The King and the Mahatma

AHMEDABAD: On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama an American black woman, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. This single act of non-violent resistance by this member of National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), sparked off the Montgomery bus boycott.
This 11-month boycott to desegregate the city's buses, under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr.resulted in the US Supreme Court ruling that bus segregation is unconstitutional. This catapulted both King and Parks into spotlight.
As a student in Morehouse college in Atlanta, Georgia, King read about Mahatma Gandhi's act of civil disobedience at the Pretoria station in 1893, his decision of not submitting to acts of injustice or exploitation.
It was here that King was mentored by principal of the college Elijah Mays, who introduced him to Gandhi's works. Mays, according to HV Shivadas of the Gandhi Foundation of USA, had returned from India as one of the growing number of African American disciples of Mahatma Gandhi.
"Through soul force', Mohandas K Gandhi was able to free his people from political domination, economic exploitation and humiliation inflicted upon them by British," said King in June 1956 at the nation convention of (NAACP).
According to The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. edited by Clayborne Carson, King said "While the Montgomery boycott was going on, India's Gandhi was the guiding light of our technique of non-violent social change. So as soon as our victory over the bus segregation was won, some of my friends said why don't you go to India and see for yourself what the Mahatma whom you so admire has wrought."
King said "My true test will be when people who knew Gandhi looked over me and passed judgement upon me and the Montgomery movement". Gandhians had praised their experiment with non-violent technique at Montgomery.
Asked about the impact of Gandhi's ideas on the Montgomery bus boycott, King said "We have found them to be effective and sustaining. They work. Look at non-violence as a philosophy of life."
King came to India for a month-long visit in 1959. He visited Sabarmati Ashram on March 1. Fifty years later, his son Martin Luther King III will be tracing his father's pilgrimage to the land of Gandhi by visiting the Ashram and Gujarat Vidyapith on Friday.