Walking to beat of peace drum
A message of living in harmony
ONE Japanese and five Indian followers of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela are walking across South Africa to Buddhist chants and drum beats, promoting the two leaders’ idea of non-violence and peace.
This year marked the 150th anniversary of Gandhi’s birth and the centenary of Mandela’s.
The peace pilgrimage reached a milestone this week when the walkers reached their halfway-mark between their starting point, Constitutional Hill in Johannesburg and Madiba’s birthplace at Mvezo in the Eastern Cape: the Nelson Mandela Capture Site in the Midlands.
With “not a pesai (India’s equivalent of cents) in our pockets”, they ask people along the way for food and shelter as a way of engaging with locals.
“Our message to humanity is that we can live in harmony,” said Nitin Sonwane, who has chosen to travel the world on similar peace pilgrimages – mostly alone and by bicycle – rather than follow a career in engineering.
Aware of the high violent crime rate in South Africa, which he attributes to the gap between rich and poor, Sonwane and his companions have encountered only friendship, goodwill, donations and hospitality.
“I feel bad for the people who murder,” he told the Independent on Saturday.
“They are miserable because of the inequality in this society. The best way (to solve the problem) is to build an equal society, like Gandhi and Mandela believed.”
Sonwane said the group not having anything to steal was their biggest shield against falling victim to crime.
“We are part of them,” he went on to say. “We feel so bad for them. We must be kind to people doing crime and transform them to living a life in a normal society.”
They greet passers-by by bowing, an act that tells the other that he, or she, is an equal human being.
While Kanshin Ikeda, from Japan, is a Buddhist monk, the rest have religious roots in Hinduism, Christianity and Islam.
Yogesh Mathuria, who gave up an IT career 11 years ago to work on world peace projects, has a forearm tattoo with texts relating to his understanding of spirituality.
“The highest priority is that you are a human being. Then, you may belong to a religion. A divine force – whatever you call it – created human beings and human beings created religion and that created a divide. I believe today that religion is the biggest divider in the world.”
The group’s expert on Gandhi’s principles is Jalandharnath Channole, who has spent 28 years in a Gandhi ashram, chosen not to marry and worn simple clothes made of homespun fabric.
“A Gandhian monk,” his companions joked.
Sangram Patil, an MBA student, said he valued “learning South African culture and explore myself”.
In KwaZulu-Natal they have stayed at police stations and, at Ingogo, near Newcastle, were invited into a local rondavel Zulu homestead to cook their food.
They were invited to a game farm near Ladysmith and have been referred to bed and breakfasts in the Midlands.
They were scheduled to arrive in Pietermaritzburg yesterday and then take a diversion to the site of Gandhi’s Phoenix settlement.
Speaking his mind at the capture site, Sonwane said Mandela lived on in the hearts of people who want freedom and equality.
“I stand with these people who fight for equality, justice and social reforms.”
Immediately before coming to South Africa, Sonwane cycled alone through Central and South America on a peace pilgrimage, including violent countries such as Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador from where members of the US-bound migrant caravan are escaping life under drug lords and gangs.
He left Venezuela off his itinerary because he felt that people there were suffering too much in that country’s economic crisis and it would not be reasonable to ask them for food and shelter.