22 December 20, 2013
INDIA
Karan Bilimoria Pays Rich Tributes to Mandela in House of Lords BY RAJ KANWAR IAN INDIA CORRESPONDENT LORD Karan Bilimoria was the only Indian among his fellow peers who was asked in Britain’s House of Lords earlier this week to pay tributes to Nelson Mandela. This honour was indicative of the tremendous respect that Mandela enjoyed not only in the UK but also within both the Houses of the British Parliament. Lord Bilimoria was the only peer who drew comparison between Nelson Mandela and Gandhi. He referred to his own Indian lineage and also specifically mentioned about his connection with South Africa through his wife Heather. Now in his own words, “I was born and brought up in India, and I met my South African wife, Heather, a year after Nelson Mandela was freed from 27 years of incarceration. We were married thereafter in the UK, in South Africa and in India, a few months before he became the President. The UK and India have always been my home – and then South Africa became one as well over the past two decades. When 21 years ago I first visited the Free State, where my wife’s family Farm is – I was told that as an Indian only a year or two before, if I was travelling through the Free State on my way from Johannesburg to Durban and my car broke down en route, I would have had to report to the police and then spend the night in gaol! How things have now changed thanks to this great man – and thanks also to President F.W. De Klerk who I have the privilege of knowing.”
Karan Bilimoria
Bilimoria said both Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi were generally talked about in India with the same degree of reverence. Mandela was himself the living embodiment of the expression ‘Ubuntu’ that roughly translated into ‘human kindness’ while Mahatma meant a great soul. For Mandela, ‘Ubuntu’ did not mean that people should not enrich themselves, but the question, more importantly, was ‘were they going to do so to enrich themselves in order to enable the community around them to improve’?. For Mandela, ‘Ubuntu’ was all about human nature, about humility, about human kindness and about community. “Mandela’s lack of bitterness, his ability to forgive and his human kindness knew no bounds,” Bilimoria added. Mandela and Gandhi were alike in many ways Quoting Mandela again, Lord Bilimoria added, “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” “Mandela was a great admirer of Gandhi and often spoke about him. He had once said of Gandhi that India was his country of birth and South Africa his country of adoption. Thus he was both an Indian and a South African citizen,” said Bilimoria. Once Mandela compared Gandhi’s and his own life and said that they both suffered colonial oppression and again they both mobilized their respective peoples against the governments that had violated their freedoms. Bilimoria quoted Mandela as hav-
ing said that ‘Gandhi was no ordinary leader’. He then added that Gandhi too would have returned the compliment by describing ‘Mandela as no ordinary leader’. “Is it not remarkable that both men had their difficulties with the two great British Prime Ministers of the past century; Gandhi with Churchill and Mandela with Margaret Thatcher. Nelson Mandela was without doubt, alongside Gandhi, one of the two greatest individuals of the past century.” Further, like Gandhi Nelson Mandela not only just changed and inspired his own country but he inspired the world. And what is more, he did not do that just for his generation or the generations beyond but he did it for the rest of the world and that too for eternity.” Lord Bilimoria recalled that Mandela had often recited the famous poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley to his fellow prison inmates that conveyed, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” Lastly, Indian peer paraphrased his favourite ‘saying’ of Gandhi and said that it applied more to Mandela than anyone else he could have imagined. ‘Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits form your character, and your character determines your destiny.’ Raj Kanwar is a Dehra Dunbased author and freelance journalist.
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