MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, July 31, 2003: The East Indian community in Memphis has found an inspiring way to give back to their community. After raising US$100,000, they have funded an exhibit where the exemplary lives of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King can be remembered. To inaugurate the opening of the exhibit, India’s ambassador to the United States, Lalit Mansingh, was invited to the National Civil Rights Museum. It is known that Martin Luther King modelled his civil rights campaign of nonviolent passive resistance upon Gandhi’s tactics. In King’s words, “Gandhi was inevitable. If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable….We may ignore him at our own risk.” Gandhi’s life has been captured in video segments and in text on wall panels where patrons can view the exhibit when they exit from the museum’s main galleries. Beverly Robertson, museum executive director says, “The exhibit is a perfect fit for the museum’s expanded focus from civil rights to the broader umbrella of human rights.” Dr. Benjamin Hooks, museum chairman adds, “Mahatma Gandhi was perhaps the pre-eminent gospel of the nonviolent movement….King was a student of the nonviolent movement.” April, 2003, marked the 35th anniversary since Martin Luther King’s death and the exhibit was established to honor the ties between the two civil rights legends.