King to Tutu, why black leaders follow path of Bapu

After Desmond Tutu, I see none except for the Dalai Lama who still commands respect across the world. Perhaps he is the last moral authority in this world with dwarfs like leaders all around. The all the more worrisome fact is that even Dalai Lama is not keeping well

SUDDENLY the world looks little scarier with the passing of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a moral giant though he was a diminutive. One more thing now that comes to mind is that why Mahatma Gandhi has influenced so many great black leaders from Martin Luther King to Desmond Tutu.

Throughout his life, Tutu fought against injustice bravely, without any fear, wherever he found it. Desmond Tutu was not afraid to use his moral authority wherever it was needed. He supported the LGBTQ movement and, without equivocation, championed the Palestinian cause. He denounced dictators on the African continent, supported Tibet's struggle against China, and criticised the American occupation of Iraq.

How many leaders you would find who took positions with courage to speak on these issues. After his demise, perhaps the Dalai Lama is the only person in the world who has some moral authority to speak. Surely, Desmond Tutu's moral authority came from suffering with the people he dared to speak for. That he could do so with a round of laughter shows, again, how rare, beautiful, and irreplaceable Desmond Tutu was. Agrees noted author Chandra Bhushan,"After Desmond Tutu, I see none except for the Dalai Lama who still commands respect across the world. Perhaps he is the last moral authority in this world with dwarfs like leaders all around. The all the more worrisome fact is that even Dalai Lama is not keeping well." Chandra Bhushan has recently authored a book 'Tumahara Naam Kyaa hei Tibat (What is your name, Tibat).

Well, both the Dalai Lama and the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu had enormous respect for each–other. They were two of the world's best-known spiritual leaders of our times. Of course, they were dear friends as well. It was a friendship rooted in a shared sense of joy, and of purpose: to foster and spread that joy around the globe, in order to address and counter its despair. Terribly upset to hear the news of Tutu's death, the Dalai Lama wrote a letter to his daughter, "As you know, over the years, your father and I enjoyed an enduring friendship. I remember the many occasions we spent time together, including the week here at Dharamshala in 2015 when we were able to share our thoughts on how to increase peace and joy in the world. The friendship and the spiritual bond between us was something we cherished." The Dalai Lama said the South African activist for racial justice and LGBT rights was "entirely dedicated to serving his brothers and sisters for the greater common good."

Like Martin Luther King Jr and his life-long comrade, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu was greatly influenced by the thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi on non-violence. In India to receive the prestigious Mahatma Gandhi International Peace Award in 2007, Tutu said, "It is a wonderful country to come to. We owe a lot to India. India was the first country to insist that apartheid should be an item on the agenda of the United Nations. And, of course, you gave us a gift that we returned to you, Mahatma Gandhi," adding, "He not only influenced (South Africa) in our struggle so that we use non-violent methods, but Martin Luther King Jr regarded him as one of his mentors. Gandhi inspired him in the civil rights movement in the United States. So we owe a great deal to Mahatma Gandhi. We wouldn't have made it without the support of the global community and India is significant part of that."

Desomnd Tutu was a regular visitor to the land of Gandhi and always visited Rajghat to pay his humble tribute to apostle of peace and brotherhood. It was my very special privilege when he visited Rajghat in 2007, I was also there. There venerable Tutu told waiting journalists, "I consider India as place of pilgrimage as it is a land of Gandhi." What a chance that when Martin Luther King Jr and his wife Corretta King reached Delhi on February 10, 1959, some reporters of Delhi waited in the lobby of Janpath Hotel, to interview a jet-lagged Black American leader who had come to India.

Just a few hours after he landed at the Palam airport after a six-day journey via New York, Paris, Zurich and Bombay, a press conference had been set up for civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Before the media could ask him anything, King said, "To other countries I may go as a tourist, but to India I come as a pilgrim. This is because India means to me Mahatma Gandhi, a truly great personality of the ages." And it is a well-known fact that Nelson Mandela was a practitioner of Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of Satyagraha or Truth Force, passive resistance and Ahimsa or non-violence. Mandela referred to Gandhiji as his role model and was inspired by Gandhiji to lead South Africa's journey to independence, and was some times referred to as the 'Gandhi of South Africa'. While Mandela and Gandhiji never met both were linked by a passion to end oppression and bring about change and took up the cause of their respective colonised countries and their subjugated people, inspiring them to resist oppression.

As that was not enough, Kwame Nkrumah a very respected African leader, politician, political theorist, and revolutionary and the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana owed part of his formation, directly or indirectly to Mahatma Gandhi. Nkrumah became a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent strategy of Satyagraha, which he coined as "Positive Action."

(The author is Delhi-based senior journalist and writer. He is author of Gandhi's Delhi which has brought to the forth many hidden facts about Mahatma Gandhi)