January 28, 2008. Copyright 2008, Graphic News. All rights reserved

India marks 60th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination
By Lis Ribbans and Julie Mullins

LONDON, January 28, Graphic News:  ÒGenerations to come...will scarcely believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon earthÓ. Albert EinsteinÕs words from 1944 bear testimony to the near-mythical status held by Mahatma (the title means Ògreat soulÓ) Gandhi in his own lifetime.

Campaigning first in South Africa against racial oppression of Indian immigrants, then against British rule in India where he rose to lead the Congress Party, he espoused strategies that graduated from orderly petition to passive resistance to civil disobedience -- but never violence.

Eschewing the material wealth available to him as a lawyer, he walked the world stage in a white loincloth, steel-rimmed spectacles and pauperÕs shoes, causing Winston Churchill to spit that he was Òa seditious Middle Temple lawyer posing as a fakirÓ.

In fact, GandhiÕs adopted style was the result of harsh personal scrutiny and deep consideration of the moral structure of the world. He read widely across all religions and was greatly influenced towards an ascetic life by the writings of Leo Tolstoy.

Gandhi was imprisoned several times, notably at the height of his Non-Cooperation Movement and after the defining act of civil disobedience -- when he led thousands of peasants in a march to the ocean to evaporate sea water into salt in protest at the British monopoly on salt production.

Not just an anti-colonialist, he also campaigned against the caste system and for religious tolerance between Muslims and his own Hindus. This last campaign, in the overheated atmosphere of newly-partitioned India, prompted Hindu fanatic Nathuram Godse to fire the three gunshots that ended GandhiÕs life.

Six decades after GandhiÕs assassination, the legacy of the man officially accorded the status of Father of the Nation remains as powerful as ever. Last June, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution declaring October 2, GandhiÕs birthday, to be the ÒInternational Day of Non-ViolenceÓ.

And on January 30, the 60th anniversary of his death, some of his final ashes will be scattered on the Arabian Sea. After GandhiÕs cremation several urns containing his ashes were dispatched to his followers across the country to be displayed at memorials, and one of those urns was handed over last year to a museum dedicated to Gandhi by an Indian business family that had preserved it since 1948. The museum had planned to display the urn along with GandhiÕs personal belongings, but deferred to the wishes of his descendants, who asked that the ashes be scattered on water in accordance with Hindu tradition.
/ENDS