Today as we remember the murder of the Father of our nation, my mind goes back to a drive through Kentucky when suddenly my eye was caught by miles and miles of stonewalls alongside the road, “Built by slaves!” said my brother and I stared at the walls.
“Stop the car!” I whispered and as I looked at those flat stones placed roughly one on top of the other I heard faintly through the ages; sounds of singing: Agonized, harrowing, painful, it pierced through my soul tearing me apart with the sadness the words and tunes carried!
I could picture the poor blacks carrying stone after stone, placing them one above the other, stumbling, falling, getting up again as the whip of the white overseer cracked on their backs. And through it all they sang; songs of hope, of an escape through death!
Yesterday I heard those songs again and same tears that filled my eyes in Kentucky spilled down my cheeks. She, Eleanor Valkenburg, sang powerfully well and there wasn’t a soul in the hall who didn’t feel the agony the negro spirituals evoked. “Sometimes,” she sang, “I feel like a motherless child!”
I thought of poor child carrying those heavy stones more than a hundred years ago, looking up and crying, wondering what she had done to have become a beast of burden, when she could see white children playing carefree, she had to labor in the sun, drenched with sweat and shielded only by the way she placed the stone on her aching shoulder.
And when she lurched under the weight, the overseer’s whip set her straight!
As the car started again that day in Kentucky I thanked God slavery was now dead at least in America, but tyranny reigns! Tyranny: Where cruel, brutal kings and dictators army and police force countrymen and subjects into acts that make them less than animals. Where a man slogs whole day still doesn’t have enough to feed family and himself!
Tyranny: Where words spoken to wrong ears means death, where justice depends on money in the wallet or whose son you are.
Still, in different parts of the world such tyranny reigns and whips of a different kind are cracked as walls of other material more severe and harsh than stone, are built.
Such needs to be broken down. The world had men like Gandhiji who stood and fought! But today the world is being made to despise such brave men. The world needs you to stand and make the people remember, why we are not slaves anymore or subjects to foreign rule and remind the people who did it!
Let us remember Gandhiji today..!
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Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and writes a daily column, which has graced the pages of over 60 newspapers and magazines, from a daily column in the Khaleej Times, Dubai, the Morning Star, London, and in nearly every state in India, from The Statesman in Kolkata, to the Kashmir Times in Kashmir to the Trinity Mirror in Chennai.
O man, it brought tears to mine eyes too! God save our country, God Almighty saves us too! Keep writing, God bless you,Bob, (you’re genius..!)
I still remember the day my father carried me on his shoulders immediately after Gandhiji’s murder to join the mourners in Mangalore but then I didn’t know what freedom meant. Freedom we enjoy today not come without a price, many suffered and imprisoned and lost their property. Gandhiji took leadership to build the freedom movement based on nonviolence and successful in making India a free country but his life was cut short by a bullet. Human nature is peculiar when Moses led Israelites from slavery to freedom, the very same people grumbled against Moses saying they preferred pots of meat in Egypt to freedom Moses offered. We don’t realize value of freedom until we lose it.
“ Oh, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength,
But it is tyrannous to use it like a giant. “
William Shakespeare
Thank you for your gentle reminder to read this article “Remembering Gandhiji Today”. Really grateful for him standing up for our freedom. And thank you for helping us see how brutal and cruel slavery is.
How can any Indian forget Gandhiji?
A frail man brought the empire down to its knees. And he wanted no position or power. God endowed him with enough spiritual power to fight a struggle. Maybe he was not sure if freedom will come within his lifetime, but he fought. And he adhered to non violence no matter what.
Its our bounden duty to keep him alive in our hearts n inform future generations about The Father of this great Nation.
Though slavery has ended the younger generation do not appreciate its value. More and more youngsters are lured to an easy going life with easy methods to make a fast buck.
My humble prayers on this day, as the father of nation rests in peace let his ideologies live for centuries.
Amazing Grace the lovely hymn was written by a slave driver. Trying times came to the dark skinned then and now such difficult times are threatening to fall on us
Yes, sad we tend to forget so soon . We take so many blessings for granted and the value gets diminished. We get what we deserve, and it is time we wake up or else we’ll be enslaved by our own .
Britishers Rules Were Best For One And All At That Times. So, Had There Been Their Stringent Rules For All Indian’s. Then, Today’s Endless Corruptions Would Have Been Eradicated From The Roots Of Infinities Of Unwanted Greeds……!!!!!!
Well quoted Ayesha! Like the Israelites were slaves in Egypt but they grew stronger in body by the day, this shows there is an enabler behind the slave and He is God.Mahathma Gandhi surely had a God leading him on the right path and right methods.Thanks for your thoughts Bob
Let my country awake……
To realise what Gandhiji has done!