Someone from the Parliament of the World's Religions suggested I meet with Arun Gandhi, and I did Thursday because, really, how often do you have the chance to talk with someone who lived with Mohandas K. Gandhi? The one detail that I couldn't fit into the column is his saying that Gandhi himself never used the title "Mahatma" that is often associated with him.
"He didn't like that," Gandhi said, pointing out that Mahatma is Sanskrit for "saint"—"He would say, 'I'm not a saint; I'm a normal person.' But the people of India decided that one, and he couldn't live it down."
Twelve is a tough age, and many a struggling preteen has been shipped off to relatives to help him adjust to this whirling ball of woe we call a world.
In Arun’s case, two things made his relocation unusual. First, the relative he was sent to live with was in India, thousands of miles from his home in South Africa.
And second, the relative was his grandfather, Mohandas K. Gandhi.
“We faced the brunt of prejudice and hate,” said Arun Gandhi, in Chicago to help plan the next Parliament of the World’s Religions, to be held in October 2015 in Utah. “Being a young man, I didn’t know how to deal with it. I was very angry and wanted eye-for-eye justice. My parents decided it was time to go to India and give me an opportunity to live with my grandfather.”
He lived with the world-famous pacifist for more than a year, until late 1947.
“He taught me some lessons in that period, and in many ways laid the foundation for my life,” Gandhi said.
What sort of lessons?
“The first lesson he taught me was understanding anger, to channel it constructively. He didn’t deny anger, didn’t say anger was bad and suppress it. He said, ‘Anger is good.’ Anger is to the human being what oil is to the automobile. If we don’t put fuel into an automobile, it won’t run. If we don’t have anger, we won’t do anything. Anger is good, but what is bad is the way we abuse anger.”
I had never heard it put that way.
"We channel anger the way we channel electricity. Anger is just as deadly and destructive as electricity, but also could be just as good and useful if channeled constructively. We have never been taught about anger, so we get mad and do things that sometimes change the course of our lives."
That makes anger very much like religion.
"Religion has been misused and abused, to create hate and prejudice and killing in the name of God," said Gandhi. "We need to do something to bring religion back to love, respect, understanding and acceptance of each other, not hate and prejudice."
Gandhi, 80, has devoted his life to fighting prejudice. He lives in Rochester, New York, but his Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute is based in Wauconda. Though his efforts are not without controversy. Gandhi was accused of prejudice himself in 2008, when he wrote that Jews and Israel were "the biggest players" in a culture of violence, which had critics recalling the pallid idiocy that his grandfather offered up to Germany's persecuted Jews in the 1930s, advising them to not flee, but to find joy in their oppression.
"There is a misconception I'm anti-Jew," Gandhi said. "I'm not. I'm anti-violence."
That's good enough for me. Though he promptly flipped the situation on its head.
"I wasn't condemning the Jews or Israel," he continued. "The fact is, unless there is peaceful solution to the problem, we are going to get bogged down . . . if we see what is happening in the Middle East today, a lot of it is because of the Palestinian situation."
Actually, the Palestinian situation is because of what has been happening in the Middle East, and anyone who believes otherwise, who dreams that should it by some miracle be settled, then the Middle East will become as placid as the Midwest, is still pointing fingers at Jews, though more slyly.
Not to dwell on that. I like the idea that the Israel/Palestinian knot is so twisted that even a hereditary advocate of pacifism can find himself spouting disguised bigotries.
I asked Gandhi about the importance of the Parliament, an institution that began in Chicago during the 1893 World's Fair.
"We have to get people to start talking, to begin understanding each other and reaching out to each other," he said.
Almost 125 years on, how's that coming?
"The second step is to create a plan to take this a few steps forward to the next level," he said. "It's going to take a long time and going to take a lot of effort."
Religion, to me, is not the solution to violence but an expression of the hostility people feel toward one another—conjuring a deity to put His divine thumbprint on your biases. Sure, you can pry religion away from that, just as you can use handguns as paperweights. But it's using an elaborate device to attempt something very simple.
Before I let him go, I had to ask: You were an angry teen when you lived with Gandhi. Your grandfather was a famous pacifist. He obviously didn't spank you, right? How were you disciplined when you misbehaved?
Gandhi laughed.
"In our family, there was no punishment," he said. "Penance. We would fast for a day or two. We were never punished."
"We channel anger the way we channel electricity. Anger is just as deadly and destructive as electricity, but also could be just as good and useful if channeled constructively. We have never been taught about anger, so we get mad and do things that sometimes change the course of our lives."
That makes anger very much like religion.
"Religion has been misused and abused, to create hate and prejudice and killing in the name of God," said Gandhi. "We need to do something to bring religion back to love, respect, understanding and acceptance of each other, not hate and prejudice."
Gandhi, 80, has devoted his life to fighting prejudice. He lives in Rochester, New York, but his Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute is based in Wauconda. Though his efforts are not without controversy. Gandhi was accused of prejudice himself in 2008, when he wrote that Jews and Israel were "the biggest players" in a culture of violence, which had critics recalling the pallid idiocy that his grandfather offered up to Germany's persecuted Jews in the 1930s, advising them to not flee, but to find joy in their oppression.
"There is a misconception I'm anti-Jew," Gandhi said. "I'm not. I'm anti-violence."
That's good enough for me. Though he promptly flipped the situation on its head.
"I wasn't condemning the Jews or Israel," he continued. "The fact is, unless there is peaceful solution to the problem, we are going to get bogged down . . . if we see what is happening in the Middle East today, a lot of it is because of the Palestinian situation."
Actually, the Palestinian situation is because of what has been happening in the Middle East, and anyone who believes otherwise, who dreams that should it by some miracle be settled, then the Middle East will become as placid as the Midwest, is still pointing fingers at Jews, though more slyly.
Not to dwell on that. I like the idea that the Israel/Palestinian knot is so twisted that even a hereditary advocate of pacifism can find himself spouting disguised bigotries.
I asked Gandhi about the importance of the Parliament, an institution that began in Chicago during the 1893 World's Fair.
"We have to get people to start talking, to begin understanding each other and reaching out to each other," he said.
Almost 125 years on, how's that coming?
"The second step is to create a plan to take this a few steps forward to the next level," he said. "It's going to take a long time and going to take a lot of effort."
Religion, to me, is not the solution to violence but an expression of the hostility people feel toward one another—conjuring a deity to put His divine thumbprint on your biases. Sure, you can pry religion away from that, just as you can use handguns as paperweights. But it's using an elaborate device to attempt something very simple.
Before I let him go, I had to ask: You were an angry teen when you lived with Gandhi. Your grandfather was a famous pacifist. He obviously didn't spank you, right? How were you disciplined when you misbehaved?
Gandhi laughed.
"In our family, there was no punishment," he said. "Penance. We would fast for a day or two. We were never punished."