According to sources Former US President Barack Obama, who has often talked about the influence of Mahatma Gandhi on his life, yesterday invoked him during a major speech, while articulating his vision of equality, justice and freedom. Meanwhile Obama, who scripted history by becoming the first black President of the US in 2009, has long shown a fascination with Gandhi, hanging a photo of the Indian icon on the wall of his Senate office and citing Gandhi in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
Furthermore in an address in honor of anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela ahead of the 100th anniversary of his birth, Obama made a plea to his audience to preserve democratic freedoms as the key to peace. Obama said "He believes in Nelson Mandela's vision, he believes in a vision shared by (Mahatma) Gandhi and (Martin Luther) King, and Abraham Lincoln, and he also believes in a vision of equality and justice and freedom and multi-racial democracy built on a pretense that all people are created equal and are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights”.
Moreover he added that there was a choice between two visions of
humanity's future that the world must choose between. Accordingly his lecture,
titled "Renewing the Mandela legacy and promoting active citizenship in a
changing world," which tracked the transformation of the world,
particularly in terms of race relations and human rights, over the past 100
years.