Gandhi's grandson speaks at Corning CC event Saturday
The world knows Mohandas Gandhi as a man of peace, revered by the Indian people for his successful fight against British colonial rule through nonviolent resistance. Even today, his countrymen and admirers around the world call him "mahatma" (venerable) and "Bapu" (father), and he has inspired millions of activists and truth-seekers.
Arun Gandhi knew him by another name: Grandfather.
Growing up in South Africa, young Arun faced a similar kind of racism from the white minority that blacks did. So in the final two years of Mahatma Gandhi's life, Arun lived with his grandfather in India, hearing the great man's wisdom first-hand and seeing those words in action.
After Gandhi's assassination by a Hindu nationalist in 1948, Arun later became a journalist for the Times of India for 30 years — but he never lost his passion for social change. He has helped to spread his grandfather's teachings through activism and speaking engagements around the world, and he has authored or edited several books on Gandhi and his teachings.
He also helped to establish the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, now located at the University of Rochester, and he has worked to uplift the poorest Indians through programs he established with his late wife, Sunanda.
Gandhi will share that message Saturday as the keynote speaker for Corning Community College's Discovery Day, a free event that celebrates the importance of liberal arts and sciences.
During a recent interview, Gandhi, now 80, discussed his grandfather's legacy of nonviolence and what humanity still needs to achieve peace.
QUESTION: You spent a couple of years living with your grandfather. Do you feel that you learned a lot during that time with it? It sounds like he imparted a lot of good lessons during that period.
GANDHI: Some of the lessons that he taught me helped me a lot dealing with my own problems. He didn't live long enough and I didn't learn enough from him — I hoped I would have had more time, but whatever time I had was quality time and I cherish that very much.
Q: It must have been very different living with him than the experiences you had in South Africa before you moved there.
GANDHI: Oh yes, definitely. South Africa at that time was full of hate and prejudice. It seemed like everybody hated everybody else. It was a very negative and unpleasant time to live in. But the time I spent with Grandfather was opposite — it was full of love and understanding and mutual respect.
Q: Do you feel like the world has made any advancement toward your grandfather's ideals since his time, or is it mostly grim news?
GANDHI: I think individually that people have made a lot of advance in that direction. People want peace, people want to live in harmony. The only problem is that we are so caught up in this political vortex, and politicians and the military-industrial complex combine to create all this violence in society because of profit-making, and we are not able to get out of that. That is something that troubles a lot of people.
Q: You've traveled around the world talking about the ideas of nonviolence. Do your travels give you hope for the future?
GANDHI: There is a lot of hope. The common people are aware of this and they want to change to have more peace and harmony in society. They don't know how to go about it and achieve it. When I speak to them about personal transformation and living a nonviolent lifestyle, it resonates with them and they feel empowered.
Individually, we do not have the capacity to change the whole world, but we do have the capacity to change ourselves. If we change ourselves and our habits, and we help people around us change, then that ripple effect will grow and eventually the world will change. But if we expect the world to change from the top down, that will never happen.
Q: What are some of the challenges that you think future generations will have to get closer to these ideals?
GANDHI: We've got to be willing to change the structure that we have. We've invested so much everywhere — the military-industrial complex creates so many weapons of mass destruction. That whole cycle of violence has totally captivated us. The people need to be aware that we can change that. It may mean a change in our lifestyle, because our economy everywhere in the world is so dependent on the military-industrial complex and the money it brings in, there may be a need to scale down our lifestyle a little — but I think that's a price worth paying if we really want peace and harmony in the world, where we can live with each other without conflict.
Q: Some of it is the materialism of the world as well, right?
GANDHI: Yes, materialism and the military-industrial complex — the two aspects have really changed human life and generated a lot of violence. That violence has translated into a culture of violence that dominates every aspect of human life — our entertainment is violent, our speech is violent, our religion is violent. Everything about us is violent, and that's not natural. It's unnatural for a civilization.
Q: The M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence is at the University of Rochester. What is some of the work that's done there?
GANDHI: We are promoting nonviolence through various means. We hold seminars and workshops. We also do a lot of community work with the inner-city young people and teaching them about nonviolence. For every little thing that we do every day, we try to transform people and educate them.
Q: You'll be speaking here at Corning Community College's Discovery Day. What is the message you like to share at events like this that you hope people hear and take home with them.
GANDHI: Usually I share the lessons I've learned and how they transformed my life. I encourage people to think about that and see how they can use those lessons in their own lives to inspire change. So far, people have accepted it very much and I have received very good response to it. I think there's probably something I'm saying that resonates with them and makes them think.
Q: As your grandfather once said, it's about planting the seeds and not knowing how they'll grow later.
GANDHI: Exactly. Sometimes we get so fixated on the end result that we don't take any action at all. We don't have to worry about the end result — that will happen whatever is going to happen. We need to keep taking action, keep planting the seeds, keep influencing people. One person at a time, the change will come.
About Discovery Day
Corning Community College's free event "Discovery Day: A Celebration of the Liberal Arts and Sciences" will be held on campus in the Commons from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Faculty from various disciplines will offer hands-on presentations:
• Psyched on Psych: Explore your personality by participating in experiments and surveys.
• Digital Art: Discover how to distort reality through puppet warping.
• Healthy You: Mindful Morsels: Chocolate Meditation and Shaking the Sugar Blues Bingo.
• Early Childhood: Children's Work is Play.
• Nursing: Be an emergency room nurse and treat a simulation mannequin.
• Sciences: Discover chemistry, human anatomy, and the microbial world.
• Engineering: Become part of a human calculator.
Participants are invited to a roundtable discussion with alumni of the elementary education program and can watch the annual firing of the college's anagama wood kiln, which uses an ancient Japanese firing process to paint the surfaces of the clay with fire and natural glazes.
Sacred Waters will present an original production of music, dance, poetry and art celebrating the region's water resources as part of the college's Year of Water initiative.
The keynote presentation from Arun Gandhi will be held at 1 p.m.
Reservations are appreciated but not required; go online to www.corning-cc.edu/discoveryday or call (607) 962-9424.
Follow Chris Kocher on Twitter: @RealChrisKocher.