The Pacifist Memorial - The Unwelcom Gandhi

The Boston Globe
The Unwelcome Gandhi.
Gandhi Disturbs Sherborn's Peace of Mind,
by Alex Beam

Sherborn - The effect is quite jarring. I am driving through horse country, this tranquil land of 3-acre zoning, as the road winds gently down into the center of town. I pass by Sherborn's dignified war memorial, a baleful Madonna and child mourning the fallen heroes of this tiny bedroom community. And then just 50 yards ahead, I catch sight of ... It.

"It" is clearly visible - indeed, too visible - from the road: a small, open plaza, with six low walls radiating away from a central patio. This monument, the recently unveiled Pacifist Memorial, has a companion statue to the sad-eyed Madonna: An 8-foot-tall bronze effigy of Mohandas K. Gandhi.

Can you imagine! The effrontery! Needless to say, the town is up in arms. Vandals have defaced the site with blue paint. The chairman of the Zoning Board recently resigned his post in order to challenge the Gandhi statue's building permit. (The statue turned out not to need a permit.)

"This is a very strong conservative area where people go back to the Revolutionary War," says Alex Dowse, whose family has lived in Sherborn since 1775. (The Dowse genealogical table hangs on a wall in Town Hall, alongside the many recruiting posters from our nation's foreign entanglements.) The statue "is an affront to the sacrifices of the people of this town for freedom."

Hear, hear! Where will it all end? What simpering, second-rate peacenik will they choose to eulogize next? Mother Teresa? Martin Luther King?

There are, of course, certain ironies attending Mr. G's chilly reception in this elite suburban enclave. One could argue that there are superficial similarities between the man whom Winston Churchill dismissed as a "half-naked fakir" and the storied heroes of our own glorious revolution. All struggled against British imperialism, albeit in different eras. And they succeeded. But the comparisons end there.

Whereas our valiant, whiskey-inflamed yeomen grabbed their muskets and sniped at many a retreating Redcoat from behind many a sheltering chestnut tree, Gandhi espoused different tactics entirely. As a political leader, his tools were nonviolent resistance, boycotts and hunger strikes. Sure, he freed 100 million people, but at the end of the day he was just another yellow-belly who never picked up a gun.

Yes, there are certain ironies. But it seems fair to say they are lost on the burghers of Sherborn.

The Pacifist Memorial and the offending statue stand on property belonging to 47-year-old Lewis Randa, whom his neighbors describe as a cross between a 1960s flower child and P. T. Barnum. It is a description that fits Randa to a T.

Interviewed inside his 3-acre Strawberry Fields compound that houses his Peace Abbey and Life Experience School, Randa tells of pulling many a financial rabbit out of the hat to give peace a chance in Sherborn. Yoko Ono once provided a packet of money to save his mortgage. On another occasion, Senate President William Bulger and conservative Republican David Locke teamed up to restore key operating funds for the school, which administers some special education programs for the state.

Randa is somewhat paranoid, but, to be fair, he does have enemies. Had he been required to obtain a building permit for his statue, "there's no way the town would have allowed it," he admits. Even though Randa unveiled his plans for a Pacifist Memorial at a splashy groundbreaking ceremony in February attended by poet Maya Angelou, "nobody took me seriously," he says. "People thought I was installing a new septic system."

Randa professes to see the brighter side of human nature: "My neighbors are good and decent people. They will come to love this statue." And if they don't? "Sherborn will be known either as the town that has a Gandhi statue, or as the town that took one down."