By Robin Arthur
Pascal Alan Nazareth’s new book GANDHI – THE SOUL FORCE WARRIOR presents the Mahatma from a refreshing new lens. A lot has been said about this great Indian luminary, whose quest for truth and whose non-violence doctrine singled him out as a statesman like no other. But Ambassador Nazareth, through narratives of the freedom struggles we’ve seen in the last century, rivets the reader’s attention to Gandhi’s influence in demolishing European imperialism and overthrowing dictators through peaceful, non-violent resistance.
In his Preface, he writes: “With the millions of Indians he inspired and led, he not only plucked the “brightest jewel in the British Crown’” but also sounded the death knell of European imperialism and subsequently of all racist, fascist and communist regimes world wide.”
Gandhi’s ideology, he avers, influenced Martin Luther King’s Civil Rights Movement in the United States; the non-violent revolution that brought down the Philippines’ dictator Ferdinand Marcos; the overthrow of the communist government in Poland by Lech Walesa’s Solidarity movement and other freedom struggles in Chile, Bolivia and Mayanmar.
Gandhi was unequivocally, the inspiration behind the great change that swept across the world in the last century. Ambassador Nazareth quotes Martin Luther King as saying: “People who had never heard of the little brown saint of India were now saying his name with an air of familiarity. Non-violent resistance had emerged as the technique of the movement. In other words, Christ furnished the spirit and the motivation while Gandhi furnished the method.”
This book deserves a fresh, new look at the life and times of the Mahatma from a global perspective.
International & multicultural 