Which tiger do you feed?

29 May 2009 door Tamar van Steenbergen

tamar-interviews-gandhi

Now 75 years old yet still touring the world, Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, is committed to continuing his grandfather's work: creating a world of peace through nonviolence and sharing views with everyone who wants to listen. He was born to Indian parents in South Africa, where the colour of his skin made him subject to racially motivated violence; he was neither as dark skinned as the native Africans, nor as fair skinned as the Europeans. He moved to India at the age of twelve, where copious poverty, violence, and his grandfather's teachings strongly influenced him to dedicate his life to creating a world without violence and poverty. By encouraging him to draw a daily growing violence tree, his grandfather taught Gandhi how to recognise violence in daily life.

"It was a way of doing introspection," he tells. "When we talk about violence, we only talk about physical violence, but we also commit a lot of non-physical, passive violence. I had to draw a tree on the principle of genealogy: ‘violence' as the parent and ‘physical violence' and ‘passive violence' as the two branches, and every day I had to examine everything I had experienced during that day and put them in their appropriate places on that tree.

"Passive violence is something we tend to ignore because half of the time we don't even know that it is violence-looking down on people, discriminating against people, consuming, over-consuming, and wasting resources, for example. Thousands of things you do every day, consciously and unconsciously. Within a few months, I had filled up the entire wall in my room with acts of passive violence."

Negative thoughts people have about others are a form of passive violence. "It is the starting point, the breeding ground for hate and prejudice.

"If we really want to create peace in the world, we cannot create it until we create it within ourselves, and we can only do that if we stop committing violence, passive or physical, against other people."

Anger is not necessarily linked to violence. "The only bad thing is how we abuse anger. Anger drives us like fuel does a car. In Hindu tradition, they say that in every one of us there are two tigers, one representing evil and one representing good. They are constantly at war with one another. And one grandson asked his grandfather, ‘Which one wins the war?' The grandfather said, ‘The one you feed.'"

Gandhi does not only tour the world to give lectures and tell people about nonviolence. He is running several projects to help people living in poverty, one of them in India.

"I lived in India for 30 years before I moved to the United States. During that period, my wife and I did a lot of social work for the poor people. An example was taking newborn, unwanted babies who were abandoned on the streets just days after they were born under our wing. Obviously, these babies were born to unwed mothers, because there is a stigma for women who become pregnant before marriage. Over a period of about ten years, we found nearly 127 such babies who were still alive. We signed them up for adoption in various countries.

"Another example of our social work was helping the poor people in every way we could, like helping them become independent. This self-help programme succeeded. But recently, after my wife passed away, my children and I decided that we wanted to create a memorial for her because she was always so considerate. We thought of creating a school for the very poor children, but it occurred to us that we couldn't just take a child from their family, because experience showed us that once children are educated, they're too ashamed of their families' poverty and they'll break away from them. So now, instead of breaking up families, we want to do something that helps the entire family and keeps them together. We would be trying to lift the entire family out of poverty by giving them basic education: reading, writing, doing arithmetic, and various types of vocational training. Then they'll be able to start a small business, make things and sell them, make a life."

Gandhi, his children, and grandchildren all work together for a better world, and despite his offspring saying it is time for him to retire, he is not planning on doing so any time soon.

"I can't see myself sitting at home, not doing anything. I have been blessed with a good health so far and I feel that as long as I can do this and people want to listen to my stories and my message, I should continue."
Some quotes in this article have been slightly altered for editorial purposes. Please find the raw transcription of the entire interview at Tamar interview transcription.

Posted in EMMA, Interview