Bill to promote Gandhi’s legacy introduced in US House.

The bill seeks a budgetary allocation of USD 30 million every year for the next five years to the USAID for this foundation.

There are two other resolutions on Gandhi pending in the Congress -- one by Senators Bob Menendez and Ted Cruz in the Senate and other by several other lawmakers led by Congressman Raja Kishnamoorthi in the House of Representatives.

Sent to the House Foreign Affairs Committee for necessary action, the bill christened “Gandhi-King Scholarly Exchange Initiative Act’” says the people of the United States and India have a long history of friendship and the world will benefit from a stronger United States-India partnership.

Mahatma Gandhi never visited the US. But Martin Luther King travelled to India, which he described as a pilgrimage.

In February 1959, Dr King and his wife Coretta Scott King travelled throughout India.

By the end of his month-long visit, Dr King said, “I am more convinced than ever before that the method of non-violent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity.”

Fifty years after Dr King’s visit, All India Radio discovered a taped message by Dr King that emphasised the intellectual harmony between messages of Dr King and Gandhi on non-violent social action.

“Mohandas Gandhi, who employed the principle of satyagraha or fighting with peace, has come to represent the moral force inspiring many civil and social rights movement around the world,” the bill says.