Oct. 2 marks the 150th birthday of Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi, who pioneered nonviolent approaches while helping lead India out from under colonization by Great Britain, until he was assassinated Jan. 30, 1948.

His experiments with “satyagraha” — in Sanskrit, roughly translated as “holding onto truth and love” —contributed to British withdrawal from India and provided a foundation of strategies for nonviolent struggles across the world.

At times, holding onto truth meant disobeying laws or practices and building more just alternatives, but Gandhi maintained civility in his actions. He accepted imprisonment as a way to demonstrate the sincerity and depth of his convictions, along with fasting, etc. Taking suffering onto himself rather than imposing it on others, he modeled the nonviolence principle that “right makes right,” rather than using violence to enact “might makes right.”

Building nonviolent actions into the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. noted, “Christ showed us the way … and Gandhi showed us it could work.” Gandhi, a Hindu, appreciated teachings of Christ, but observed, “Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

In 2007 the UN General Assembly established Oct. 2 as the annual International Day of Nonviolence. Into the future, Gandhi’s guidance to “Live simply, that others may simply live” and his nonviolent strategies for social, economic and political change can help us hold on to truth and love, as we outgrow the climate crisis.

Mark Rains

Vienna

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