Barack Obama’s memoir hits stores Tuesday.
Washington:
Former US President Barack Obama said much of his fascination with India revolved around Mahatma Gandhi, whose “success of the non-violent campaign against the British regime has become a beacon for other marginalized and dispossessed groups. “.
However, the 44th US President, in his latest book, regrets that the Indian icon has not been able to successfully deal with the caste system or prevent the partition of the county based on religion.
In his book “A Promised Land”, Obama writes about his journey from the 2008 election campaign to the end of his first term with the daring raid on Abbottabad (Pakistan) that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama ben Laden.
“A Promised Land” is the first of two planned volumes. The first part was published Tuesday in bookstores around the world.
“But more than anything, my fascination with India was linked to Mahatma Gandhi. With (Abraham) Lincoln, (Martin Luther) King and (Nelson) Mandela, Gandhi had profoundly influenced my thinking,” wrote Obama, who had visited India twice as president.
“As a young man, I had studied his writings and found him expressing some of my deepest instincts,” said the former US president.
“His notion of ‘satyagraha’, or devotion to truth, and the power of nonviolent resistance to stir consciousness; its insistence on our common humanity and the essential unity of all religions; and his belief in the obligation of every society, through its political, economic and social arrangements, to recognize the equal worth and dignity of all people – each of these ideas resonated with me. Gandhi’s actions had moved me even more than his words; he had put his beliefs to the test by risking his life, going to prison and throwing himself fully into the struggles of his people, ”wrote Obama.
Gandhi’s non-violent campaign for India’s independence from Britain, which began in 1915 and continued for over 30 years, had not only helped defeat a empire and liberate much of the subcontinent, it had unleashed a moral burden that weighed on the whole world. , he writes.
“It has become a beacon for other marginalized and dispossessed groups – including black Americans in southern Jim Crow – eager to secure their freedom,” Obama says.
Recalling his first visit to India in November 2010, Obama said he and the First Lady Michelle visited Mani Bhavan, the modest two-story building tucked away in a quiet part of Mumbai that had been Gandhi’s home for many years.
“Before the start of our tour, our guide, a graceful woman in a blue sari, showed us the guest book that Dr King had signed in 1959, when he visited India for attention. conference on the fight for racial justice in the United States. Declare and pay homage to the man whose teachings inspired him, ”he wrote.
“The guide then invited us to go upstairs to see Gandhi’s private quarters. Taking off our shoes, we entered a simple room with smooth, patterned tile floors, its patio doors open to admit a slight breeze and a pale, hazy light, ”he told me.
“I looked at the spartan bed and pillow, the collection of spinning wheels, the old-fashioned telephone and the low wooden desk, trying to imagine Gandhi in the room, a light, dark-skinned man in a plain cotton dhoti, his legs folded under him, writing a letter to the British Viceroy or preparing for the next phase of the Salt March, ”he said.
“And at that point, I had the greatest wish to sit down next to him and talk. To ask him where he had found the strength and the imagination to do so much with so little. To ask how he had recovered from his disappointment, “he wrote.
Obama said Gandhi had more than his share of the struggle. “Despite all his extraordinary gifts, Gandhi had not been able to heal the deep religious schisms of the subcontinent nor prevent its partition into a predominantly Hindu India and a predominantly Muslim Pakistan, a seismic event during from which countless sectarian violence and millions of families had died. were forced to pack what they could carry and migrate across the newly established borders, ”he said.
“Despite his best efforts, he had not defeated India’s suffocating caste system. But somehow he walked and fasted and preached into his seventies – until that last day of 1948 when he was on his way to prayer. shot at point blank range by a young Hindu extremist who considered his ecumenism to be a betrayal of the faith, ”Obama wrote.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
