LESSON FOUR

Know Your Own Worth

Many people today have a cartoon image of my grandfather as a saintly man who gave up all material goods and wore as little clothing as possible. But here’s a surprise: he actually understood the value of money as well as anybody. He believed that economic strength was a key to India’s freedom, because he knew national independence is meaningless if you can’t support yourself or your family.

On the ashram we had no economic distinctions and lived a radically simple life. We all did chores together, from working in the vegetable garden to cleaning the toilets, and we sat on the ground to eat and study and talk. When we went to meals, nobody served us, and we brought our own plates, bowls, cups, and utensils and washed them afterward. Nobody felt deprived because we all experienced the same conditions. Bapuji understood that most of us need very little to be happy. We get in trouble when we start comparing ourselves to others and think that what they have is better—and maybe worth fighting to get. Bapuji saw that ending economic disparities would be a huge step in reducing violence in the world. You can’t preach nonviolence, as my grandfather did, without also recognizing the anger that gets stirred by inequality.

Bapuji tried to keep his life simple, but he also met with some of the most important people in the world. In 1930 he traveled to London to attend the first Round Table Conference organized by the British government to discuss the future of India. As always, he was wearing the handspun, hand-woven clothes, called khadi, that he encouraged as a way of helping the poorest rural farmers. The khadi movement had taken hold and was beginning to have an effect on the British textile industry. Since many Indians were showing stirrings of independence by making their own khadi, the British could no longer buy all of the cotton in India at cheap prices and then sell it back as expensive, machine-made clothing.

The participants at the Round Table were invited to Buckingham Palace, and my grandfather arrived wearing his loincloth and shawl. Royal aides fretted that this wasn’t proper attire to meet the king, but Bapuji just smiled and said that if King George didn’t want him as he always dressed, he wouldn’t attend. Reporters heard about the story and couldn’t get enough of it. “Gandhi to Go to King’s Party in Loin Cloth!” blared one headline. They loved the idea that he would be walking across the crimson carpets of Buckingham Palace in khadi and well-worn sandals. King George came in wearing the daytime formal dress of a morning coat and striped trousers, while Queen Mary stood by in a shimmering silver tea gown. When he was asked if he felt underdressed wearing a loincloth in the presence of the king, Bapuji famously quipped, “The king had enough on for both of us.”

Bapuji didn’t think it was wrong to want economic success—he just thought it was wrong not to lift others up with you. He didn’t care about money for himself, but he was realistic and knew that his projects needed funding. So he came up with a plan. Whenever he went out, thousands of people asked for his autograph. His prayer services embraced everybody, so there were often throngs of Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Buddhists in attendance who admired him and wanted his signature. He realized that if he charged the small fee of five rupees (less than a dime today) for every autograph, he could raise money for his social and educational programs.

The first time I went on a trip with my grandfather, I was given the job of collecting the autograph books and money and bringing them to Bapuji in a bundle to sign. I was thrilled! I felt very important to be close to Bapuji and doing something for a bigger purpose.

In those days before “selfies” and cell phone cameras, autographs of famous people were rare and special, and some were quite valuable. So after a few days of collecting, I decided I too wanted to get my grandfather’s autograph. But I had no money, and I didn’t know if Bapuji would make an exception for me. I told myself that because I had been helping him a lot, there was no harm in trying. I collected pieces of colored paper, cut them to the size of an average autograph book, and stapled them together. That evening after prayers, I slipped my little untidy book into the stack I took to Grandfather. Then I stood by as he began signing the books, hoping that in the rush of the moment he wouldn’t notice anything amiss.

No way. Grandfather was absolutely meticulous about every dime he received. He needed money to do his work. When he came to my book and saw no money accompanying it, he paused.

“Why is there no money for this autograph?”

“Because it is my book, Bapuji, and I don’t have any money.”

He smiled. “So you are trying to pull the wool over my eyes? Why do you need an autograph?”

“Because everyone has one,” I answered.

“Well, as you can see, everyone pays for the autograph.”

“But, Bapuji, you are my grandfather!” I pleaded.

“I am glad to be your grandfather, but a rule is a rule. If everyone has to pay, you have to pay too. No exceptions for anyone.”

My ego was hurt. I wanted to be special! So I blurted out, “You’ll see, Bapuji, I will make you give me an autograph for free. I’ll keep trying no matter how long it takes!”

“Is that so?” Bapuji’s eyes twinkled and he laughed. “Let’s see who wins this challenge.”

The game was on. In the weeks that followed, I used every strategy I could think of to pester him into giving me an autograph. My favorite technique was to burst into the room when he was in meetings with high officials and world leaders and wave my book at him, asking him to sign. One day I ran into a meeting, loudly announcing that I needed his signature right then. Instead of getting angry, he pulled me to his chest, put his hand on my mouth, and kept the discussion going. The important politician he was speaking with looked stunned, not knowing what to make of our scene. I thought Grandfather would give in just to keep things calm, but I should have known better than to challenge a man who’d taken on the United Kingdom.

Our competition continued for several weeks. One of Bapuji’s high-level guests became so irritated by my interruptions that he essentially took up my cause. “Why don’t you just give him the autograph so he will leave and stop annoying us?” he asked, exasperated.

Bapuji wouldn’t let him set the agenda for our relationship. “This is a challenge between me and my grandson,” he replied calmly. “You need not get involved.”

Bapuji never lost his temper or ordered me out of the room. He had immense control over his anger, in spite of my attempts to provoke him.

On one occasion, to pacify me, he wrote “Bapu” on a slip of paper and said, “Here is your autograph.”

“That is not good enough!” I declared.

“It’s all I can give,” he said, with the same persistence he showed in everything.

I was starting to understand his message. After a few more days I realized that I was never going to get the autograph for free, and I finally stopped hounding him. But instead of feeling defeated, I felt proud. I knew that our little contest hadn’t really been over a scrawl of ink. Instead Bapuji was giving me a lesson in value. Since he had decided that his signature was worth five rupees, it should be worth that to everyone. If he gave it away to me for free, he was lessening his own value. Equally important, our challenge showed me that even if I didn’t have five rupees, I had great value. My grandfather was willing to treat me with the same respect he paid heads of state. He didn’t undermine me in front of them or treat me as a distraction. My needs were as real as theirs and as worthy of attention.

Though he never gave me his autograph, Bapuji offered a much greater gift. He started spending an hour every day with me, talking and listening. He had such a busy schedule I didn’t know how he could manage to fit me in, but it turned out that with disciplined habits, you can accomplish a lot more than you imagine. Bapuji had me write out my own schedule—including study time, playtime, ashram chores, and prayer—and put it on the wall to show that each minute in my life too was valuable.

Bapuji helped me see that each person has special value. He exuded love and respect for everyone, young and old, rich and poor. I came to understand how important it is to appreciate our own worth as individuals. We sometimes worry that other people are better than we are, and we forget to see what it is that makes us valuable to the world. Once we feel confident in ourselves, we can recognize and honor the value of those around us, regardless of social stature or the power attributed to them by worldly standards.

Some scholars of my grandfather’s life have portrayed him as being against progress and money, but that is a misreading of his values. He valued money for what it could do to end misery and help people out of desperate situations. But he didn’t consider money the measure of a person’s worth. He would never (ever!) think someone wearing expensive clothes and flying first class was more important than someone clothed in rags and sleeping under a bridge. I’ve seen photos of my grandfather in his simple khadi shawl meeting heads of state from around the world. The royal leaders are decked out in ornate uniforms and shiny jewels and huge hats—frankly, they’re the ones who look silly to me. Bapuji didn’t need an elaborate costume to let the world know of his worth.

If you use money and material gain to define your value, you may end up feeling hollow. I feel sorry for someone who tries to impress me with his premium car or oversized house, because I know that he feels something missing at his core. No amount of acquired stuff is going to fill that emptiness. On the other hand, I too often see people who think of themselves as failures because they got fired from a job or have been struggling to make a rent payment. They fear that wealthier friends look down on them, and they are embarrassed not to have more. We need to separate our self-worth from the stuff we have acquired.

Successful people who earn big salaries have every right to be proud of what they’ve accomplished, but they make a mistake if they think the size of their bank account is a reasonable measure of their worth. In fact it can be just the opposite. “Materialism and morality have an inverse relationship,” Bapuji believed. “When one increases, the other decreases.” He didn’t mean that it was immoral to earn money or that there was something inherently honorable about being poor. He objected only to focusing on material gain to the exclusion of everything else. If money means something to you, then go ahead and work hard and make a lot of money. But always remember there is a next step beyond that.

Materialism and morality have an inverse relationship. When one increases, the other decreases.

Some of my own children and grandchildren have taken up the family cause of nonviolence and helping others. Our family now includes activists and professionals of all sorts, and I am very proud of all of them. My grandson in India is a lawyer who works to rescue trafficked girls, and my granddaughter has been using video journalism to highlight little-known organizations doing good work in Indian villages. In America one grandson is a caring and hardworking doctor, and I am equally admiring of another grandson, who is the managing director of a well-known investment company in Los Angeles. He gets a bigger paycheck than I have ever dreamed of, but he is also showing signs of being very charitable and understanding his obligations to the bigger world. As I said, you can’t use money as a measure of a person’s worth in either direction.

Bapuji understood that many important things—like eradicating poverty and discrimination and giving people better health care—require infusions of money. He would never take anything for himself, but he was unabashed in asking for support for his causes. So I tried to use that model when I first came to the United States and had the idea to launch an institute for nonviolence. My wife, Sunanda, and I talked about it, and the more we imagined the workshops, seminars, and lectures we could offer, the more excited we became. We thought it would make sense to have the institute on a university campus, and I wrote to a number of university presidents, telling them about the plan. Not one of them answered. Maybe they thought the idea was too far-fetched, or they just threw the envelope unopened into the wastebasket.

Finally, a colleague connected me to the president of Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tennessee. I went to meet him, and he enthusiastically offered us a rent-free home and office space on campus. Wonderful! I was thrilled, even though he made it very clear that the university didn’t have the money to fund the institute; we’d have to do that ourselves. I accepted without knowing how my dream would play out.

I stayed awake many nights, trying to figure out how I could get the money I needed. I had images of my grandfather holding his cloth sack out the train window to collect for his good causes and charging five rupees for his autograph. His autograph! It suddenly occurred to me that I had something very valuable: a stack of his original handwritten letters, tucked away in a box in my house. The letters had been written to my parents and to us children. Copies had already been given to the Indian government, but the originals were deteriorating because I didn’t have the means to properly preserve them. Should I be sentimental and just hold on to them until they completely fell apart? That seemed wrong. I knew they would be valuable to a museum or a collector, and selling them would give me money to promote the cause of nonviolence. To the question “What would Bapuji do?” the answer seemed obvious.

I got in touch with Christie’s auction house, and they sent me an estimate of $110,000. Now the dream was becoming real. A dear friend (and legal advisor) helped me register the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence as a charitable organization, a 501(c)3. I didn’t want anybody to think I would be using even a cent of the proceeds for myself, so I asked Christie’s to auction the letters and transfer the money directly to our brand-new institute.

The sale was announced, and that night my phone in Mississippi rang at 2 a.m. I groggily answered and was stunned to hear the office of the president of India on the other end. Apparently all hell had broken loose. Before I could say a word, the president’s private secretary accused me of commercializing my grandfather’s name and insisted that I stop the auction at once. I tried to explain my plan, but I may not have been very articulate at that hour. I finally hung up when I realized I wasn’t having any impact.

The next day the president issued a statement to the press denouncing me for exploiting the Gandhi name. I started getting angry and abusive letters from all over India. I was shocked. Now the sleepless nights returned with a vengeance. I needed the spirit of my grandfather to give me some guidance, but I didn’t hear his voice.

Late one night I thought about Bapuji’s belief that all people have equal value and how, faced with a dilemma, he often asked the public what to do. So I got in touch with the New York Times and asked if I could send them an op-ed piece explaining my problem and asking readers to guide me. I titled it “What Should I Do?”

When the piece was published, the response was overwhelming. More than 90 percent of the people who took the time to reply said they supported my plan. Many Indian newspapers reprinted the Times essay, and very quickly the tide turned. Suddenly people were praising me for following the true spirit of Gandhi. People who had been attacking me viciously now lauded and blessed my effort.

All the controversy, though, scared away many would-be buyers, and when the auction took place, the letters brought in only half of what had been estimated. In a final ironic twist, I discovered that the buyer was the Indian government—which had turned down my earlier offer to sell them the letters.

Bapuji believed that each of us is endowed with special talents, and it’s our job to use them not just for ourselves but to build strength for others, now and in the future. There’s an ad for a very expensive jewelry company that proclaims that you never actually own one of their watches; you just look after it for the next generation. I don’t know much about high-priced timepieces, but I do know that the same concept applies to the deeper values we possess. Bapuji often said that however we acquired our talents—through good education, helpful family, or hard work—we don’t own them; we are just their trustees. Our talents will be passed on by what we do and who we help, and they should be used to contribute to others as much as ourselves.

Some years ago I took a group of young women and their professors from Wellesley College on a tour of India. I wanted them to see some of the good work that was going on there and the huge difference one person can make in adding value to impoverished lives. We spent the first day visiting slum projects in Mumbai and then took an overnight train to a small town built around the sugar industry, where another project was giving hope and help. We traveled for several days and met inspiring people, but all of our accommodations were very simple. We took long bus rides over dusty roads, and most of the hotels didn’t have showers—just buckets of hot and cold water that you could pour over your body to get clean. After a while the young women started grumbling that they’d really like to have a comfy bed for one night and a decent shower to wash their hair.

Finally we got to a big city that had a brand-new five-star hotel. As a promotion, we had been offered rooms at half price, which we gladly accepted. As we all stood in the ornate lobby, waiting for the rooms to be made ready, there was a burst of enthusiasm from the young students. Luxury awaited! They got their keys and went off to enjoy the amenities they’d been missing.

About thirty minutes later there was a knock on my door, and I was surprised to find several students there, looking distraught.

“Please, Mr. Gandhi, we’d like to move hotels and go someplace not so extravagant,” one of them said when I opened the door.

“What’s wrong? I thought you were so happy to be here.”

“Our rooms are beautiful, but the windows face out to the shanties, where people are living without anything. It goes against everything we’ve learned this week. We shouldn’t have so much when they have so little.”

I appreciated their compassion but told them we would stay. The images that were causing them such distress could also be a learning experience. “Usually we live in comfort and don’t have a window into the other half of the world. Tonight you can’t shut it out—and we never should. Maybe the stark contrasts you’re seeing will stay with you, and whenever you think of them in the future, you’ll be reminded of the need to take action.”

It’s sometimes hard to know what to do when faced with the huge problems in the world. The students couldn’t simply go over to the shanties and invite the people huddled there to spend the night in their hotel room. But recognizing the discrepancies is the first step to changing them. Or maybe the first step is caring about the people who are in those shanties across the street and recognizing them as individuals with worth and value. The students on that trip no longer saw the poor as an indistinguishable group that could be overlooked or ignored. Instead they recognized that each person would be as happy for a soft bed and warm shower as they were.

I admire people like Bill Gates, who don’t think their wealth makes them better than anyone else. A core belief of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is “All lives have equal value.” They stand behind that motto every day with programs to empower the poorest people in the world. They help transform lives by offering health care and education, and they focus on ensuring that more children “survive and thrive.” Bill Gates may be one of the richest people in the world, but he knows that his real worth isn’t measured by the bottom line on his tax return. He proves how rich he is by caring about those who have less.

Bapuji talked often about the need to share our talents and good fortune with others, and I know he would have liked to meet Bill Gates and thank him for his good work. He also would have had great respect for the corporations that show a sense of responsibility in the world that goes beyond stock prices and shareholder returns. One example I have seen firsthand (and I know there are many others) is the Tata Group, based in Mumbai. It is one of the biggest conglomerates in India, with some thirty companies making everything from cars and steel to coffee and tea. It was started back in 1868, and the Tata family that has run it ever since maintains a commitment to what I like to call “compassionate capitalism.” Instead of living like kings, the Tatas have chosen modesty for themselves; they use a significant portion of their personal and corporate profits each year to help the poorest in India get clean water, better conditions for agriculture, and a chance at an education. In the town of Jamshedpur, where Tata Steel is located, the company provides just about everything for the local workers. A few years ago one executive joked that the Tatas are so generous in providing utilities, housing, cars, and local amenities (they even run the local zoo and hospital) that “the only thing you need to bring is a wife.” (Or maybe now a husband.)

The Tatas are Zoroastrians, members of an ancient religious movement that began in Persia (modern-day Iran). As happens so often with religions, the adherents faced terrible persecution when a different religion gained power, and in the seventh century many fled the country. A boat full of refugees arrived on the west coast of India, and in an audience with the king, the Zoroastrians asked him to let them stay. But the king pointed to a glass full of water on the table and said, “Just as this glass is full of water, my kingdom is full of people. We have no room to accommodate any more.”

In response the leader of the refugee delegation poured a spoonful of sugar into the water and stirred it. “Just as this sugar has dissolved in the water and sweetened it, my people will dissolve into the community and sweeten it,” he replied.

The king understood and allowed them to stay—and the Zoroastrian presence has sweetened the Indian community ever since.

Everyone who hears this lovely story smiles at the idea of that sweetened glass of water. But it needs to be more than a story. The king’s first response is what people around the world say right now when confronted with refugees, the poor, or those of a different religion, race, or ethnicity. Why can’t we instead accept that every community can use some sugar and spice?

Think of your own value in that glass of water, and make it your principle in life to be sure that you are always sweetening the glass.