In this interview, Mary Elizabeth King, an expert on nonviolent resistance, discussed how Mohandas Gandhi’s civil disobedience influenced the American civil rights movement, and what he might think of India today. NEW DELHI — The United States and India, the world’s oldest and largest democracies, have been punishing their citizens for using civil disobedience to…
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By. Mary Elizabeth King Gandhi recuperating at the home of the Rev. J.J. Doke, Gandhi’s first biographer, in Johannesburg, after having been assaulted on February 10, 1908. (Wikimedia) Born 150 years ago, Gandhi’s perceptions about human sensibilities, social power and political truths began their transformation not in India, but South Africa. Born 150 years…
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By Ramachandra Guha, The News Minute, Sunday, January 06, 2019. In the last week of January 1924—fully 95 years ago—two radicals in Kerala formed an ‘Anti-Untouchability Committee’. They were TK Madhavan, a journalist and a follower of the great Shri Narayana Guru; and KP Kesava Menon, a Congressman and a follower of Mahatma Gandhi. In the months…
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In the 1950s, Rev. James Lawson of Ohio went to India as a Methodist missionary. There, he studied “satyagraha,” a set of principles and methods of nonviolent resistance developed by Mohandas Gandhi. In 1957, Dr. Martin Luther King asked Rev. Lawson to assist the nonviolent resistance movement for civil rights by sharing satyagraha with activists,…
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By Larry W. Isaac, Daniel B. Cornfield, Dennis C. Dickerson, James M. Lawson, Jonathan S. Coley. While it is generally well-known that nonviolent collective action was widely deployed in the U.S. southern civil rights movement, there is still much that we do not know about how that came to be. Drawing on primary data that consist of detailed semi-structured interviews…
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By Lester R. Kurtz. CONVENTIONAL wisdom assumes that power grows out of the barrel of a gun, as Mao put it, or is given to those who steer a course down the mainstream. Mahatma Gandhi, however, is a “counterplayer” whose success lies not in accepting dominant paradigms but in challenging them. Most of the world’s…
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By Mary Elizabeth King. BACKGROUND In 1838, when the Antislavery Convention of American Women adopted a policy of using sit-ins and protest rides to resist slavery in the United States (Mabee, 1970, p. 115), it underlined the importance of refusing to cooperate with that cruel and inhumane system and foreshadowed the crucial role of women…
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By Anne-Marie Codur and Mary Elizabeth King. Recent scholarship has revealed contributions of women throughout the ages to the development of nonviolent methods for waging conficts. The fndings are unearthing a version of history in which women’s involvement has been conducive to the use and expansion of civil resistance and nonviolent struggle. With women, until…
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By Walter H. Conser Jr. Stories of national origin provide conceptions of national identity for the people who share them. They celebrate the charter events of a people, enshrine particular historical episodes, and privilege specific historical interpretations. People in the United States, by eulogizing stories of violence in their national origin, have effaced or…
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The Rev. James Lawson addresses the audience at the Allen Temple Baptist Church at a commemorative service for Martin Luther King Jr. By LOU FANCHER OAKLAND — The use of violence as a means to gain freedom or to protect a citizenship never fulfills its promises to humanity, the Rev. James Lawson said. “World War I…
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