Arun Gandhi - Pencils, Violence and Humanity

Birte

"The gift of anger" von Arun Gandhi ist ein kleines, feines Buch, dass den Weg in meinem eh schon viel zu vollem Koffer fand, um ehrlich zu sein, weil es schlichtweg das Schmalste von meinem Büchertisch war und somit den wenigsten Platz wegnahm. Ich war auf dem Weg in die Berge, um mich zu erholen. Letztendlich war es eine der besten Entscheidungen, die ich in meinem Leben, wenn auch zufällig, getroffen habe. Denn dieses Buch begleitete mich jeden Morgen um kurz nach fünf mit einem Kapitel in den Tag. Und ich musste mich als Schnellleserin zwingen, das Buch nicht auf einmal zu verschlingen. Diese Worte des Enkelsohns Mahatma Gandhis berührten mich zutiefst. So sehr, dass ich mir fest vornahm, ihn kennenzulernen. Wieder zuhause schrieb ich ihm und noch in der selben Woche bekam ich seine Antwort. Manchmal ist es im Leben so, dass man einen Fremden trifft, aber man das Gefühl hat, dass man sich schon seit Ewigkeiten kennt. So war das von Anfang an zwischen uns. Dann hatten wir die erste Videokonferenz, ich in London. Arun im Osten von Bombay, auf dem Land. Ich war hin und weg von unserem Gespräch, es hatte eine enorme Dynamik und Nähe zugleich. Leider gab es bei der Aufnahme des Calls solche Tonprobleme, dass ich dieses Gespräch nicht für diesen Podcast verwenden konnte. Verloren sind seine starken Aufnahmen natürlich nicht. Daraufhin verabredeten wir uns bei meinem nächsten Besuch in New York und wieder kam etwas dazwischen. Als ob es einfach nicht sein sollte. Unglaublich. Und dann kam Corona und legte uns lahm. So dauerte es noch einmal drei weitere Jahre, bis wir uns endlich zum ersten Mal tatsächlich sahen. Bei ihm zuhause, in Rochester. Am 2. Mai ist Arun Gandhi in Indien gestorben. Sein Rat, den er mir bei unserem letzten Treffen mitgegeben hat, war, die Veränderung, Birte, die beginnt bei dir, fang an, geh in Vorlage und erwarte nicht, dass der andere damit beginnt. So Arun, I have to start with this first. It's an extraordinary pair of glasses. Very special.

Gandhi

Thank you.

Birte

Do you see how it easy you can become the sexiest man alive? And there is also, the glasses are also a symbol for your grandfather. And we have the picture above?

Gandhi

Yes,

Birte

Yeah.

Gandhi

Yeah, these are special to me also.

Birte

So definitely, the glasses are not the symbol which comes first to my mind when I'm thinking of your grandfather. Above all, it's the non-violence he stands for. And that's the point for you. Could you tell us something about your work? I know you are going to jails and also talk to offenders.

Gandhi

Yes, the institute that I started initially in Memphis, Tennessee. I moved it to Rochester after I came to live here. And it's more more or less independent. They don't depend on me very much. But whenever they need any advice or help I step in. But one of the programs that I helped start there was to go and visit the prisons and take this message there. And the excuse that we had to go into the prison was a programme that I started in 1998 to commemorate my grandfather's 50th Memorial anniversary, and Martin Luther King's 30th Memorial anniversary. My grandfather's anniversaries on 30th of January, Martin Luther King on fourth of April. And I connected the two anniversaries in that 64 day period. I called it a season for non violence. And I just went around the country and I spoke to people and communities. And I said, do whatever you can during the 64 days to take us a few steps closer to the dream that both of them had, the dream of creating peace and harmony in the world. So if you can do something to take us closer to that dream, it will be meaningful. I didn't expect this but you know, it kind of caught on very much. And now we have nearly 400 communities all over the country who are observing this season for non violence. And so I decided to take this into the prison and get the prisons involved in it. And I was lucky that in Groveland, which is about an hour away from here, the superintendent there was very sympathetic and wanted some constructive programme and she agreed to try this out. So we started in Groveland. And within a few months, there was a marked difference in the prison. The superintendent says, the violence in the prison had reduced by 75 per cent.

Birte

So what exactly happens in these talks with the prisoners?

Gandhi

Well, first of all, what we did was to treat them as human beings. You know, the first time when we went there, and, you know, we were three of us who went in, and they were all nearly 200 of them. And we shook hands with them, and we called them by their names. And they started crying. Yeah, these big people who are in for murder, and all that kind of thing. They started literally crying, tears were streaming down. And I thought that I said something or did something that they didn't like, and so I apologised. And I said, you know, I don't know what I did. But I'm sorry that you're crying. They said, No, we are crying because you're the first one who treated us like a human being that we otherwise in the prison, we are just numbers. They refer to us by a number and bully us and make us do things but you're treating us like a human being. So that was the first step. But then we just sit and talk. And I explained to them, what Martin Luther King's dream was, what my grandfather's dream was, and why non violence and you know, if they had any questions, we talked about that. And it just grew. And then I did took in next step. And that was to get people from outside, to come into the prison and spend a whole day with people from inside. We did that. And we would get about 20, 25 people from outside and 20, 25 prisoners. And in a big room like this, we would all sit together and just chat and talk about like we are doing here now. And that also, you know, made them very, and especially because we spent the whole day, the prison authorities hosted lunch for us. It would be simple sandwiches and, and chips and things like that. But we had this kind of restaurant style with the table and four chairs and, and we made sure that at every table there were two prisoners and two outsiders. And we would sit and talk to build up a relation. So all of that kind of helped. We didn't talk to them that you got to behave. And you got to do this. We just talked about general things. That success in Groveland prison, the authorities in Albany, the ministry or whatever, department that takes care of them. They heard about this, and they came to Albany to monitor what we were doing. And after they were satisfied with it, they asked me if we could expand it to other prisons. And I said yes, I don't mind doing it. So we, we went to five prisons. We were working in Groveland, ?, Attica, and to others, so five prisons we were working on for nearly five years, and all of them showed a great deal of change.

Birte

After the work you have done.

Gandhi

But then COVID came and they locked down everything. And so last two years, we haven't been able to go.

Birte

Yes, we have to find back to life. Yes. That leads me to the question, you deal with a lot of people that have been part or even the source of a lot of violence. Also, there's obviously still a lot of violence in the world long after your grandfather started to fight against it. And now even a war in Europe, between Russia and Ukraine. Does that make you lose confidence sometimes?

Gandhi

Yes, it does. It makes me wonder and I've been spending nearly 30 years trying to teach and talk about non-violence and people don't seem to understand, I don't know. I am maybe generalising. I can't say that people themselves don't understand. But I think the problem is so vast and so deep rooted that, you know, even if a few people understand, they don't know how to deal with that. There are so many things that we have to think about. First of all, as I said earlier, our relationships are very bad. They are all dependent on what am I going to get from it. So our relationships are based on exploiting each other. If I want something from you, I'm going to exploit you until I get it, and when I don't get it anymore, then I can break up the relationship. So exploiting nature, exploiting resources, exploiting people, that's become a way of life today. And when you exploit each other, and, and nature and everything, you're gonna create conflict. And we see that conflict with nature, we have exploited so much, that now we are wondering how to deal with this environmental problems that we have. People we have exploited and divided so much over the years, that we don't look at people as human beings, but we define them by their colour, or their race or their religion and politics. And you know, that all those divisions and the differences, the economic disparities that we see in the world, all of this adds up to create a major conflict. And and that keeps, you know, erupting every now and then.

Birte

Yeah, yes, I agree in what you say. What do you think is the reason for the increase of self centredness in our society? Do you think this is a general development?

Gandhi

It comes from development, I mean, you know, over the years, we have been taught, I mean, even when we parent our children, we tell our children, you got to be successful in life. Don't think about anybody else, think about yourself and get to the top. That's the message that we give to the children when they're growing up.

Birte

So your opinion, is that starts at home, in the family?

Gandhi

Yeah, yeah, it does. And, and the family is influenced by the society and the society is influenced by what's going on in the rest of the world. So, you know, everybody's exploiting everybody else. And we've become so selfish and self centred, that we don't care about what's happening to the other person. As long as I'm happy. I've got everything that I need, I don't care what happens to the rest. But we can't live like that and our national foreign policies. Every government in the world has a foreign policy that is dependent on what is good for them. And they will do what is good for them. That means that we look at the rest of the world as something that we can exploit to get what is good for us. No country in the world can survive on its own. We are all here together. And we can survive only by helping each other and making this world a better place.

Birte

So what can you give, do you have any advice for the people not to despair here?

Gandhi

Yes, I think we have the capacity, we have compassion, what we unfortunately what we do is all the good thing, the compassion, the love, the respect that we have, we suppress it.

Birte

Why? Why do we do this?

Gandhi

because the world requires us to be strong and successful. Success is measured by how much we have, what kind of cars we drive, what kind of a home we have, how much money we have in the bank, that is the measure of success. And so if everyone is going to look at that way of success, then it's going to create all these problems.

Birte

When I talk to people about this, I often hear one of two things from them. On one hand, many are unsure whether they can even make a difference on their own. On the other hand, many struggle with making a positive change, because they think that in our society, aggressive self centred behavior is required in order to be successful. What is your opinion on this?

Gandhi

Yeah, I'd say for that. You know, we have many examples in history where one person has made a tremendous change. When Jesus started his ...

Birte

His mission.

Gandhi

Mission in life, he didn't think of how many people are going to be affected by this, who's going to follow me, that thought didn't come to him, he just started doing what he thought he had to do, because that was the right thing to do. And look what's happened today, billions of people are following his message. The same thing can be said on a smaller scale with my grandfather, with Dr. Martin Luther King, they were all individuals, all one person who felt that they had something to do, something to make this society a better place. And they did it and it had some impact. So there are these examples. The trouble is we don't have that confidence within ourselves. And so we just follow like sheep, because everybody's going in that direction, I'm going to walk in the same direction too.

Birte

Like many others, I grew up with a famous saying of your grandfather, be the change you want to see in the world. It sounds really simple when you say it like this. So how can we have such a hard time getting into action? Also, we know that if we don't change our behaviour, it will most likely end in a catastrophe.

Gandhi

Yeah. Because we don't live our own lives. We live for somebody else, we are always thinking about what will they think about us? How will we, other people look at us, we don't care about those things, we have to live our own lives. And we have to make the right decisions. So as long as we give our lives over to society, to decide where it's going to go, we are never going to change. If we are masters of our life, because it's our life to live, not somebody else's, the government is not going to come and and feed me. I've got to do something to feed myself. You know, we have to live our own life, and make that decision that we want, whether the other person is going to be a good person or not. It's not my business.

Birte

But this is very difficult for people to change this point.

Gandhi

It is difficult because we are so set in our way of life.

Birte

I imagine that many young people are struggling with topics like making a difference, and caring too much about what others think, is there general advice you can give to those people?

Gandhi

Well, for everyone, it's a different thing is there's no, you know, I can't give you one one way of for everybody to follow.

Birte

I understand. But is there a big idea or a big sentence where we can you know, where we can get orientation?

Gandhi

Yeah, I would say that change can happen only with the individual because we are the masters of our life. And we can make change ourselves. I can't change you without changing myself.

Birte

Oh, this is important.

Gandhi

Yeah, when I change myself, then, you know, like, famous words of my grandfather is that we have to live what we want others to learn. And we can't live one way and then tell people to live another way. So it's through your own example, that people learn and follow.

Birte

What do you think we need more, or different role models?

Gandhi

We are, I think personally, we are our best role model. That is if we live properly, and live in a positive way, making a difference in other people's lives. In other words, we need to bring back all the compassion and respect and love and all the good positive feelings that are there within us which we are suppressing. We need and we need to bring that back out again and suppress the negativity. And when we do that, you will find a tremendous change not only in your life, but in the lives of all the people around you.

Birte

So little steps every day. This is comparable to grassroots movement, isn't it? So for example, we start changing our behaviour in our immediate surroundings, meaning with our family at home, then we continue at our job, school or even traffic, right?

Gandhi

If we think that change can come from the top down, the government can legislate and make a law and change everybody. That never happened.

Birte

We have to take responsibility. And don't accept excuses. It's so easy. And now ..

Gandhi

Yeah, we make excuses because we, we really don't want to disturb the lifestyle that we have gotten used to.

Birte

I have the impression that change often comes more easily in times of crisis, because in these times, we are thrown out of our comfort zone and forced to think about how we can improve our situation. What do you think about this?

Gandhi

Yeah, maybe. But at some stage in in every case, we have to make that personal decision that we want to change. And sometimes the change is easy. And sometimes the change is difficult. But it's again, you know, there are so many complex issues that control us, and dominate us that it's not always easy to change all of that at one stage, we have to keep changing things. So sometimes the easy things would be changed very quickly. But there are some difficult situations we face. And that was going to take time. But it's a, a lifelong attempt to keep changing. You know, like my grandfather used to say, nonviolence is such a vast philosophy, that every day I wake up and I find new things, and right up to his assassination. He said, I don't think I've really understood the entire philosophy, its tools, there's so much more to explore in. Now, when I go out, and I speak about nonviolence to people, they think nonviolence is just not going to war, or not fighting with anybody. I'm nonviolent, I'm peaceful. But we are committing violence in different ways. They get lost, they say what do you mean, I'm not fighting with anybody. I'm not exploiting anybody. I said you are, you don't know it. But our whole life is geared in such a way that we are exploiting it. And I tell them the story of the pencil, when I was living with grandfather, and I was 12 years old, and you know, he had given me a notebook and a pencil to do my lessons with. And one day I was coming back from school, and I had this little three inch butterbur pencil, and I said, I ...

Birte

Need a new one?

Gandhi

I need a new one. This is too small. And I just threw it away because I was so sure that he would give me a new pencil. But that evening, when I asked him for a new pencil, instead of giving me a new one, he's kept asking me about the old one, where did you throw it away? And why did you throw it away? And and I couldn't understand why he was making such a fuss over a little thing like a pencil until he told me to go out and look for it. And it was already getting dark outside. And I said you don't expect me to look for a pencil in the dark. He said, Oh, yes, I do. Here's a flashlight. And he sent me out with a flashlight to look for this pencil and I think I spent about two hours searching for it. And when I finally found it and brought it to him, he said now I want you to sit here and learn two very important lessons. The first lesson is that even in the making of a simple thing like a pencil, we use a lot of the world's natural resources. And when we throw them away, we are throwing away the world's natural resources. And that is violence against nature. And the second lesson is that because in an affluent society, we can afford to buy all these things in bulk, we overconsume the resources of the world. And because we overconsume them, we are depriving people elsewhere, of these resources and they have to live in poverty. And that is violence against humanity. And we see this happening all the time. I mean the disparities between countries, African countries and Asian countries, their lifestyle is so different and so impoverished. And yet we enjoy our life when we don't think it's our responsibility to do anything for them. And that is violence. It's passive violence. So to make me understand this thoroughly, he made me draw a genealogical tree of violence, with violence as the grandparent, and passive violence and physical violence as the two branches. I had to build this tree every day, every day before I went to bed, I had to analyse and examine everything that I had experienced during the day. Now, if it was kind of violence, where physical forces used, you know, beating and punching and kicking, then that would go into physical violence. But if it's the kind of violence where we don't use any physical force, and yet we hurt people, consciously or unconsciously, that is passive violence. And the way I had to determine whether this is passive violence or not, is to ask myself the simple question, if somebody were to do this to me, would I be hurt by it? Or would I be helped by it and if I came to the conclusion that it would hurt me, then that was passive violence.

Birte

When you say this ? is for that to understand, you need empathy, and compassion. And sometimes I have the feeling that we lost it, that we lost the feeling, for the other ...

Gandhi

We have not lost it, we have suppressed it. Because the world expects us to be strong. And to be brave, ...

Birte

But aren't friendly people, the strong ones in this case, personally, I feel like a person that is aggressive, only shows one of their weaknesses, rather than appearing strong. Do you know what I mean?

Gandhi

Yeah, I mean, that is the right thing, but in a different way, we are overwhelmed by that aggressive person, we either fear that person and keep that person away from us, or we become subservient to that person and, and just keep following them. You know, we can't confirm that the aggressive person, because we don't want to show our weakness or we don't want to ...

Birte

So when we look at the current situation in the world, the outlook can seem rather grim. In the run-up to our talk, you mentioned that in 1925, your father published a talk in the Young India named "The seven sins of society", this list of values shows solutions for a lot of major problems in the world. It was published nearly 100 years ago. But still, these values are nowadays more relevant than ever. 100 years, and we haven't learned? Unbelievable, isn't it?

Gandhi

Yeah, it is. Well, Jesus came with this mission 2000 years ago, and we haven't learned anything from it either.

Birte

You're right. You're right. So it's there a value for you, which is more important than the others, makes more sense, or makes it more easier to come out of our problem, and maybe could be the solution of a lot of our problems?

Gandhi

We can't come out of it until we change, until we change our habits, our relationships. So it has to begin with the individual. There's no other way to get out of the problem that we face today. Other than change.

Birte

And this is a possibility for us to make a difference to be the change.

Gandhi

Yeah.

Birte

This makes me think of the talk before our video, you told me that while it is important for us to be aware of our rights, we have to think about our duties as well.

Gandhi

Yeah, we are so obsessed with rights. We are demanding our rights. We want rights, and we have a charter for human rights. But we have never talked about responsibilities. And rights and responsibilities are two sides of the same coin. You can't have rights without having responsibility. And likewise, you can't be responsible if you don't have rights. So we have to understand and accept that and be more responsible. And I don't think that the type of life that we are leading today, or the laws and things that govern us show any responsibility at all. Take, for instance, the major controversy here in the US today about gun control. Now what on earth do human beings like you and me need weapons of war in our homes? And how can an 18 year old go and buy a deadly weapon? Without any question? And yet that same person can't go and buy a beer? Because he's not old enough to buy beer? So what kind of laws do we have? And? And what is that whole fascination for weapons? I mean, I can understand weapons for hunting, and then you don't need automatic weapons to go hunting?

Birte

Yeah, definitely not.

Gandhi

So, you know, there's all these rights, we have to have our rights and the right to bear arms and all that nonsense. Where is your responsibility towards the nation, and the nation is not made up of one individual, or a few individuals. A nation is a whole nation that says, the whole world is a human world. And we all exist in here, not just as human beings. But along with all of creation, we are all part and parcel of that. And we can survive and flourish only if the rest of us can survive and flourish. Nobody is going to survive and flourish on their own.

Birte

So what what makes you most optimistic? Is there anything?

Gandhi

Well, I think that without optimism, life would be worthless, then you might as well be dead. I think there is the possibility of goodness and everybody, and it's just that reaching out to that goodness, and, and making them aware of it is something that we all need to do.

Birte

So do you have a call to action to the audience, to the people?

Gandhi

Just change yourself first.

Birte

And could you give them any advice on how to change, one that maybe makes it a little easier?

Gandhi

Well, yeah, my grandfather used to, when I was growing up, and he insisted, every day, that I should get up and tell myself, I'm going to be a better person today than I was yesterday. And every day, I had to make a positive change in my life. And to be able to make that change in my life, I had to first make a list of all the things that I consider to be my weaknesses. And when I had that list in front of me on the wall, then I could focus on issues that needed to be done. But if we don't have that, you know, this is something that really bothers me a lot, too. When you speak to people today, and they just say, well, I am what I am, you just have to accept me. You are not what you are. You wouldn't be civilised if you were, what you were born, we keep evolving and we keep changing. And that is what civilisation is that we become better every day. Again, the whole concept of civilisation has been hijacked. And they think civilisation is money. The richer you are, the more civilised you are, which is all nonsense. The most richest people in the world are the less civilised people in the world.

Birte

I said thank you for the clear words. It was a pleasure for me. Thank you for your time. Arun Gandhi.

Gandhi

Thank you. Thank you very much for this pleasure to talk with you.

Birte

Thank you. I will see how we change every day to a better.

Gandhi

Yes.

Birte

Thank you.

Und wie es eben so ist bei einer Liveaufzeichnung, manchmal schleichen sich technische Probleme ein, sodass ich im Nachhinein kurze Passagen von mir neu aufzeichnen musste.