory.
In the words of biographer Geoffrey Ashe "The revelation of Truth-force was complete, and its inventor had not been found wanting. He rose from his abasement with the unique glory, which still haloes him. Here and here alone in the human record is a revolutionary, who could have launched his revolution, could very likely have carried it through yet refused because it would be the wrong sort of revolution. Rather than lead his people along the old paths of bloodshed and terror and cheated hope, Mahatma Gandhi, the Great Soul, was willing to fail" (Ashe. 230).
The Viceroy took the initiative from the Mahatma and arrested him on March 10, 1922. On March 18, 1922, Mr. Justice Broomfield tried him. In his defense, the Mahatma indicted the British Empire, pleaded guilty for opposing an unjust government and asked for the severest punishment. He was given six years. He spent his jail term reading 150 books and spinning cloth. But he had an attack of appendicitis in January 1924 and was allowed to convalesce in freedom at Juhu Beach.
On May 28, 1924 he retired to his ashram in Sabarmati and lived there for the next six years. During this time, his lieutenants offered Satyagraha in various places for different local issues, but there was no nationally coordinated effort. The British government offered to discuss dominion status to be granted at some future date, but the Indian Congress, united under the chairmanship of Jawaharlal Nehru, voted for complete independence and vested the Mahatma with power to call for the next national effort for freedom. The Mahatma proposed lowering taxes, freeing political prisoners, banning liquor trade, reducing expenditures for armaments and government salaries and abolishing the salt tax. He wrote the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, and asked for a conference on these matters as between equals, but the Viceroy ignored him.
On March 12, 1930, at the head of 78 members of his ashram, the Mahatma announced that he was marching 241 miles to the salt flats at Dandi to pick up nature's gift of salt, in spite of British laws. They walked through the dusty villages and stopped for morning and evening prayers. The Mahatma expounded on non-violence, truth, the rightness of their cause and the love of God. For three weeks, the press took it all in and reported it to the world. At the sea coast at Dan& thousands had gathered. Among them were Indians of all classes and religions, the rich and the poor, the orthodox and the liberal, the aristocrats and the untouchables and more important, the women; the Indian women were liberated and were now full participants with the men in the freedom struggle. There, at dawn, with the first blush of sunrise, from the primeval ocean whence life arose, the Mahatma picked up a handful of salt -salt, the gift of God. The day was April 6, 1930.
This started a wave of salt making all over India. The Viceroy violently suppressed these unarmed activities and shot, beat and imprisoned thousands, including the leaders of the country. As Lord Irwin's biographer wrote, "his religious convictions seemed to re-enforce the very ruthlessness of his policy of suppression" (Ashe. 288). Mahatma protested the police violence but was himself arrested. His arrest set off strikes and protest marches, which were vigorously quelled. Hundreds of unarmed Indians were killed and thousands wounded, yet not one Englishman died in the conflict. The Indian masses had learned the lesson of Satyagraha. An example was furnished by the 2,500 unarmed Indians who offered Satyagraha at the salt depot at Dharasana and a testimonial was recorded by Nehru's letter to Gandhi. "May I congratulate you on the new India you have created by your magic touch!
What the future will bring I know not but the past has made life worth living and our prosaic existence has developed something of epic greatness in it. Sitting here in Naini Jail, I have pondered on the wonderful efficacy of non-violence as a weapon and have become a greater convert than ever before" (Ashe. 293).
The Viceroy at last relented. The British government called for a Round Table Conference in London for September 12, 1931. It ran for 12 weeks until December 5, 1931. Gandhi was the sole representative of the Indian National Congress. Various religious groups, minority factions and princely states were represented. No common agreement could be arrived at in such a milieu and this left the British in charge. The diplomacy of divide and conquer had worked again.
At this time the Mahatma lived in the east end of London among the working class British. He engaged in his early morning prayers and daily walks among them. He visited their homes and factories and listened to them. He visited Cambridge, Oxford, Canterbury and even a Lancashire cotton mills Many people from all walks of life and from all over the country came to visit him. He made friends with these British. They all learned to like him and respect him. He was asked to make a recording for the Columbia Gramophone Company and he said, "In the midst of death, life persists. In the midst of untruth, truth persists. In the midst of darkness, light persists. Hence I gather that God is life, truth, and light. He is love. He is the supreme good. But he is no God who merely satisfies the intellect, if he ever does. God to be God must rule the heart and transform it" (Ashe. 310).
On his return to India, he was put in jail, the Congress Party was declared illegal and its leaders arrested. The new Viceroy had orders to crush Gandhi and the Indian National Congress. The government issued communal awards, defining separate electorates by religious groups, and even awarded a separate electorate to the untouchables. In prison, Gandhi began a fast to protest against separate electorates, especially for the untouchables. He explained that the Hindu majority must accept the untouchables as part of their own group. Tagore supported the Mahatma, saying that the communal award was an institutionalized affront to humanity. The Mahatma reclined in a cot under a mango tree and weakened. Frantic negotiations produced an agreement whereby the untouchables would vote with the Hindus but have a reserve of 147 seats in the provincial legislatures. On September 25, 1932, Gandhi broke his fast. He buoyed up India's morality and her spirit. He saved India from fragmentation and Communal disintegration.
The government of India Act of 1935 called for free elections and gave the legislatures power to govern. The National Congress entered the electoral process and led nine of the eleven provinces. It proved that it was an all India Party and not just a Hindu organization as was claimed by the British and the Muslim League. Yet Jinnah and the Muslim League pushed for sectarian politics and began to talk of a separate country of Pakistan to be carved out of India. This was an anathema to a unified India as envisioned by Gandhi and the Indian National Congress.
In March 1940, the Muslim League voted for a separate nation of Pakistan. It was promised as a haven for every Moslem Indian. The two nation theory was put in place, and Jinnah as its father finally got his revenge on the Mahatma and his former colleagues.
At the outbreak of World War II, the Mahatma wrote Hitler asking him to spare mankind, and telling him that India would not cooperate with him* He also wrote the Viceroy asking him and the British to quit India and leave her to her own people.
Louis Fischer asked Mahatma's secretary Mahadev Desai what the secret of the Mahatma's personality was, and he replied "Passion...This passion is the sublimation of all the passions that flesh is heir to sex, anger and personal ambition...Gandhi is under his own complete control. That generates tremendous energy and passion...Bhramacharya was perfected" (Ashe. 351).
During World War II, the leaders of the Congress Party and the Mahatma were in jail. Jinnah and the Muslim League were in favor with the British and enjoyed their support and encouragement.
In internment at Poona, Kasturbai Gandhi asked the Mahatma whether there was any room in India for the British, also. He replied that there was, but that the British must stay on as brothers, not as conquerors. In December 1943, Ba, (mother) Mrs. Gandhi, that wonderful lady, became ill. On February 22, 1944 with her head resting on her husband's lap, she passed on before him to seek the Absolute Truth.
In 1946 Jawaharlal Nehru, the Congress President, was asked by the Viceroy Lord Wavell to head an interim Indian Government, which he did. Jinnah, who had wished to head the government, called for `Direct Action" on August 16, 1946. It began as a slaughter of Hindus in Calcutta, claiming over 5,000 lives there. Thus did Jinnah show his non-cooperation and his right to Pakistan. In October of 1946, communal killings reached their height and the Mahatma spent months in Noakhali, Bengal, bringing peace to the eastern wing of India.
With the arrival of the last Viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, in 1947, the British started the process of "Quit India" which Gandhi had so long wanted. However, this did not happen without much blood letting, since Jinnah demanded a secession of the predominant Muslim west and east provinces or parts of these provinces into the separate nation of Pakistan. He also did not allow Mountbatten to be Governor General of both countries as agreed upon. He changed his mind at the last moment and proclaimed himself Governor General of Pakistan.
The exchange of population and the arousal of religious and communal hatred led to the loss of thousands of lives and deeply pained the Mahatma, who stayed in Bengal and kept that half of the country more or less in peace by preaching Muslim-Hindu brotherhood and fasting to get all the people to behave civilly to each other.
When things calmed down in Bengal, he went to Delhi in January of 1948 en mute to Pakistan to maintain the peace. He resorted to another fast to stop the Hindus and Sikhs from murdering Muslims in Delhi. He succeeded and relative calm reined that city. At the end of his fast he held his daily prayer meetings, as was his custom. He was gaining strength and energy for his trip to Pakistan. On the afternoon of January 30, 1948, he conferred with the Deputy Prime Minister Vallab Bhai Patel and tried to mend the deputy's relationship with Prime Minister Nehru. He told Pate to stay with Nehru since India needed both of them. By then he was late for his 5 o'clock prayer meeting and thus left Patel. Gandhi walked into the garden leaning on his two grandnieces, towards the spot at the end of the yard where customarily sat for his prayers. About halfway there a man in a khaki jacket pushed himself before the Mahatma, bowed and fired three shots.
The Mahatma fell with the words, "Hey Ram (Oh God)" uttering from his lips. He was dead in ten minutes. The prophet of non-violence thus tasted violent death at the hands of one of his own countrymen whom he had just liberated.
"The whole world is the garment of God. Renounce it then, and receive it back as the gift of God" (Is a Upanishad, verse I).
The Fall-Out Shelter Problem
Assume that the world has world has suffered a major catastrophe because of a Nuclear Holocaust. There are only 10 survivors. The resources available can only sustain 6 people. You have the difficult task to make a decision, which 6 will go in the shelter so they can survive and continue the human race.
For too many people, violence is becoming an ordinary way of resolving conflict or releasing emotions or being entertained.
For just one day, one night, turn off violence in all its ugly forms.
Each of us has the power to turn off violence beginning in our own homes
Identify the problem. Focus on the problem, not on the person.
Keep an open mind. Things aren't always the way you think they are.
Listen and take time to "hear" what the other person is saying.
Use humor.
When you anticipate a difficult situation, plan ahead, thinking of several alternative ways to peacefully resolve the dispute.
Postpone decisions. Give yourself time to calm down and avoid overreacting. Be open to compromise.
Avoid the conflict. Sometimes it's not worth it to argue.
Other strategies: flip a coin, take turns, share, get someone else to listen to both sides and help work out a peaceful resolution.
Violence is a learned behavior. It can be unlearned.
In 1929, the year of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birth, Mahatma Gandhi predicted that a black man would teach the Western World the principles and methods of non-violence. He wrote, "Let not the twelve million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is no dishonor in being slaves. There is dishonor in being slave-owners. But let us not think of honor or dishonor in connection with the past. Let us realize that the future is with those who would be truthful, pure and loving. For as the old wise men have said, truth ever is, untruth never was. Love alone binds, and truth and love accrues only to the truly humble. Perhaps it will be through the Negro that the unadulterated messages of non-violence will be delivered to the world" (Bennett.3-4).
Martin Luther King Jr. used nonviolent resistance to overcome segregation and unequal treatment of blacks in the southern states of the U.S.A. After him all African-Americans could lift up their heads proudly and live in dignity. His followers were required to adhere to the philosophy of nonviolence, which demanded (1) that they be courageous and offer non-resistance not through fear or cowardice or lack of weapons but through a conviction in the rightness of their cause; (2) that they seek reconciliation and friendly understanding from their opponents rather than victory over them; (3) that they direct their energy against the unjust situation and not against the people who perpetuate it; (4) that they be willing to accept suffering, pain, humiliation, jail and even death to prove the righteousness of their cause and also bear this degradation without retaliation; (5) that the nonviolent resisters cleanse themselves of hate and instead, show love and consideration for their opponents; and (6) that they believe theft cause to be just and to have faith in the future and in a peaceful and harmonious settlement of the dispute. (Harris p.24.).
The struggle in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 and 1956 brought out the character of Martin Luther King Jr. It was customary, in those days, for the blacks to sit at the back of the bus and also to surrender their seats if a white person demanded it. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a black seamstress riding on a bus at the end of her working day, refused to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus. She was arrested and charged with violating Montgomery's segregation law. ED. Nixon, president of the, local N.A.A.C.P., arranged bail, and Rosa Park's trial was set for December 5. Nixon suggested that the blacks boycott the bus for that one day and he called for support from the black leaders of the community. Among those leaders was Martin Luther King, Jr. recently installed as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist church. Leaflets urging the boycott were printed and distributed, Sunday sermons exhorted it, and the Montgomery Sunday paper helped the cause by publishing news of the intention of the black citizens.
The King residence was on the Jackson Street bus line. Martin was pleasantly surprised to see the buses running almost empty.
The black people of Montgomery were united in this effort. They walked, rode carts or mules and carpooled to and from work. That evening the black leaders were so impressed by their followers that they decided to continue the boycott until the bus company changed its rules. They formed an organization called the Montgomery Improvement Association and elected Martin Luther King Jr. as chairman.
As elected spokesman for the blacks, Reverend King demanded that the bus company meet three conditions before the ban could be lifted. The three conditions were (1) that black people be treated courteously by bus drivers; (2) that passengers be seated on a first-come first-serve basis with blacks sitting from the back of the bus and whites from the front; and (3) that black bus drivers be hired to drive in black neighborhoods on predominantly black routes (Harris.p.8)
Reverend King organized his people into committees to run the boycott. They were the negotiating committee, the finance committee, the transportation committee, the program committee and of course the executive board of the Montgomery Improvement Association. The people on these committees directed strategy, collected and distributed funds, ran the car pools, answered emergencies and kept the day by day operations going for the three hundred, eighty-two days duration of the Montgomery bus boycott.
There were two meetings with the city council and representatives of the bus company in December of 1955, but no progress was made since the white city fathers refused to agree to the three conditions of the black bus boycotters. The city council then resorted to tricks and subterfuge and even tried to divide the black leadership.
When these actions failed, the city council started a "get tough" policy by arrests and imprisonment of blacks for minor and trumped up traffic violations culminating in the arrest and imprisonment of Reverend King in mid-January of 1956. The next stage was violence of whites against blacks. Harassment and threats over the phone directed primarily against Dr. King and his family as leader of the non-violent resistance movement climaxed in the bombing of his home on January 30; 1956. Luckily no one was hurt that night, and Reverend King was successful in peacefully dispersing the angry crowd, which gathered around his damaged home seeking revenge. King reasoned with the crowd, "Let's not become panicky. If you have weapons, take them home; if you do not have them please, do not. Seek to get them. We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence. We must meet violence with non-violence . We must love our white brothers no matter what they do to us. We must meet hate with love. Remember even if I am stopped, this movement will not stop, because God is with the movement. Go home with this glowing faith and this radiant assurance" (Bennet.70).
Reverend King's next ordeal came during the following month of February 1956. The city fathers discovered an old State of Alabama law, which forbade conspiracy against a business-- that is, the Montgomery Improvement Association boycott of the transportation business. Reverend King was lecturing at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee when his name was put on the list of those to be arrested. King voluntarily returned, was arrested and put on trial. On March 22, Judge Carter found him guilty of violating the state's anti-boycott law and fined him $500 plus court costs. King's lawyers appealed the decision and friends paid his fine. King continued to lead his people in their non-cooperation with evil, which is as much a moral duty as is cooperation with good. The city of Montgomery again failed in their continued attempt to stop the nonviolent protest of the blacks against the unjust and degrading segregation laws.
In the meantime, lawyers for the Montgomery Improvement Association had filed a brief in the United States Federal District Court against the city of Montgomery charging that the bus segregation laws were a violation of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which guaranteed civil rights to all. The case lasted from May 11, 1956 through June 4, 1956. By a two to one decision the Federal Court ruled that the bus segregation laws of the state of Alabama were unconstitutional. The state of Alabama appealed the decision.
The next step in the struggle was an attempt by the city to disband the car pools, which were so successfully operated by the transportation committee of the MIA. The Montgomery city council initiated legal proceedings to ban the car pools as an illegal business operation, and subpoenaed Reverend King and the other black leaders of the Montgomery Improvement Association to a court hearing on November 13, 1956. Judge Carter of the city court of Montgomery declared the car pools illegal. On the same day, the Supreme Court ruled on the appeal by the State of Alabama. A newspaper reported as follows: `The United States Supreme Court today affirmed a decision of a special three judge U.S. District Court in declaring Alabama's state and local laws requiring segregation on buses unconstitutional. The Supreme Court acted without listening to any argument; it simply said the motion to affirm is granted and the judgment is affirmed" (Bennet.77).
Thus the buses in Alabama were desegregated at last. Reverend King and his committee drew up educational leaflets and held mass meetings to instruct the bus riders to behave in a loving, peaceful, brotherly and non-violent way in order to assure an orderly transfer from segregation to integration.
Martin Luther King Jr., was born on January 15, 1929. His father was Martin Luther King Sr., pastor of Ebenezer Baptist church, Atlanta, Georgia. His mother Adele was a schoolteacher. This well-to-do middle class family had a tradition of hard work, thrift, service, responsibility, and sacrifice. Young Martin assimilated these good qualities from his parents. He enjoyed good health and had a quick mind for schoolwork. Surrounded by preachers, he saw the power of words at in early age, and said to his mother, when only six, "I'm going get me some big words" (Bennet.17). He learned how to express his ideas in an eloquent and convincing way, which would serve him all his life.
King finished high school in 1944 and entered Morehouse College. There he was greatly influenced by two educators, Dr. Benjamin Mays and Dr. George Kelsey. In 1947 he was ordained a minister and assisted his father at Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta. Alter graduating from Morehouse College in 1948; he started theological studies at Crozier Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. While there he heard of Mahatma Gandhi from a lecture in 1950 by Dr. Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University. King was so moved that he bought all the books on Gandhi that he could find at his neighborhood bookstores. He studied the books intently, filing away the ideas in his mind. Perhaps he saw immediately that Gandhi's method of peaceful, nonviolent resistance to unjust laws was the best way that the black Americans could wrestle their civil rights from a reluctant, superiorly armed white majority.
Graduating first in his class at Crozier earned him a scholarship, which he used to pursue a doctorate degree at Boston University. While there, King met and courted Coretta Scott, a music major.
Coretta accepted his marriage proposal and the couple was married on June 18, 1953 at Coretta Scott's parents' home in Heiberger, Alabama. Coretta remained a loyal and supportive wife all through Martin's turbulent and checkered career. She bore him four children--two girls and two boys.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. accepted a job offer at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama in 1954 while still completing the thesis for his Ph.D. degree. King reported for full time work in September 1954, the year before he was catapulted into the limelight as leader of the Montgomery Improvement Association, which organized and ran the bus boycott against racial segregation.
Because of his work in Montgomery, Morehouse College granted him an honorary doctor's degree. President Benjamin Mays cited King with a quotation from Emerson: "See how the masses of men worry themselves into nameless graves when here and there a great soul forgets himself into immortality" (Bennett.80). That same year, 1957, King formed the SCLC-- Southern Christian Leadership Conference consisting of all the black ministers in the southern states. Its main function was to work to integrate the races.
As President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King met with both Vice-President Nixon and President Eisenhower to ask for passage of federal laws to hasten integration. The administration argued against federal laws. It said that peoples' hearts must first change in order for integration to work; that laws cannot change peoples' hearts and attitudes; and that the time was not yet ripe for integrating the races.
In 1958, Reverend King was in Harlem, New York promoting the sale of his book, Stride Toward Freedom. A crazy woman named Izola Curry stabbed him with a letter opener and nearly succeeded in killing him. King's recuperation was slow, taking months of convalescence before he returned to normal health.
King had always wanted to visit India--the land of Mahatma Gandhi. In February of 1959 he took the opportunity to make the trip. Upon his arrival in India, King proclaimed "To other countries I go as a tourist, but to India, I come as a pilgrim" (Bennett.1O1). He had dinner with Prime Minister Nehru, who's handling of India's minority problems greatly impressed King. King wished that the Eisenhower administration could do things for the American blacks similar to what Nehru did for India's minority. When he returned to America from India, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. resigned as pastor of Dexter Ave. Baptist Church. This resignation took effect on November 29th, 1959. Reverend King became co-pastor with his father at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. This position gave him more time to work for sac and to direct the civil rights movement.
Sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters started spontaneously in Greens borough, North Carolina in 1959 and continued through 1961. During this time King was taken to court on tax evasion charges, but nothing came of the charges. In the fall of 1960, King was arrested at a lunch counter sit-in in Georgia; He was jailed in the Reidsville prison in Alabama. This experience was during the presidential contest between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. Both Robert Kennedy and the presidential candidate, John F. Kennedy, used their influence to get Reverend King released on bail, The Kennedys even called Coretta King to console her. It is quite possible that the kindness of the Kennedy brothers towards King and his family helped Kennedy win the presidency by swinging black votes towards the Democratic candidate.
Over 70,000 black and white citizens engaged in the lunch counter sit-ins. Participants faced cruel treatment and beatings from the white police. Several died. These efforts led to integration of the races at the lunch counters of 24 Southern cities.
In April of 1963 King led a boycott of stores in Birmingham, Alabama. At that time, Birmingham had the cruelest segregation laws in the country. King was arrested and thrown into prison. When his fellow clergymen chastised him for not patiently waiting for desegregation to come, he wrote his famous letter from Birmingham Prison. He stated to his dear fellow clergymen that blacks had waited patiently for three hundred and forty years for their constitutional and God-given rights and that nothing was given to them without a struggle. The clergy should understand why the blacks must resort to action, finding it difficult to wait any longer. Reverend King also deplored the bad treatment given to blacks, explained his peaceful, nonviolent resistance, and implored everyone to vote for the restoration of civil rights and equality to minorities.
During the months of the store boycott and non-cooperation, police chief "Bullt' Connor and the Birmingham Police Department beat, bullied, "fire hosed", and jailed unarmed black women and children of Birmingham. Connor even unleashed dogs against them. Since businesses were losing money and the Supreme Court had ruled against Birmingham's segregation laws, a truce was arranged which guaranteed (1) the desegregation of public facilities within 90 days; (2) the placement of black clerks and salespersons in the workforce in the stores; (3) the release of all political prisoners; and (4) the start of communication between blacks and white leaders in a biracial committee to work out desegregation problems. After the agreement, King asked his people "to move from protest to reconciliation."
Asa Randolph Phillips proposed a march in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1963 for the creation of jobs and to call attention to the Civil Rights bill stalled in Congress. President Kennedy had sent the Civil Rights Bill to Congress early in 1963 saying in part, "One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this nation for all its hopes and its boasts will not be fully free until all its citizens are free....Now the time has come for this nation to fulfill its promise" (Harris.61). Two hundred thousand people gathered on the Washington Mall and marched to the Lincoln Memorial to show their solidarity in demanding civil rights and equal treatment for the minority population of the United States. On that day, August 28, 1963, Reverend King delivered his famous "I Have a Dreamt' speech, in which he eloquently spoke for an equal and fair deal for all people, irrespective of the color of their skin, or the circumstance of their birth.
In recognition of his non-violent leadership of the civil rights movement, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for the year 1964.
1964 also saw the Klu Klux Klan clubbing and maltreating King and other blacks in St. Augustine, Florida. The year 1965 saw the confrontation at Selma, Alabama. King wanted to help register black voters in this southern city.
The sheriff, Jim Clark, played the same role as that of "Bull" Connor of Birmingham, Alabama. King was arrested for leading a group of blacks in their efforts to register to vote. While at Selma, King heard of the killing of a black demonstrator by a state trooper in Marion, Alabama.
Reverend King therefore, planned to lead a protest march from Selma to Montgomery to call attention to the incident. Governor George Wallace banned the fifty-four mile march. Sheriff Jim Clark and his troopers tear-gassed, beat, and drove the marchers off the Edmund Pettus Bridge back to Brown's Chapel in Selma. Reverend James J. Reeb, a white Unitarian minister who joined the protest in Selma, was clubbed to death. His death gave impetus to the Voting Rights Bill which President Lyndon Johnson had proposed to Congress finally signed this bill into law on August 6, 1965.
The problems of equal treatment, jobs and poverty in the northern cities of the United States were not successfully resolved by Reverend King. He made trips to the Watts area of Los Angeles, California, and lived for a time in the slums of Chicago. These gestures however, did little to help. "Blacks without hope, whites full of hate, mayors who smiled politely but made no promises--this was the hypocrisy of the North" (Harris.1O1).
In April of 1968, Reverend King took time to go to Memphis, Tennessee to help the garbage union get a decent wage and work settlement from the city. There were many more threats to his life than usual but he said, "I just want to do God's will...He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked down and I've seen the Promised Land" (Harris.103).
The next day, April 4, 1968, a sniper shot and killed Martin Luther King Jr. His life ended before his 40th year.
Sarah Snapp
Wilder Foundation
Everyone has a right to be safe in body, mind, and spirit.
Violence is a leaned behavior. It can be unlearned.
Alternative skills can be taught and learned.
Children learn from watching adult behavior.
Stopping violence is everyone's job.
Violence hurts. It is not entertainment, fun nor glamorous.
Violence has a spreading effect. Violence begets more violence.
Violence is not an effective way to solve problems. It usually makes problems worse.
Deterrents to violence must include both accountability (consequences) and caring (empathetic, responding, nurturing relationships). Punishment alone cannot prevent or stop violence.
A climate that supports nonviolence provides:
Children learn what they need to know by responding to and modeling after key adults. Therefore relationships are the curriculum.
The environment must take over for children at times of high stress by reducing the challenges and therefore allowing the children to continue to be successful.
Guns Kill their Owners and Family Far more often than Criminals.
Handguns purchased for home protection are 43 times more likely to be used to kill the owner, family member or friend than it is to be fired in self defense, according to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Some protection, eh?
More and More Americans Die Each Day from Handguns.
More than 25,000 Americans die from handgun, violence each year according to government statistics, and handgun violence is sharply increasing. In act, handguns kill the same number of Americans every two years as were killed in the entire Vietnam War.
Schools are No Longer Safe from Gunfire.
More than 135,000 students carry handguns to school everyday, and another 270,000 have carried a gun to school at least once, according to the National School Safety Center. It has gotten so bad that some schools are now installing metal detectors and building high concrete walls just to protect their students from stray gunfire.
Sale of Dangerous Assault Weapons is also on the Rise.
The production of military style weapons has increased dramatically in the recent years. In fact, the number of weapons designed to accept silencers and bayonets increased 51% in 1989 alone and these assault rifles are ten times more likely to be used in crime than other firearms, according to a study published by Cox newspapers.
Five Schoolchildren Murdered and Thirty Injured in Minutes.
One lone gunman toted an AK-47 to a Stockton elementary school and gunned down 34 children and one teacher in less than two minutes. Systematically spraying the playground, Patrick Purdy riddled the schoolyard with 106 bullets - after buying a Soviet military weapon without a background check or waiting period.
There's Virtually No Regulation of Gun Dealers.
Due to NRA lobbying efforts, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms does not have the funding to thoroughly check applicants. Anyone who sends in $30 can obtain a three-year license for selling guns, often in violation of local law.
America is the World's Most Violent Nation, by far.
Other industrialized nations have virtual bans on handgun sales. That explains why the chance that you will be gunned down In Amer. ice is 55 time higher than if you lived in Great Britain -- while almost 7 time higher than in Australia and more than 5 times higher than in Canada.
Eleanor Roosevelt was the wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and niece of Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States America. She was born on October 11, 1884, in New York City and died on November 7th, 1962. In her autobiography she wrote very modestly, "About the only value the story of my life may have is to Show that one can, even without any particular gifts, overcome obstacles that seem insurmountable if one is willing to face that fact that they must be overcome; that, in spite of timidity and fear, in spite of a lack of special talents, one can, find a way to live widely and fully. Life is meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life" (Roosevelt. xix).
Eleanor was raised in a very religious atmosphere. She learned verses from the Bible, which she had to read to her mother every morning. Her, mother died when Eleanor was eight years old. From then on she lived with Grandmother Hall, her mother's mother, on West 37th Street in New York City. Eleanor's father died of a brain tumor in 1894 when Eleanor was ten. The two had been very close. Eleanor had loved her father very much, a love that dominated her life for many years beyond his death.
Early in life she came to realize that there were poor and needy people around her. Her father used to take her to distribute