By IANS,
New Delhi : It will be a rare confluence of the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Junior, nostalgia and jazz when Martin Luther King III comes to India Saturday to retrace the “pilgrimage” of his father 50 years ago.
The trip by Martin Luther King III, the eldest son of Martin Luther King Jr and Coretta Scott King, will be bristling with historical memories as he begins his India visit from New Delhi and goes to landmarks his father visited from Feb 10 to March 10, 1959.
Mahatma Gandhi, who inspired King Junior and his civil rights movement, will be an invisible presence that will accompany King III and his team wherever they go to India.
A team of African-American legislators that includes US House Representative John Lewis will also be in India at the same time and will accompany King III to various places associated with the historic 1959 journey.
Besides visiting the Raj Ghat and Gandhi museums in New Delhi, they will also go to Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad from where Gandhi started a 322-km walk to Dandi in south Gujarat to scoop out handfuls of sea salt in defiance of British laws.
King spent a day at the ashram in Ahmedabad on March 1, 1959 and was so powerfully affected by the experience that he loved telling the story of Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement to his American followers.
Besides history and nostalgia, there will be plenty of soulful music during King III’s visit. Jazz icon Herbie Hancock will perform at a concert in Mumbai on the occasion.
King III, the founding president and chief executive officer of Realizing the Dream Inc., a non-profit organisation formed to carry on the legacies of his parents, is expected to meet Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and other Indian leaders. He will deliver the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Memorial Lecture entitled “A New Nonviolent Revolution” in New Delhi Feb 17.
The presence of African-American lawmakers in India at this commemorative moment also signals the long journey American society has taken from the time when Martin Luther King Junior was battling against racial segregation to the election of the first African-American president in the US history.
The US House of Representatives Wednesday passed a resolution recognising Mahatma Gandhi’s influence on Martin Luther King Jr and commemorating the golden jubilee anniversary of the American civil rights leader’s visit to India in 1959.
“The trip to India impacted Dr King in a profound way, and inspired him to use non-violence as an instrument of social change to end segregation and racial discrimination in America throughout the rest of his work during the Civil Rights Movement,” says the resolution.
In a radio address to India in 1959, King had said: “The spirit of Gandhi is so much stronger today than some people believe.”
That statement is as true today as it was 50 years ago, said Jim McDermott, co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, speaking on the resolution in the House of Representatives.
“We think that the spirit of Gandhi is much stronger today than some people believe. Today we no longer have a choice between violence and non-violence; it is either non-violence, or non-existence,” Martin Luther King Jr had said.