Lessons from my Grandfather

Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson and author Arun Manilal Gandhi passed away at the age of 89 on Tuesday, May 2, 2023, after a brief illness, in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, India.

In this special episode of Nonviolence Radio, Stephanie and Michael return to an interview from 2017 with Arun Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, who died at the age of 89 earlier this year. In what follows, we get to revisit some special moments from that program. We hear Arun speak about how his grandfather taught him about the broad and inclusive nature of nonviolence, about the power of anger (properly used) and about Gandhi’s promotion of the charkha (spinning wheel) as a key tool for achieving Indian independence: what might be our charkha today? Arun speaks clearly and tenderly about lessons from his grandfather and these clips from that interview help to bring to light not just Gandhi’s principles, but a sense of his personality.

[From my grandfather] I realized that nonviolence was not just about not fighting, it was about not exploiting, and not wasting, and not harming people in different ways. Actually, it’s passive violence, non-physical or passive violence that fuels the fire of physical violence. So logical, if we want to put out that fire of physical violence, we have to cut off the fuel supply. And since the fuel supply comes from each one of us, we have to become the change we wish to see in the world.

These selections from Arun Gandhi’s interview are followed by lots of good news in the Nonviolence Report.

Transcript archived at Waging Nonviolence