A talk about Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi Society of Ottawa, 1984. Speech during the symposium held on Monday January 30, 1984 at St. Paul University, Ottawa.
It is singularly appropriate that a symposium on Mahatma Gandhi should take place within the precincts of St. Paul University. Gandhi applied the Sermon on the Mount in a large socio-political setting; perhaps the largest in history as far as application of the Sermon is concerned. The Church departed from the Sermon on the Mount fairly soon after she was accepted by the Roman establishment, and, subsequently, propounded the Doctrine of Just War.
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Why did the leaders of the international community choose the Azores islands, almost midway between Europe and America for a summit? In order to underline the importance they attach to trans-Atlantic solidarity? No. The choice was made in order to escape from anti-war demonstrators.
Even as the leading lights of the ‘coalition of the willing', the chiefs of government of United States of America, United Kingdom, Spain, and Portugal were meeting and taking the world perilously close to a big war, Jose Saramago, the Nobel laureate Portuguese writer taking part in one of the many demonstrations throughout the world said: "We are marching against the law of the jungle that the United States and its acolytes old and new want to impose."
