India Prime Minister Narendra Modi has become the second world figure to support the creation and operation of a privately funded Eternal Gandhi Museum planned for southwest Houston.
“The Eternal Gandhi museum will be a prized cultural landmark in Houston,” said Modi, leader of the world’s most populous democracy, during his weekend visit to Houston. “I have been associated with this effort for a while. It will surely make Gandhi’s thoughts popular among the youth.”
His Holiness The Dalai Lama, world leader of Tibetan Buddhism and the Tibetan people, endorsed the museum project in January letter to its local backers.
Gandhi was the Indian leader whose non-violent resistance movement led India to independence from British Rule and inspired later civil rights movements in other nations.
After Modi’s speech Sunday to about 50,000 people at NRG Stadium, Modi met with Indian-American business leaders and unveiled a plaque stating that he had symbolically participated in the ground-breaking for the museum, which will take place in southwest Houston. ANI News video of the unveiling is here.
Mayor Sylvester Turner visited Rajghat, the Gandhi Memorial in New Delhi, during the Greater Houston Partnership trade mission he led to India in November 2018.
The mayor related the Eternal Gandhi Museum project in Houston to his visit to Gandhi’s living quarters and the garden where Gandhi was assassinated in 1948.
“The kind words from Prime Minister Modi and His Holiness The Dalai Lama help us show that here in the nation’s most diverse city, we live the values of tolerance, inclusion and pluralism, which were among Gandhi’s most important teachings. We are a welcoming city, where one of every four residents is foreign-born and where we build relationships rather than walls,” the mayor said.
