Gandhi Journal Article-III ( October 2016 )
Relevance of Mahatma Gandhi in Canada
By Dr. Neeta Khandpekar
Gandhi's legacy is significant for both of them owing to have faced problems of separatism and secession in specific areas. Canada's accord of 1992 (though failed) was an act of political courage, an experiment at once educative and conciliatory which is perhaps the only way of fusing a multicultural society into a nation. Even today we read news headlines like "IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE MAHATMA, GLOBAL MAHATMA". And in fact Martin Luther King Jr, Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Adolfo Perez Esquivel were inspired by Gandhiji's philosophy and practice and have been awarded the Nobel Prize across the world. Gandhi is now a global icon and a mystical figure rolled into one. In the twentieth century Non-violence has achieved many successes. The American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's led by Martin Luther King Jr. culminated in political rights for African-Americans. Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe when confronted with non-violent resistance, led by forces like Solidarity in Poland and Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia. In 1986, a massive show of people's power toppled Ferdinand Marcos's dictatorship in the Philippines. The armies refused to fire on the people after being convinced by them-Photographs of girls offering roses to men manning the tanks are still etched in memory - to support the pro-democracy movement. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu played a major role in South Africa's relatively peaceful transition from apartheid to a democracy that granted blacks political rights. Esquivel an Argentinean was the founder of Peace and Justice, a pan-Latin American civil rights movement in the 1970s that adopted non-violence as its credo at a time when the continent was gripped by violent conflict. This paper will focus on twenty first century issues especially in Canada and its solutions in Gandhian thought.
