Remembering Mahatma Gandhi
I have been quoting the brilliant Arundhati Roy for several years now to the effect that the non-violent movement, begun by Mahatma Gandhi, is in a crisis – the leaders of the world, particularly the United States (and her own India) have learned that they can ignore mass non-violent actions. We saw that it was not only our political leaders who were ignoring non-violent actions when Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” showed what none of us watching network “news” had seen, the large protests at President Bush’s first inaugural.
Now, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of Gandhi’s death, it seems a good time to look at this crisis, and consider how we might creatively respond to it.
First, we need to remember that the word “mass” is often before the phrase “non-violent resistance.” Maybe the emphasis on the leaders ignoring non-violent efforts is an easy answer for me, getting me and us off the hook – maybe just not enough of us are joining in the non-violent movements of our time.
One of the great witnesses to the power of peace and reconciliation living today is Fr. Michael Lapsley. I have blogged about him before. The Pilgrims for Peace met him and heard him speak in South Africa at the TEAM Conference in the Spring of ’08. Something he said then has helped shift my thinking about the origin of the crisis in the non-violent movement.
“Until Apartheid became an issue for the whole world, Apartheid was not going to disappear,” he said. In preaching I have often pointed out that the diabolic is the shattering of an integrated whole. The diabolic is intensified by the deliberate isolation and then destruction of already disconnected “shards.” It would have suited the purposed of the Apartheid regime to keep the oppressed out of the public eye.
Perhaps this is part of what Jesus meant when he said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains but a single grain; but if it dies it bears much fruit.”
I think for me it is time for all that is holding me back from my solidarity with my brothers and sisters everywhere who are hemmed in by the diabolic to die. I believe the crisis of the non-violent movement rests more on the shoulders of a passive, dispirited public, and Church, than on the shoulders of public leaders and the media. I think it is time for me to follow the Jesus whom Gandhi admired, and who inspired him. Maybe the best way I can honor the anniversary of Gandhi’s death is to prove this maxim of his untrue in my own life: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” Mohandas Gandhi
