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BYLINE: CHRIS DORNIN New Hampshire Union
Leader
DATE: February 6, 2009
PUBLICATION: New Hampshire
Union Leader (Manchester,
NH)
PAGE: 03
By CHRIS DORNIN New Hampshire Union Leader
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CONCORD -- One hundred fifty people
attended the 9th annual "Keeping the Dream Alive" banquet last
night to honor the vision of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr.
The N.H. Cultural Diversity Awareness Council hosted the event and
thanked newly elected U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen for helping this state set
aside a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. She signed the enabling act a
decade ago as the first woman governor.
Her husband Bill accepted the award because she was busy in Washington.
The affair had a distinct Indian-American flavor, including several
performances of Indian music and dance by young people. The keynote
speaker, Ambassador Prabhu Dayal, heads the Indian Consul in New York and cited
the profound influence of the martyred Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi on
Dr. King's civil rights movement.
Dayal quoted this passage from a speech the Rev. King delivered in India
in 1959, calling for peaceful struggle against tyranny. The American had
witnessed for himself what Gandhi's death, supreme restraint and courage
had won- freedom from British rule.
"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," King said on Indian
national radio. "In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his
life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral
structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the
law of gravitation."
Dayal said King, who was assassinated in 1968, made possible the recent
election of Barack Obama as this country's first African-American
president.
"His dream has come to fulfillment," Dayal said. "Rev.
Martin Luther King was deeply impressed by the pacifism of Mahatma Gandhi
and made it an integral part of his movement. Only someone who is strong
can take on himself the suffering of being non-violent."
Before his talk, the ambassador accepted a ceremonial peace pipe from
Native American George Thomas of Massachusetts,
who chanted and danced a blessing over the gift in his ancestral tongue.
India-born Kedar Gupta of Hollis also spoke. The chief executive of
Advanced Renewable Energy founded the successful high-tech firm, GT
Solar, which he left two years ago after growing it from a $1,000
investment into a 120-employee global operation. Both companies do much
of their business abroad.
"We created a group (at GT Solar) that spoke every kind of language,
people from Russia,
from China, from Japan, from Europe,"
he said. "That's what I'm proud of. I came to this country with
little in my pocket. Martin Luther King told us to dream big."
Rep. Linda Foster, the House deputy speaker, greeted the Diversity
Council on behalf of Gov. John Lynch, praised its commitment to justice
and equality.
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