Today is an important anniversary to remember

[Joe Brummer]

FIFTY-EIGHT YEARS AGO. TODAY.

Born Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who became known as
The MAHATMA (In India, mahatma means Great Soul). The Mahatma’s Credo: Live Simply, That Other’s May Simply Live

The Mahatma, b. Oct. 2, 1869, d. Jan. 30, 1948 at the hands of a fanatical Hindu assassin’s bullet. Gandhi was a lawyer. Schooled in London, he first practiced in South Africa. From his earliest days, he was stuck by the unreasoned and abusive treatment of people based on color or origin. He returned to India in 1915, after having made a significant contribution to the improvement in the treatment of people from India in South Africa.

Gandhi immediately became involved in the movement to free India from Great Britain. He lived to see a free India in 1947, only to watch it sink into religious wars with the Hindu majority waging war on the largest minority, the Muslims. Ultimately, what Gandhi had worked so hard to prevent, the separation of India and Pakistan, happened. Leaving the issue of whhich gets the state of Kashmir as the tender box of relations to this day.

Gandhi was the first person in modern times to transform the concept of non-violent protest or resistence for the right cause into a technique that ultimately proved stronger than any weapons of war or oppression invented by man. The spirit and example of Gandhi lives today. Gandhi combined the ideals of courage, non-violence and truth as the guiding light of a movement that brought freedom to 350 million people living on the Indian sub-continent, from barely 50 million people living in the far off British Isles. Martin Luther King Jr studied him.

(I borrowed these words from a fellow poster on the web board for my local paper)