New Delhi, July 19 (IANS): Prime Minister Narendra Modi has condoled the death of veteran US Congressman John Lewis, saying his legacy will continue to endure and inspire.

In a tweet, the Prime Minister said, "We mourn the loss of US Congressman John Lewis, a champion of civil rights, non-violence and Gandhian values. His legacy will continue to endure and inspire."

Lewis, the son of sharecroppers who survived a brutal beating by police during a landmark 1965 march in Selma, Alabama - a southeastern US state that's home to significant landmarks from the American civil rights movement - to become a towering figure of the civil rights movement and a longtime US Congressman, died on Friday after a six-month battle with cancer. He was 80.

Lewis, a Democrat who served as the US representative for Georgia's 5th Congressional District for more than three decades, was widely seen as a moral conscience of Congress because of his decades-long embodiment of non-violent fight for civil rights.

His passionate oratory was backed by a long record of action that included, by his count, more than 40 arrests while demonstrating against racial and social injustice. In 2011, after more than 50 years on the front lines of the civil rights movement, Lewis received the nation's highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, placed around his neck by America's first black President, Barack Obama.