Mann ki baat: Barack Obama admires Mahatma Gandhi, visits Rajghat the second time

NEW DELHI: When Barack Obama paid tribute to Mahatma Gandhi at Rajghat, he became the first US president in office to visit the memorial a second time. But that's hardly a surprise. No US president has quoted the global lodestar for peace and non-violence as frequently as Obama.

On occasions as varied as speaking at the UN General Assembly, interacting with ninth-grade students in Virginia and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, he has found regular reason to cite Gandhi. In the past, many world leaders, from Julius Nyerere to Kenneth Kaunda, from Lech Walesa to Aung San Suu Kyi, have acknowledged the Mahatma's influence on their life.

Back in 1906, Gandhi launched the idea of nonviolent public protest in South Africa bringing words like truth and moral force to the lexicon of politics. But Obama's respect for Gandhi was perhaps spurred by his own hero and idol Martin Luther King. The civil rights activist was an unabashed admirer of Gandhi. In 1959, King had visited India and published an account in the Ebony magazine.



"While the Montgomery boycott was going on, India's Gandhi was the guiding light of our technique of non-violent social change. We spoke of him often," he wrote.




The Montgomery bus boycott was a protest against racial segregation in public buses in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955. Earlier in a TV interview on NBC in Oct 1957, Kiwng said he bought several books on Gandhi and Gandhian techniques and that he had become "deeply influenced by Gandhi" while never realizing that he "would live in a situation where it would be useful and meaningful."



Obama found inspiration from both Gandhi and King. In his 2009 Nobel prize acceptance lecture, he said, "The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached — their fundamental faith in human progress — that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey."

It is ironical, though, that King and Obama received the Nobel peace prize, not Gandhi. Obama's persistent reference to Gandhi has been critiqued too.