A Comparison between Mahatma Gandhi’s Thoughts and Latin America’s Liberation Theology

Mahatma Gandhi, spiritual, political and social Hindu leader of India in the first half of twenty century, conducted a political and social struggle by his spiritual and religious values. Theologians of Latin America’s liberation theology started their opposition against the unjust political and economic structures of Latin America after 1960s. Despite their different religious traditions and cultural atmospheres, Gandhi and liberation theologians had comparable features in bases, methods and ends. They had critical relations to their religious traditions, believed in contextual viewpoints, tried for this-worldly changes, removing poverty and injustice and argued that praxis is more important than mere theory. Liberation theologians emphasized on Marxist thoughts and tried to change unjust political and economic structure, even by violent methods of struggle. So, ends are more important than means. But Gandhi, with his emphasis on spiritual and moral transformation, believed in inseparability of ends and means. He argued that violent methods would lead to more severe constraints than that of colonialism. In these thoughts Gandhi was influenced by Leo Tolstoy’s thoughts and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. He was in contrary with socialist struggling groups in India.