Podcast dramatizes spiritual bridge between Gandhi, MLK

LAWRENCE — Many people know Mahatma Gandhi influenced Martin Luther King Jr. Now a new podcast traces the eventful path from the Khyber Pass to a Harlem hospital room and the mystic theologian who trod it, thus becoming a personal bridge between the two great prophets of nonviolent social change.

Darren Canady, University of Kansas professor of English, wrote the six-part, three-hour audio drama that is part of the multimedia “Day of Days” project helmed by executive producer Michael Epstein.

The podcast dramatizes the 1958 meeting between King and the Christian minister and academic Howard Thurman in a hospital room, shortly after King barely survived a stabbing by a Black woman at a book-signing event. It also brings to audio life the transcendent experience Thurman had at the Khyber Pass.

While the assault on King is largely forgotten today, “It created the emergency that caused these men to reconnect, and it came at a point in Martin's own trajectory where he really needed ... a voice of advice,” Canady said. “The stabbing also was one of the first signs that King’s opponents were not limited to white racists in the South. There were people throughout that book tour, in the days leading up to the stabbing, who were protesting because they felt like he was too conciliatory already.”

Canady said Thurman’s message to King was: “You have to understand that part of where this violence is coming from is that you are preaching something that could upend entire world orders. Yes, your initial entry into this is about Blacks in the South. But you know the truth is that what you are discussing and advocating for has global connections and global meanings.”

“Howard was saying that to really accomplish what you are destined to accomplish, you have got to slow your roll. You are doing too much,” Canady said. “You are moving so fast that you're not allowing yourself to do the interior work that will make it possible for you to do the revolutionary work beyond this.”

The podcast dramatizes the meeting Thurman and his wife, Sue, had with Gandhi in 1936 in India, and links their pilgrimage to the hospital room meeting.

When the Thurmans finally meet Gandhi, “They're having this back and forth about the choices that have made up to that point in the Civil Rights Movement, but also in the struggle for Indian independence,” Canady said. “Sue and Howard are trying to get a sense of how does nonviolence actually work on the ground? That's when Gandhi says he doesn't like the term nonviolence because it has a negative connotation. It's better to think about the thing that you do, as opposed to talking about the thing that you don't do. So he talks about the concept of ahimsa, which is basically the soul force. It is the thing that gives you strength to withstand injustice, the thing that helps you to connect to your fellow person and shift their energy that would do you harm to another energy that actually acts as resistance and survival and forbearance for you.”

The Thurmans ask Gandhi to come to America to preach this message, but the Mahatma demurs, insisting they need their own champion.

“He says, ‘Based on the struggles that I have already seen, the American Negro may actually be the way that my compassionate system of nonviolence reaches the world,’ and it becomes prophetic in certain ways,” Canady said.

It’s not as though King was unaware of the great Indian leader before 1958, Canady said, partially because of the work Thurman had been doing ever since his meeting with Gandhi.

Canady said he knew little about Thurman when he got the assignment to write the podcast script, but researching the man engendered great admiration.

“I was struck by the wisdom and his ultimate optimism about humanity, which I could use at that moment, and we certainly can use in the current moment,” Canady said.