Martin Luther King III retraces his famous father’s footsteps in Thiruvananthapuram and Chennai

Martin Luther King III on stage with actor Kamal Haasan and members of A.R. Rahman’s K.M. Music Conservatory, Chennai, February 25. Poet Vairamuthu also performed.

Martin Luther King III addresses students at St. Mary’s School, Thiruvananthapuram, February 24.

February 25: As part of his country-wide tour on the 50^th anniversary of his parents visit to India, Mr. Martin Luther King III, son of American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, visited Thiruvananthapuram and Chennai from February 22 to 26.  Like his parents 50 years earlier, Mr. King came to India to learn more about Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings on nonviolence and to meet with a broad cross-section of people, with an emphasis on the youth.  He spoke about the tremendous influence that Gandhi had had on his father and on the U.S. civil rights movement.  He said that Gandhi’s methods and his father’s methods are as relevant today as they were in the last century.  Experience has proved that nonviolence works (to effect social change), and violence does not.

During his meetings with officials, religious leaders, students and people from all walks of life, Mr. King often cited two quotes – one attributed to Gandhi that “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” and the other written by his father from a jail cell in Alabama that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  Mr. King’s message is encapsulated in these two quotes, namely that violence solves nothing and that Americans and Indians and people from every continent on earth are inextricably bound together and affect one another.  For this reason, Mr. King, through his organization “Realizing the Dream,” has called for “a new nonviolent revolution” to work toward peace, justice and an end to poverty all over the world.

Mr. King was deeply touched by the warm reception he received everywhere he traveled in India, and he was especially honored by the tribute paid to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi by actor Kamal Haasan, composer A.R. Rahman and poet Vairamuthu in a magnificent performance of “The Living Dream” in Chennai on February 25.  He told the artists and the audience that he would return home to America more inspired and more determined than ever to carry on the work of his parents, of Gandhi and of all those who came before and after them carrying the message of nonviolence.