Speculating about what a modern-day Gandhi or King might be doing today requires knowing what they would not be doing. In their own day, Gandhi and King did not follow traditional paths to power because they were not seeking worldly power for themselves.

A lack of self-interest set Gandhi and King apart from other statesmen in three ways:

1. They did not profit from their efforts to reform society.
2. They did not run for public office.
3. They did not delegate unpleasant and dangerous work to others.

Voluntary poverty
Each man made his commitment to voluntary poverty quite clear. For more than 12 years, from December 1955 to April 1968, Martin Luther King was essentially a full-time volunteer for the Civil Rights Movement. As president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a nonprofit organization he cofounded and led, King collected a symbolic salary: $1 per year. At an SCLC meeting in 1962, two board members suggested that President King collect a real salary. King declined.

“I think I get along fairly well by speaking and writing,” King said of the $6,000 per year he earned from those activities. “I must never give people the impression that I am out for big money. …” (Bearing the Cross) Awarded $56,000 along with the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, King gave it all to the Civil Rights Movement.

Taking a job in South Africa in 1893, Gandhi served the Indian community selflessly in its effort to earn equal rights in the British colonies there. In 1901, when Gandhi decided to return to India, the South African Indian community feted Gandhi, presenting him with many “gold and silver objects and diamond ornaments,” including a very valuable gold necklace for his wife, Kasturba.

After the party, Gandhi “went home and spent a sleepless night. The gifts might be construed as payment for services which he had rendered with no thought of material gain.” The next day, Gandhi surrendered the gifts to trustees, asking that they create a fund to aid the Indian community. “So it was, and the fund, augmented from other sources, served South African Indians for decades thereafter.” (Life of Mahatma Gandhi)

Civil servants, not elected officials
Not only were Gandhi and King uninterested in public office, they were often reluctant to take on leadership roles at all.

During the election of officers to the Montgomery Improvement Association, the group that formed as a result of Rosa Parks’s arrest, King initially resisted election as president, accepting reluctantly by saying “If you think I can render some service, I will.” A few weeks earlier, King had turned down an offer to serve as president of the local NAACP chapter in Montgomery. (Bearing the Cross)

In 1967, several people asked King to run for president. “My role,” King said, “operates outside the realm of partisan politics. I have no interest in any political candidacy. … I should serve as a conscience of all the parties and all of the people, rather than be a candidate myself.” (Bearing the Cross)

When India gained independence in 1947, Gandhi told coworkers that going into power politics “would spell ruin” for them, himself included. “Those who are holding the reins of power today would easily have stepped aside and made room for me,” Gandhi explained, “but I do not want to take power into my hands. By abjuring power and devoting ourselves to pure, selfless service of the voters we can guide and influence them. It would give us far more real power than we shall have by going into the government.” (Life of Mahatma Gandhi)

Fighting on the front lines
Gandhi spent nearly 7 years in prison overall; King was arrested 30 times. Neither had bodyguards, and both risked their lives when necessary to help others earn equal rights for themselves by means of peaceful struggles.

So who among us is working for the public good but not taking a salary, not running for office, and not shunning the grunt work? Hard to say. Perhaps a few pure souls today are laboring in obscurity, saying “No” to all these worldly temptations. But as soon as any would-be Gandhi or King decides to run for office, to take a salary for community work, or to shun the grunt work, know that a modern-day Gandhi or King would never do any of those things.