Nonviolent Resistance

Words: 859
Pages: 4

Mahatma Gandhi’s Theory and Practice of Passive Resistance was called into existence as a response to his growing belief that India should be politically independent from Great Britain. He felt he needed to devise a philosophy for his fellow men, women and children to live by to achieve such independence.
Martin Luther King, Jr. devotedly believed in Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of Nonviolent Resistance. From his jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, King writes a letter to the religious leaders who believe him an “outsider agitator (164).” In it, he urges the leaders to reconsider their beliefs about equality and human rights based on the religious texts they and he believe in.
King wants African Americans to be accepted as equals members of American society. He urges his followers to accept punishment for disobeying an unjust law lovingly (168). This idea, though rooted in Gandhi’s Satyagraha, also stems from King’s Christian belief to turn the other cheek. Even though King did believe that Passive Resistance should take on this form, he does not refer to Gandhi’s Satyagraha explicitly; he instead adapts his idea to that of the Christian faith that the recipients of his letter also adhere to.
Both Gandhi
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Up until that moment, he writes in a metaphor, he had let his people kill both snakes and scorpions because he had not possessed the courage to himself pick up the two animals to teach his fellows fearlessness (451). With his writings on Satyagraha, he is now attempting to form a lesson in fearlessness just like that for his fellow