How India’s freedom struggle influenced political movements across the world

India’s long fight for freedom culminated in Independence on 15 August, 1947. The hard-won fruits of the labours of countless freedom fighters were obtained after decades of struggle against the British. This year, India is celebrating its 77th Independence Day. But did you know that India’s fight for independence influenced political movements across the world? Let’s take a closer look: Civil Rights Movement in America The Civil Rights Movement in America was massively influenced by the Indian Independence Movement led by Mohandas Gandhi. Gandhi’s influence on Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., who led the civil rights movement for African-Americans until his death in 1968, cannot be overstated. According to the Stanford university website, the charismatic and loquacious Baptist minister first gained knowledge of Gandhi’s teachings during his seminary training. King argued that Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence was “the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.” He even said he thought Gandhi was “the greatest Christian of the modern world,” as per the website. According to Biography.com, King first put the principle of non-violence to work during the Montgomery bus boycott –triggered by Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger The mass protest by African-Americans to desegregate the bus system in Alabama lasted 13 months. It ended with the US Supreme Court in 1956 striking down segregation on the bus system as unconstitutional. Luther told a crowd in New York City in the aftermath of the ruling:

“Christ showed us the way and Gandhi in India showed it could work,”

King, in his book Stride Toward Freedom, echoed many of Gandhi’s teachings of non-violence. “The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent,” King wrote. “He also refuses to hate him.” King in 1959 on a five-week trip to India with his wife Coretta Scott King and others met the Gandhi family, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and other high-profile Indian activists. According to Biography.com, the sojourn only reinforced King’s already strong belief in non-violence as a tool to obtain freedom. “Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals,” King is said to have remarked. King wasn’t the only high-profile civil rights leader influenced by Gandhi. Congressman John Lewis in the 1950s attended non-violence workshops where he learned about Gandhi and his ideas of non-violence. Anti-apartheid movement in South Africa The anti-apartheid movement in South Africa also drew strength and inspiration from India’s freedom movement. The leading light of the struggle, Nelson Mandela, described Gandhi – whose experiences in South Africa triggered his awakening as a freedom fighter – as his ‘role model’. [caption id=“attachment_12983792” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Ex-South African president Nelson Mandela viewed non-violence as an integral part of the anti-apartheid movement. Reuters[/caption] Mandela in his biography wrote, “Nonviolent passive resistance is effective as long as your opposition adheres to the same rules as you do.” “But if peaceful protest is met with violence, its efficacy is at an end. For me. nonviolence was not a moral principle but a strategy.” “Violence and nonviolence are not mutually exclusive; it is the predominance of the one or the other that labels a struggle,” Mandela added. Despite this, there is little doubt that Mandela viewed non-violence as an integral part of the anti-apartheid movement. Mandela’s favourable view of non-violence as a tool against oppression would only be further strengthened by the nearly three decades he spent in prison – during which he avidly read books by Gandhi. On his release from prison, Mandela became the first President of apartheid-free South Africa and brought the country together through his Truth and Reconciliation Commission. “While Nelson Mandela is the father of South Africa, Mahatma Gandhi is our grandfather,” Harris Majeke, ex-South Africa ambassador to India, was quoted as saying by Progressive Magazine. “Mandela was inspired by the Satyagraha campaign led by Gandhi. It was a compelling act of passive protest against oppression. This would later inspire the formation of the African National Congress and strengthen Mandela’s belief in our shared humanity.” Inspired Suu Kyi in Myanmar Before she fell from grace, Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi was seen as an international symbol of peaceful protest against the brutal generals that had ruled Myanmar for decades. Al Jazeera in 2012 quoted Suu Kyi as saying about Myanmar’s political struggle, “We could draw inspiration from the triumphs of our forebears but we could not confine ourselves to our own history in the quest for ideas and tactics that could aid our own struggle. We had to go beyond our own colonial experience.” Like King, and Mandela before her, Suu Kyi also took inspiration from the Indian Independence Movement and the non-violent principles espoused by Gandhi. The Hindu quoted Suu Kyi on a 2012 visit to India as saying that India’s freedom struggle and its leaders including Gandhi and Jawaharlal had inspired her in her quest for a democratic Myanmar. [caption id=“attachment_12942882” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Aung San Suu Kyi. like King and Mandela, was inspired by India’s freedom fight. AFP[/caption] Suu Kyi, speaking about the many years she’d spent under house arrest, added, “…I felt closer to those who I could identify with politically, intellectually, spiritually through their thoughts, even if they were complete strangers or figures of the past, than to those whom I know personally,” she said. However, Suu Kyi herself in a speech admitted that there were some differences between her belief in non-violence compared to the other leaders. “I was attracted to the way of non-violence, but not on moral grounds, as some believe. Only on practical, political grounds,” she explained, as per Al Jazeera. It is “not quite the same as the ambiguous or pragmatic or mixed approaches to non-violence that have been attributed to Gandhi’s satyagraha or Martin Luther King’s civil rights. It is simply based on my conviction that we need to put an end to the tradition of regime change through violence, a tradition which has become the running sore of Burmese politics,” she added. Heavily influenced Sri Lanka’s quest for freedom Sri Lanka’s freedom movement, which got its own independence in 1948, was also inspired by Gandhi. According to Deccan Chronicle, Gandhi even visited Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in 1927 – his only such trip to the country – after being invited by Sri Lankan freedom fighter Charles Edgar Corea.

Gandhi made several speeches and left a lasting influence and legacy in Sri Lanka.

A piece in Ceylon Today noted how Gandhi’s policy of non-violence ‘heavily influenced’ the Sri Lankan quest for freedom and India’s freedom struggle stirred several notable leaders including Buddhist revivalist Anagarika Dharmapala. “Inspired by the actions of the leaders of Indian National Congress, he launched it as a mixture of nationalism combined with a temperance movement,” the piece noted. The piece added how Dharmapala took to Gandhi’s boycott of foreign-made clothes and his embrace of locally-produced fabric. [caption id=“attachment_12983802” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Anagarika Dharmapala on a 2014 stamp of India. Image courtesy: India Post, Government of India[/caption] The piece further noted how Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), which came from the Youth Leagues in 1935, was the first party to demand independence – exactly how the Indian National Congress demanded complete freedom from the British. “Thus, by adopting Gandhi’s concept of non-violent satyagraha, Sri Lanka too gained its independence,” the piece concluded. Inspires freedom struggle, ‘Swadeshi’ push in South Korea While some contend India’s freedom struggle was inspired by March First Movement – Korea’s struggle to get independence from Japan – others say it is in truth the exact opposite Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Santosh Kumar Ranjan told Indian Express he discovered over 50 editorials between 1920 and 1930 in Korean newspapers highlighting the Indian subcontinent’s fight against the British. “There were almost daily reports on India’s Non-Cooperation movement of 1920-22 and the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1931-34,” Ranjan added. Ranjan said Gandhi’s stature had grown so much by 1922 that the newspapers began referring to him as Mahatma. “We respect Gandhi neither because of his status and position nor for his leadership qualities or political abilities. In fact, his commitment to truth and violence and his sacrifice of luxury and family pieties to come up with different hope of actions is respected by us,” one newspaper wrote in its editorial following his imprisonment by the British. Ranjan also said that texts show that Cho Man-sik, a high-profile Korean nationalist leader, was influenced by Gandhi’s ‘Swadeshi’ push for goods. Cho in July 1920 founded the Society for the Promotion of Native Production.

Ranjan told the newspaper that Cho first became aware of Gandhi’s ideals while in college in Japan.

He added that other leaders such as Yom Tae-jin and Yi Kwang-su, mimicking Gandhi’s Swadeshi movement, founded the Self Production Association in Seoul. In Ghana, Zambia, Tanzania, Nigeria According to the book The Commanding Heights by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, while India’s independence provided a template for decolonisation and independence across the world, the change was most fiercely felt in Africa. In Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, the son of a goldsmith, would be at the forefront of the freedom struggle. Nkrumah, who would rise to become the first African-born prime minister of Ghana, was influenced by Gandhi’s life and teachings. As per The Wire, Nkrumah and JB Danquah, both tall figures in Ghana’s independence movement, admitted to being inspired by Gandhi.

However, Nkrumah initially had his doubts about some of Gandhi’s ideals.

“At first I could not understand how Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence could possibly effective. It seemed to be utterly feeble and without hope of success. The solution to the colonial problem, as I saw it at that time lay in armed rebellion… After months of studying Gandhi’s policy, and watching the effect it had, I began to see that, when backed by a strong political organisation it could be the solution to the colonial problem,” Nkrumah wrote. In 1945, Nkrumah organized the Fifth Pan-Africanist Congress in Manchester. During this conference, Gandhi’s non-violent ideals were brought up and “endorsed as the only effective means of making alien rulers respect the wishes of an unarmed subject people”. Nkrumah would take to Gandhi’s non-violence ideals as ‘positive action’ and would declare 8 January, 1950, as “Positive Action day”. As per The Wire, after Gandhi was killed on 30 January, 1948, Nkrumah wrote, “We too mourned his death.” [caption id=“attachment_12983812” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Kwame Nkrumah, who would rise to become the first African-born prime minister of Ghana, was influenced by Gandhi’s life and teachings. Image courtesy: Abbie Rowe - John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum[/caption] “For he had inspired us deeply with his political thought, notably with his adherence to non-violent resistance.” Nkrumah would in 1957, less than a decade later, lead his country to independence. As per Hindustan Times, Kenneth Kaunda, known as ‘Africa’s Gandhi’, would emulate the Mahatma by espousing civil disobedience, strikes, and boycotts to obtain Zambia’s freedom from the British. KK, as he was also known, mirroring Gandhi’s actions in South Africa, burned his colonial identity card. Influenced by Gandhi’s asceticism, the first president of Zambia was a non-drinker and a non-smoker.

As per The New York Times, Kaunda said Gandhi’s writings “went straight to my heart”.

In 2012, KK was bestowed the Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Peace and Reconciliation. In Tanzania, Julius Nyerere was influenced by the Mahatma in that country’s struggle for independence. Nyerere, incidentally, was the recipient of the inaugural Gandhi Peace Prize in 1995. In Nigeria, Chief Soyemi Coker, Nnamdi Azikiwe, and Obafemi Awolowo were huge admirers of Gandhi and his non-violent methods. Incidentally, all three were at the Fifth Pan-Africanist Congress in Manchester in 1945 organised by Nkrumah. To sum up, the echoes of India’s fight for independence have been felt across the world. With inputs from agencies