The non-violent messages of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. still are difficult for many to embrace today, Gandhi’s grandson said.
“Gandhi’s doctrine is indeed a challenge to us as human beings,” Rajmohan Gandhi said. “We all want to do what we want, but Gandhi asks us to search our conscience and do what’s right … but that isn’t popular today.”
He spoke Jan. 20 about the legacies of his late grandfather and King, as well as the world after Sept. 11, at the Schorling Auditorium, School of Education. The 260-seat auditorium was standing-room-only, leaving at least 125 people to watch the lecture on a television in the hallway. The event was sponsored by the Center for South Asian Studies in the South Asia Current Affairs Series and the International Institute.
Gandhi’s non-violent principles not only were instrumental in gaining India’s independence from Britain, but they inspired King and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.
In 1950, as a 20-year-old, King attended a speech in Philadelphia given by Mordecai W. Johnson, then the Howard University president, who had visited India after Gandhi’s death. King wrote that the “message was so profound and electrifying that I left the meeting and bought a half-dozen books on Gandhi’s life and works.”
Non-violence wasn’t an original concept; as King wrote, it dated back to Socrates and early Christians. Gandhi, for his part, thought “non-violence was as old as the hills,” said Rajmohan Gandhi, an honorary visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
King and Gandhi thought violence was counter-productive. Gandhi said the results would lead to a “terrible reprisal that left the oppressed weaker than before.”
When asked what should happen when the conscience of an oppressor is highly opposed to non-violence, such as in the case of Adolf Hitler, Rajmohan Gandhi said he doesn’t believe in total non-violence. In certain situations, a country must go to war, he said.
In discussing the world after Sept. 11, he said people believe it’s a clash of civilization, of good versus evil.
“What further proof was needed?” he asked. “All of a sudden liberals became conservatives. Leftists became rightists. CNN journalists became Fox journalists.”
He shared a few fond memories of his grandfather, who died when Rajmohan Gandhi was 12 years old. The younger Gandhi spent limited time with his grandfather, who often traveled or spent time in prison. It was customary to bow before Mahatma Gandhi, who sometimes whacked his grandson’s back. He was strong for someone thin from fasting, Rajmohan Gandhi said.
“I can still remember that stroke,” he said while massaging his lower back with both hands, eliciting laughs from the audience.
But the most powerful impression for him was being with his grandfather while praying with a crowd, which included some who were angry with Gandhi because they lost loved ones. Gandhi never had bodyguards to protect him.
Rajmohan Gandhi said he thought at that time, “Hey, this guy is unusual and he sure is courageous.”
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