TEMPLE EMANUEL OF MARYLAND
January 17, 2014
KING, GANDHI, MANDELA:
GIANTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY,
BEACONS FOR THE 21ST
David S. Fishback
Sadly, the history of the human race
has most often been stories of one tribe dominating another, with cycles of violent
retribution and oppression.
The 20th Century was a time
of both unspeakable horror and hope for a better
way for us to live on this planet. In
the United States, we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to
remind ourselves of that better way. As
we all know, his determined use of creative non-violent action seared the
nation’s conscience and enabled us to abandon American Apartheid without a
second Civil War.
With the passing last month of Nelson
Mandela, it is worthwhile to pause for a moment to consider Mandela’s life and
achievements in the context of the two other non-violent giants of the 20th
Century: Dr. King and Mahatma Gandhi.
Gandhi, from 1893 until 1914, lived in British-ruled
South Africa, where he was the leader of efforts to secure rights for the
Indian immigrant population. Gandhi’s
concerns were not limited to Indians, and he advised and assisted in the
formation of the African National Congress in 1912. http://www.anc.org.za/docs/arts/2012/GANDHIANDTHEBIRTHOFTHEANCq.pdf Gandhi began to develop his theory of creative
non-violence in South Africa and, upon his return to India in 1915, employed it
over decades to eventually secure India’s independence from Britain. http://www.polity.org.za/article/mbeki-mahatma-gandhi-satyagraha-100th-anniversary-01102006-2006-10-01
As Jewish South
African writer Nadine Gordimer observed, Gandhi’s
years in
South Africa, his creation there of the political pressure of non-violence …
influenced the non-violent protest tactics that the African National Congress
practiced until the ferocity of state oppression refused any hope of reform and
led to the creation of [the ANC armed wing].
Gordimer recognized that “the voice calling
upon the conscience of the 20th century to be roused against colonization,
whether manifest as the British possession of India or the whites in apartheid
South Africa, came from” Gandhi and Mandela. http://novelrights.com/2011/07/12/nadine-gordimers-key-note-speech-amnesty-international-ambassador-of-conscience-award-nelson-mandela/ See also http://www.tolstoyfarm.com/mandela_on_gandhi.htm and http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=4089 and https://www.stlbeacon.org/#!/content/33968/mandela_commentary_120613
In 1959, Dr. King, only 30 years old
and fresh off the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and his early attempts
to expand the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, traveled to India for
the express purpose of learning tactics of creative non-violence from Gandhi’s
disciples. King learned those lessons
well, and became the major organizer and spokesperson for the Movement that
secured the end of legal segregation.
To be sure, Mandela was different from
King and Gandhi: As Gordimer noted, by
the early 1960s, Mandela despaired of non-violence and advocated selective
violent actions against the oppressive, racist South African regime which gave
no hope of budging an inch, and which provided no legal mechanism for
democratic change. While King and Gandhi
were able to use creative non-violence to appeal to the conscience of
oppressors whose own self-image included a sense of fairness, Mandela was faced
with a different foe: A minority tribe
understandably fearing for its own survival after decades of the minority’s oppression
of the majority.
But there were enough flickers of
conscience among white people in South Africa, notably among South African Jews,
to begin to undermine the edifice of Apartheid.
Just as in the United States, where the Jewish community provided so
much support to the Civil Rights Movement, Jews were a key part of the
struggle. In the second half of the 20th
Century, Jews in both the United States and in South Africa, having achieved equality
and even influence while also remembering the pain of our own earlier
oppression, served as a bridge to justice. Indeed, for many years the only member of the South African
Parliament to oppose Apartheid was Jewish member Helen Suzman, who became an
ally of Mandela. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Suzman
A turning point in the South African struggle
was the 1964 treason trial of the leadership of the African National
Congress. Of the 15 defendants in the
Rivonia Trial, five were white – all South African Jews. The defense legal team
included prominent Jewish attorneys. And Nadine Gordimer, at Mandela’s request,
assisted in crafting Mandela’s now-famous speech at the trial. http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/rivonia-trial-fifty-years-later Mandela told the court, and the world that:
During my
lifetime I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against
black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society
in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. . .
. It is an ideal which I hope to live
for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to
die.
When Mandela was elected the first
president of the new South Africa, one of his first acts was to appoint Arthur
Chasklason, one of his Jewish attorneys from the treason trial thirty years
earlier, as head of the Constitutional Court. http://washingtonjewishweek.com/mandela-had-complex-ties-to-jews-israel/
These Jewish connections should
surprise no one. Tikkun Olam – repairing
the world – is a central part of our Jewish identity.
When governments around the world
applied sanctions to the Apartheid regime, the oppressors began to rethink their
situation. Still, they understandably
feared that if they ended the monstrous system they had created, they, in turn,
would become the victims. Mandela’s insistence, from his jail cell, that the
oppressed not turn to violence gave the Afrikaner leadership the courage to
back away from the abyss that Apartheid had created. And what most people believed would be an
inevitable bloodbath became a peaceful transition.
The readings we had earlier this
evening showed that Dr. King recognized that racial segregation had to end to heal
both the segregated and the
segregators. Mandela, too, recognized
this wisdom. At the end of his memoir, A Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela wrote
that “When I walked out of prison, . . . my mission [was] to liberate the
oppressed and the oppressor both.” He further
explained that
The truth
is that we are not yet free. . . . . We
have not yet taken the
final step
of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult
road. For to be free is not merely to
cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom
of others.
Dr. King understood that civil and
political equality is necessary, but not sufficient, to create just societies. That is why the 1963 March on Washington was
the March for Jobs and
Freedom, and why Dr. King’s last great effort was the Poor People’s Campaign in
1968. Likewise, Nelson Mandela declared
that
While
poverty exists, there is no true freedom. And overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act
of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to
dignity and a decent life.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2005/feb/03/internationalaidanddevelopment.hearafrica05 These truths are universal. And Mandela’s formulation echoes our own word
Tzedakah – which means both justice and charity, for they are one in the same.
Strength in the face of oppression is
central to the struggle for human dignity.
Gandhi influenced both Mandela and King, who in turn, influenced those in
Eastern Europe who peacefully stood up to oppressors’ tanks to bring down the
Soviet Empire. And when Dr. King’s Civil
Rights Movement opened opportunities, a young African American student named
Barack Obama attending college in 1980 was first inspired to work for social
justice by Nelson Mandela’s Anti-Apartheid movement. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mandelas-cause-shaped-obamas-political-awakening/2013/12/05/ed570bf4-5dff-11e3-95c2-13623eb2b0e1_story.html
So
when President Obama spoke at the Mandela memorial service last month, his
words had great resonance:
We, too,
must act on behalf of justice. We, too, must act on behalf of peace. There are
too many people who happily embrace Madiba’s legacy of racial reconciliation,
but passionately resist even modest reforms that would challenge chronic
poverty and growing inequality. There are too many leaders who claim solidarity
with Madiba’s struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own
people. And there are too many of us on the sidelines, comfortable in
complacency or cynicism when our voices must be heard.
In the readings earlier, we noted Dr.
King’s vision of a World House – the real
Real World – in which people of
different religions and ethnicities need to learn to live and work
together. Gandhi, in addition to his
work for Indian Independence, sought, and to a great degree achieved, peace
between the Hindu and Muslim communities.
Mandela and King sought, and achieved, peace between the White and Black
communities. Such peace is grounded in
efforts to develop fairer societies, in which everyone’s rights are secure and
respected, and in which economic justice is essential.
The Temple Emanuel community has sought
to be true to these values. In 2012, we
worked with Jews United for Justice as part of the faith community’s successful
efforts in supporting Civil Marriage Equality and the Dream Act. And last year and this year, the Temple has
been part of that same coalition to support a just increase in the minimum wage
in Montgomery County and statewide in Maryland.
So at this Brotherhood Service, at the
time of the celebration of the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we
should be mindful of the possibilities that Dr. King, Mahatma Gandhi, and
Nelson Mandela offered to us. May we be
bold enough and strong enough to follow their examples.
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