John Dear on Douglass' new book on Gandhi

Jim Douglass new book, Gandhi and the Unspeakable

http://ncronline.org/blogs/road-peace/jim-douglass-new-book-gandhi-and-unspeakable

by John Dear SJ on Feb. 14, 2012

Jim Douglass is one of the world's great teachers, theologians and practitioners of Christian nonviolence. I regularly return for inspiration to his classic works The Nonviolent Cross, Resistance and Contemplation and Lightning East to West, which have been recently republished by wipfandstock.com. Based at Mary's House Catholic Worker in Birmingham, Ala., Jim spent the last two decades completing his groundbreaking work, JFK and the Unspeakable, which detailed the forces which aligned to kill President John F. Kennedy in order to stop his work for peace and disarmament.

Douglass has planned other books on the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Robert Kennedy. In the process, he began to study the widespread conspiracy to kill Mahatma Gandhi and the latent support for his assassination within the new Indian state. That study has resulted in another powerful book, Gandhi and the Unspeakable: His Final Experiment With Truth, a shocking exposé and inspiring meditation published this week by Orbis Books. I urge all those interested in Gandhi and nonviolence to read this profound work.

As we all know, Gandhi was assassinated in New Delhi by a Hindu fundamentalist on Jan. 30, 1948, as he walked to his public evening prayer service. Since the previous summer, more than a million people had been killed in the civil war between Hindus and Muslims as Pakistan split off from the new India. Right-wing Hindu extremists such as the assassin were enraged by Gandhi's nonviolent campaign to reconcile Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi spent his last months walking, campaigning, praying and fasting for an end to the violence, and at the time of his death, was planning to go to Pakistan on a mission of peace.

Just as Douglass investigated the reasons why JFK was assassinated by myriad forces, including members of the U.S. government, he explores the reasons why Gandhi was killed and why the Indian state might have benefited from his death. Douglass' journey took him to the Library of Congress, where he read the sole "Printed Record of Mahatma Gandhi Murder Case, Vols. 1-8," the court record that once belonged to Nathuram Godse, Gandhi's assassin. Douglass used this massive material and other original sources to explore Gandhi's mythic struggle of nonviolence against the forces of what Thomas Merton called "the Unspeakable."

http://ncronline.org/blogs/road-peace/jim-douglass-new-book-gandhi-and-unspeakable

Social Sin and Social Grace

Social sin can be countered and struggled against in millions of ways and in a myriad of manners. May Social Grace have its sway. Here the Olgala Sioux Tribe struggles to free their people from those who would enslave them by selling products inimical to their health. Although the damage done by alcohol to college students isn't as bad as the destruction ravaged on reservations, maybe colleges and universities should sue the alcohol companies for all it costs to deal with intoxicated and out of control students. - Fr. Rick.

February 10, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/us/south-dakota-oglala-sioux-tribe-sues-beer-makers.html?_r=1&src=recg

South Dakota: Oglala Sioux Tribe Sues Beer Makers

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Oglala Sioux Tribe of South Dakota sued some of the world’s largest beer makers on Thursday, saying they knowingly contributed to devastating alcohol-related problems on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The tribe said it wanted $500 million in damages for the cost of health care, social services and child rehabilitation caused by chronic alcoholism on the reservation. The suit filed in United States District Court of Nebraska also names four beer stores in Whiteclay, a Nebraska town near the reservation that, despite having only about a dozen residents, sold nearly five million cans of beer in 2010. The suit names Anheuser-Busch InBev Worldwide, SABMiller, Molson Coors Brewing Company, MillerCoors LLC and Pabst Brewing Company.