A Reflection on M. L. King Day

Most of us know the story of Dr. King’s struggle and of his shift, late in his life to focus on economic rights as well as civil rights.  Most of us also know that Dr. King was strongly influenced by Mohandas Ghandi’s philosophy of non-violent resistance and the remarkable success of Ghandi’s movement in freeing the Indian sub-continent from British rule.

I learned something recently that I found remarkable... that Ghandi in turn was strongly influenced by Leo Tolstoy’s religious views (Tolstoyanism, characterized by his opponents alternately as Christian Pacificism and Christian Anarchism) and that the program for Indian independence was outlined by Tolstoy in “A Letter to a Hindoo” published in 1908.  This document, once in Ghandi’s hands in 1909 prompted further correspondence between him and Tolstoy in the last year of Tolstoy’s life.  Ghandi, in his autobiography, credited Tolstoy as "the greatest apostle of non-violence that the present age has produced.”  Today, 100 years after his death, he remains controversial in Russia and excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church.

I find it very interesting that the non-violent resistance program, demonstrated as successful by Ghandi and King, is so infrequently implemented in our times.  I believe the reason for this is the rarity of the leadership that can inspire a large body of people to take the blows and not respond with violence.  This is one of the few ways the powerless can take the moral high-ground from the powerful.  The method is simple, but the execution is almost superhuman.