Gandhi was immediately struck by the speaker's invocation of God, and told the meeting that anyone who voted for the resolution by invoking God as his witness would in fact be making a solemn pledge, from which there could be no going back.
Krishna Mohan Banerjee, in his Dialogues on the Hindu Philosophy, has the Samkhya speaker saying, "the existence of God cannot be established because there is no proof.... nor can it be proved by Inference, because you cannot exhibit an analogous instance".
Through allegory, the speaker accuses God of unjustly punishing the young, selfless King, whose premature death ended a career that would have unfolded in stark contrast to the majority of the ministers and bishops of the Church of England, whom the speaker condemns as depraved, materialistic, and selfish.
Certainly not John Fitzpatrick Mahoney, speaker of the House ("and God help the country") and as unscrupulous a politician as you'd hope to find outside a federal prison cell.
The Parliament was partially focused on climate change, and many speakers emphasized how the integrity of God's creation is at risk.
"We are now forming suicide cells to make jihad in the name of God," said a speaker in the video using the classical Arabic favored by Al Qaeda.
"Our fight is for the sake of God," said one speaker in Rabaa al-Adawiya.
Their phrase "I and I" can be used in place of "I," "we" or Rastafarians as a group, but generally expresses the oneness of the speaker with God and all people.
Joseph Sebarenzi is the former speaker of the Rwandan Parliament and author of God Sleeps in Rwanda: A Journey of Transformation (Atria, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, 2009).
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