GANDHI BIRTHDAY – INTERVIEW OCT 2ND
What strikes me first is the timing. In 1893, the year Queen Liliʻuokalani was overthrown, a young lawyer named Mohandas Gandhi was thrown off a train in South Africa because of his skin color.

That year changed both of their lives.
They had a lot in common. Both faced powerful empires… Britan & the US..

Both chose not to answer force with force. When armed men backed by U.S. troops took over the government, the Queen yielded under protest rather than let her people die. She chose to trust in law, in petitions, and in the conscience of the American people.

Gandhi made that kind of moral resistance into a mass movement. He called it satyagraha, or ‘truth-force.’
Both also suffered for it. The Queen was imprisoned in her own palace. Gandhi spent years in jail. Neither one let prison make them bitter.

Now the differences matter too. She was a monarch a Queen defending a sovereign nation that was already recognized around the world. He was a commoner organizing millions of ordinary people.

And the outcomes were different. India became independent in 1947. Hawaiʻi was annexed, and the Queen died in 1917 without seeing justice. But the arch of justice is now bending low…. after all these years w

But I think her legacy is just as powerful. Her aloha, her refusal to hate, and her faith kept Hawaiian identity alive. You can see it today in the cultural & language revival and in the work of aloha ʻāina.

On Gandhi’s birthday, it’s worth remembering that Hawaiʻi had its own great teacher of peaceful resistance.” We see Kapu Aloha emerging now as a soul force a truth force in Hawaii.