LEGACY

Legacy

Rizal was a contemporary of Gandhi, Tagore and Sun Yat Sen who also advocated liberty through peaceful means rather than by violent revolution. Coinciding with the appearance of those other leaders, Rizal from an early age had been enunciating in poems, tracts and plays, ideas all his own of modern nationhood as a practical possibility in Asia. In the Noli he stated that if European civilization had nothing better to offer, colonialism in Asia was doomed.

Though popularly mentioned, especially on blogs, there is no evidence to suggest that Gandhi or Nehru may have corresponded with Rizal, neither have they mentioned him in any of their memmoirs or letters. 

As a political figure, José Rizal was the founder of La Liga Filipina, a civic organization that subsequently gave birth to the Katipunan led byAndrés Bonifacio,, a secret society which would start the Philippine Revolution against Spain that eventually laid the foundation of theFirst Philippine Republic under Emilio Aguinaldo. He was a proponent of achieving Philippine self-government peacefully through institutional reform rather than through violent revolution, and would only support "violent means" as a last resort. Rizal believed that the only justification for national liberation and self-government was the restoration of the dignity of the people, saying "Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?"

Rizal, through his reading of Morga and other western historians, knew of the genial image of Spain's early relations with his people. In his writings, he showed the disparity between the early colonialists and those of his day, with the latter's injustices giving rise to Gomburza and the Philippine Revolution of 1896. The English biographer, Austin Coates, and writer, Benedict Anderson, believe that Rizal gave the Philippine revolution a genuinely national character; and that Rizal's patriotism and his standing as one of Asia's first intellectuals have inspired others of the importance of a national identity to nation-building.

Several titles were bestowed on him: "the First Filipino", "Greatest Man of the Brown Race", among others. The Order of the Knights of Rizal, a civic and patriotic organization, boasts of dozens of chapters all over the globe . There are some remote-area religious sects who claim him as a sublimation of Christ. In September 1903, he was canonised as a saint in the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, however it was revoked in the 1950s.

During his exile, he became a noted biologist, having discovered rare animal species, notably the Philippine Gliding Lizard. He sent specimens secretly to Europe and even proposed a binomial name for the creature (which is still used today).

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