When I found out
that I was scheduled to go to India, I was surprised. Just like Africa,
mainstream media misrepresents India with horrendous rapes, extreme poverty, E.
coli, cows in the street and esoteric temples. Needless to say, I wasn’t
excited. I also did not feel a cultural connection to India. However, as I
thought about it more, I discovered that I did have a personal connection to
India. As an African – American, I feel a deep connection with the civil rights
movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The activists of that era have truly inspired
me and shaped my identity. I had overlooked how India was the first country to overthrow British
colonial rule under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi in 1947. This was not a war, so to speak, but a non-violent
resistance movement. It inspired independence movements all over the African
continent and our civil rights movement here at home. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said about the Movement, “Jesus gave us the inspiration and Gandhi gave
us the method.” John Lewis and the other ‘sit-in’ college students
studied Gandhian non-violent philosophy for two years with the Rev. James
Lawson of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) before that first historic sit-in
in 1960. John Lewis even uses the Hindi names of each concept in his autobiography.
So here was my personal connection. If my leaders were connected to India, then so was I. And of course I
expected that the political and social climate of India would be like that of the
African – American community: post civil rights awareness…racially conscious...power
for the people..anti-colonial mindsets..."Black is beautiful" or "Indian is
beautiful." The research question that informed my trip was how the legacy of Gandhi as the ‘Father of the Nation’ is transmitted in Indian classrooms.
I arrived home to DC from Ghana on a Thursday and I was off to India the following Monday. I
thought I was on my way to discover the cradle of freedom movements all over
the world. Little did I know that many different surprises were waiting for me
upon my arrival. 
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