Ghandi insisted on going to England to study –
Despite family and local pressures in India to stay.
As a barrister, he travelled to Africa to help to fight
For Indians laboring there, indentured, injustice
Engrained in their work lives. He exercised there his rights
To equal treatment – on trains, in hotels – an awareness, ceaseless,
Developing in him, which carried him back to help heal his Indian nation:
Helping peasants forced to grow crops for too little to live,
Helping to boycott imperialism with non-cooperation,
Bringing leaders together completely unwilling to give
The ‘untouchables’ equal status, or women equality,
Independent lives free of oppression. Human dignity:
This is what he woke to, fasted to, spoke to and embraced.
Jailed 11 times, 6 years by Britain, to their eternal disgrace.
Venerable one, your nonviolent resistance and will with its own ‘Why’
Brought us the strength to see Peace in what it means to “do and die.”
June Edvenson 