[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 140 (Friday, September 30, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 30, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
        ON THE 125TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF MAHATMA GANDHI

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise to bring to my colleagues 
attention a very important anniversary which will be celebrated over 
the weekend. Sunday, October 2 is the 125th birth anniversary of 
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi--the Mahatma.
  It is difficult to capture the profound impact that Gandhi had on our 
world. His is still a household name admired some 125 years after his 
birth. A name which calls up inspiring images of a single man dressed 
in hand-spun cloth, leading a nation to independence. The effects of 
his nonviolent actions were not limited to his country, nor his time. 
Leaders of today continue to study his life and adopt aspects of his 
thought.
  If I may invade ever so slightly the privacy of the President's 
luncheon table, in May, 1994, Mr. Clinton had as his guest the 
distinguished Prime Minister of India, Mr. P.V. Narasimha Rao, who in 
his youth was a follower of Mahatma Gandhi. In a graceful passage, the 
P.M. related how it came to pass that Mahatma Gandhi, caught up in the 
struggle for fair treatment to the Indian community in South Africa, 
and in consequence in jail, read Thoreau's essay on ``Civil 
Disobedience'' which confirmed his view that an honest man is duty-
bound to violate unjust laws. He took this view home with him, and in 
the end the British raj gave way to an independent Republic of India. 
Then Martin Luther King, Jr. repatriated the idea and so began the 
great civil rights movement of this century. A movement even so, still 
far from fulfillment.
  It is no fluke that in 1994, when the heads of two democracies 
governing over one fifth of the world lunch, that Mahatma Gandhi should 
be a topic of conversation. Even as we pause on the threshold of a new 
millennium, we recall how his legacy shaped us and how it will be 
carried into the future.

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