LESSON ELEVEN

Lessons for Today

My grandfather’s murderer was a right-wing Hindu who was outraged by Bapuji’s philosophy of erasing the caste system and bringing equality to all. Others in his mold continue to try to undermine my grandfather’s memory. They disagree with his message that there is good in all religions and that we need to recognize and support all beliefs. “Religions are different roads converging upon the same point,” Bapuji said. “What does it matter that we take different roads so long as we reach the same goal?”

Bapuji looked for fundamental truths and urged people to read all the scriptures and find the positive points in each. People with narrower viewpoints want to believe that only their position is correct. They try to boost themselves by undermining others. They are afraid to be challenged and attack those who offer a wider view. Bapuji would have told them that such cowardice is not a sign of faith.

In speaking of my grandfather, Albert Einstein famously said, “Generations to come will scarce believe such a man as this ever walked upon this earth.” U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall called him “the spokesman for the conscience of all mankind.” One commentator said my grandfather proved that humility and simple truths are more powerful than empires. Bapuji had no title or wealth or official office. He didn’t rule an army or an empire or discover the theory of relativity. But he spoke truths that we understand deep in our hearts. Perhaps that is why his name and image have been so revered.

In the time I spent with him at Sevagram ashram, Bapuji had me make a list of my weaknesses and bad habits—not to berate myself, but so I would know what I needed to improve. You need to know your weaknesses, he explained, to be able to transform them into strengths. Your goal every day is to be better than you were the day before. Once you start trying to improve, there’s a snowball effect. I’ve continued that approach my whole life. Bapuji taught me that my purpose is to make a positive impact on the world, and I consciously strive to do things that matter.

When I first moved to America, I wanted to share Bapuji’s philosophy with college students. Since I didn’t have a PhD, universities wouldn’t allow me to teach. Bapuji never let formalities like that get in his way—he always found his own path. So I started a nonviolence institute in my grandfather’s name and began giving informal workshops and lectures. Working on an individual level to help people gain a better understanding of justice and conflict resolution, I saw how powerfully Bapuji’s ideals still resonated. His philosophy helps bridge the gaps between people.

At one point in the early 1990s, anger about police brutality and racial injustice sparked riots in Los Angeles. I was living in Memphis, which suffered a similar incident and also seemed about to erupt, and people in the community asked me to intervene to calm the tension. I wasn’t completely sure what to do. I didn’t have my grandfather’s magnetism or ability to persuade people. But I knew that whenever he couldn’t find an answer, he organized a prayer service and invited people to look for answers with him.

The incident in Memphis boiled up on a Thursday, and I decided to hold an interfaith service on Sunday. I spoke to the board of the university where my institute was located, and they said it would take at least two weeks to prepare for an event like that. Two weeks! I pointed out that if your house is burning now, you can’t wait two weeks to find the water supply.

So I gathered a small group of colleagues, and we personally called all the religious organizations in Memphis. We asked each of them to come and offer a five-minute prayer of peace and harmony. I didn’t care how big or important they were—they all had the same five minutes.

That Sunday more than six hundred people gathered on a football field we had chosen for the service. I think it helped that it was a neutral ground—not a church or mosque or synagogue—so no particular tradition dominated and everybody felt equal and respected. More than thirty religious groups came forward to offer their five-minute prayer of peace. An incredible feeling of connection and friendship and understanding floated between the goal posts of the football field that day. People who once thought they had very little in common smiled and hugged each other. The spiritual atmosphere lingered and had a calming effect for weeks after. Many said the prayer service saved Memphis from exploding in violence.

Peace and hope can blossom when we open ourselves to others. In joining together we flourish in ways we never can if we stand alone. When I was at the ashram with Bapuji, he insisted that we look beyond our immediate relatives and accept all of humanity as family. Just as you would be willing to make personal sacrifices to help a brother or sister in distress, you should be willing to feel the pain of neighbors and even strangers and make similar sacrifices to help them. At first it bothered me that Bapuji wouldn’t make concessions for me. I was his grandson—didn’t that make me more special than anyone else? Only later did I understand the much bigger message he was sending: too many of us spend our time trying to protect our own small part of the world; we forget that we are all interconnected and can’t flourish by ourselves.

You give yourself and the world a great gift when you choose to take a wider view and look for commonalities rather than differences. We each survive only if the rest of the world survives. The rich are getting richer, and the poor are just made poorer. If you are in the first group, that may seem just fine to you. But as we continue to support the stark division between rich and poor, we invite conflicts to occur over and over. And we hurt ourselves (and the world) in other ways too. Consider, for example, that because the poorest people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America don’t have fuel for cooking, heating, and washing, they are chopping down whole forests for wood to burn. In the process all of us suffer from the damage to the environment. We are all connected. When 20 percent of the world’s population use 80 percent of the world’s resources to maintain their level of affluence while 80 percent of the population are left to scrounge for a livelihood, it is a recipe for disaster.

Americans are making a dangerous mistake in believing that we can protect our own interests by walling ourselves off from others. We expect that military might will win the day in any conflict, so we spend almost 60 percent of the federal budget on the military and weapons of mass destruction. We build more weapons than we can use and then sell them around the world. The United States has already demonstrated that it is a superpower in military strength. It now needs to show the world that it can be a superpower in moral strength. That means being willing to do what is good for the world and not just what is to our own advantage.

When the horrors of 9/11 occurred, America responded by bombing Iraq, which ultimately led to more and expanded violence in the Middle East. Once Americans accepted that Iraq and 9/11 were truly unrelated, we rallied behind a war against “terrorists” that has been going on for many years now, with no end in sight. Instead of getting calmer, the world seems to become more dangerous, with terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels and throughout the Middle East.

People ask me often, What would Gandhi do against terrorism? I think my grandfather would have urged a foreign policy based in compassion rather than greed. He would have explained that our relationships with the rest of the world are founded in mutual respect, understanding, and acceptance. Immediately after 9/11 he might have asked Americans to try to understand the source of hate and frustration that caused people to attack us in the most devastating way. “Hold on!” some Americans might say. “We didn’t do anything wrong. We were the ones attacked.” That is absolutely correct. But if there is hatred brewing in the world, we should try to stop it. My grandfather would have reached out to those nations and people angry at the United States to try to improve our relationships. “You cannot breed peace out of non-peace,” he once said. “The attempt is like gathering grapes of thorns or figs of thistles.” Humility heals wounds; arrogance aggravates them.

I think my grandfather would look with dismay at many of the current world leaders who seem more intent on enriching themselves than on bettering the lives of the people in their countries. He believed ardently that people in power should use their position for the good of their fellow men and women. But he knew that didn’t always happen. “Power comes from sincere service. Actual attainment often debases the holder,” he said. Many people in government now focus only on winning elections and advancing their own careers, and they are willing to spew hatred and bigotry to get their way. They don’t seem to care that they are undermining the very government and democracy they are meant to serve.

So how do we stand up to the wrongs and injustices and outrages we see every day? First, we truly have to see them. I think back to that day in South Africa in 1895 when a white man decided he didn’t want to share a compartment with someone of darker skin, and he got the police to throw my grandfather off the train. It was Bapuji’s first experience with blatant prejudice, and he was stunned. But when he told other Indians what happened, many of them just shrugged. If the white people didn’t want him in first class, why didn’t he just move to another car? “Because it is unjust,” Bapuji said repeatedly. “We cannot accept injustice meekly.”

But the apathetic responses also made him realize that “nobody oppresses us more than we oppress ourselves.” We stop noticing the wrongs that are done to us and inflicted on others. Preoccupied with our daily lives and a desire to get along, we stop paying attention. Outrageous behavior starts to seem normal.

Bapuji would tell us all—right now!—to wake up to the inequities and injustices of the world. We don’t have to accept bigotry and unfairness. We must fight it on all levels. In encouraging people to take action, though, Bapuji recognized that there is no point in fighting hate with hate or anger with anger. Doing that only multiplies the very problems we want to eliminate. He believed change could come only from positive approaches—from love, understanding, self-sacrifice, and respect.

My grandfather’s work for change started with an invitation to dialogue. When that failed, he would embark on a massive public protest to gain the sympathy of people on all sides of the issue.

The kind of nonviolent protests Bapuji encouraged could work today, but we have to think about our ultimate goals and what we are trying to achieve. For example, the rampant police shootings of young African American men are atrocious and must be condemned. But the protests that followed each one often focused only on the need to punish the culprits. Bapuji would have urged taking a longer view. People do indeed need to be held accountable, but the greater purpose of the community should be to erase the underlying fears and prejudices that led to the shootings. Otherwise those fears and prejudices remain intact (even if suppressed) until the next occasion, when they erupt again.

Maybe a better approach would be to try to understand implicit bias and see how even the most well-meaning among us can slip up. At our M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, one of our diversity workshops had an unusual twist. The person running it had made masks out of photographs of people of all races. At the workshop, each of us was handed a mask to put on and told to look in the small mirror placed in front of us. It was startling to look through the eyes of the mask into the mirror and see a stranger. We were given two minutes to describe the person we had become.

All of us in the workshop were thoughtful people from upper-middle-class backgrounds and represented many different races. We were confident that we had no prejudices—and every one of us was proven wrong. Latent stereotypes emerged in the descriptions we gave. Confronted with an unfamiliar face, we fell back on expectations based on race or gender or age.

My background in South Africa, where I suffered prejudice of the worst kind, had made me understand its dangers, and my years with Bapuji had convinced me of the need to fight prejudice on every level. But at the workshop that day, I realized I could be as guilty as anyone else of measuring people by how they looked.

Bapuji’s goal was to transform society and make us see our commonalities rather than our differences. Many groups now take a different course and use disruption as an end in itself. They are willing to paralyze communities to make society aware that they exist and deserve respect and recognition. They don’t want understanding or acceptance—but to live on their own terms. I have deep sympathy for their plight, and I know how difficult the battles can be. But no society has survived under a “divide and rule” policy. A divided country or community eventually falls apart. And that is truer now than ever.

Many leaders would like to close doors and pretend that the world outside their borders doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter. But the world is shrinking and societies are becoming more, not less, multiracial and multireligious. Bapuji saw that change and understood that we should not strive to live among our own ethnic or racial group and join the mainstream only for business or commercial activity. Rather, we need to live and work with shared views of what is good for all of us.

America has fallen into a spiral of identity politics, where people live in separate communities and voting lines are drawn to encourage those distinctions. Many people vote not for what is good for the entire country but for what they perceive to be good for their group. (Ironically the person or party they think will support their interests often doesn’t.) Real equality happens when we can step outside our small group and look at the greater good. True democracy ensures that everyone is not only equal but embraced and respected.

Bapuji pointed out that politicians “often have a trick of wrapping Truth in a veil of mystery and giving to what is temporary and unimportant preference over the permanent and deeply important.” I wish his reminder could be emblazoned on every voting booth. Political campaigns get caught up in personal issues or false promises, and the bigger worldview and what really matters are pushed aside. People suffer and countries fall apart from this shortsightedness.

Politicians often have a trick of wrapping Truth in a veil of mystery and giving to what is temporary and unimportant preference over the permanent and deeply important.

As an example, Berlin has erected potent memorials to the Holocaust and the Jews who were killed out of meaningless hatred. Posters near the main square show how the city was devastated at the end of World War II, with German citizens of all religions left huddling without food and shelter. So many innocent people of varied backgrounds and dreams died or suffered from the fallout of hatred. The memorials should give us hope that we have learned from the past.

But have we really changed? Have we learned the lessons of past devastations? A Nazi-type hatred of diversity continues in countries around the world, and it is the most dangerous problem we have. We see its vicious results every day, in bullying in schools and harassment on the streets and in mass killings and global displacement. Even since World War II hate has fueled genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. Right now we are witnessing the destruction of Syria. The horror may seem far away, but many of the people who have lost everything are people just like you and me: they want to do meaningful work, to feed their families, to raise their children in safety, to support their communities, to live in peace. Now they are living in refugee camps and wondering why nobody seems to care or wants to help them.

Once we recognize what we have in common rather than what separates us, we approach the world and each other with a different perspective. You might think a current conflict or a recent tragedy doesn’t affect you, but today’s in-group can be the out-group tomorrow. Once we start dividing people—by race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual preference, political view, body type, age, socioeconomic status, ability or disability, language, accent, personality type, favorite sports team—there is no end to the distinctions that can be made. Ultimately we all are outsiders to someone else!

Hatreds and discriminations that occur far away from us can be confusing. I have spoken to many Americans who admit that the distinction between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, between Shia and Sunnis in the Middle East, and even between Muslims and Hindus in India are a bit mysterious. To an American of Judeo-Christian background, each pairing seems to be more alike than different. Yet each has tried to destroy its counterpart.

I mention this not to mock Americans’ ignorance of world religions but to point out how appropriate the confusion really is. Often the people we discriminate against are the ones who are most like us. The loyalties we form for our own group—and the disdain we have for outsiders—often make no sense at all. Psychologists have found that when people are randomly assigned to a particular group, they immediately prefer it and insist that it is better than the others. That’s true no matter how unimportant the distinction that’s being made. Give some people red T-shirts and others blue T-shirts, and alliances will form. Experiments have shown that the people wearing the red T-shirts will be nicer and more supportive to their fellow red shirts than to people in blue (and vice versa, of course). We are more likely to help and cooperate with the people we consider “us” than those we think of as “them.”

Psychologists are now looking at the sources of this “in-group bias.” Some think we are intrinsically wired to prefer the group where we find ourselves. But we also teach our children certain cultural norms and expectations, and certainly an educational system that encourages inclusiveness rather than divisiveness can start to make a difference. The equality and inclusiveness I learned from Bapuji have remained a powerful part of my life over all these decades—and will remain so. We can try to teach those lessons to our own children, whatever the outside influences pulling them in a different direction.

Many of the problems that divide and destroy us cannot be solved by legislation. They can be solved only by a willingness to open our minds and hearts to understand and respect each other. If he had been here, my grandfather would have had a big smile in 1964 when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, giving equal rights to people regardless of race, religion, sex, or national origin. He would have been equally pleased by the follow-up legislation four years later, promising fair housing for all. But he would have been wise enough to know that it was just a start. He would not have been surprised that now, more than fifty years later, lack of equality still exists.

People have to believe change is possible. Five years after the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was made into law, the Justice Department brought a legal suit against a realty company in New York that it said was discriminating against potential tenants and refusing to rent to African Americans. The president of that realty company was Donald Trump. The legislation didn’t stop his discriminating, and years later many voters didn’t seem to care. He is now the president of the United States.

The civil rights legislation moved America halfway forward—but we stopped there. The other half of the way needs to be traversed through soul-searching, enlightenment, and education. The same can be said about legislation giving rights to women and gays and lesbians. Changing laws to protect people is vital, but the real change comes when people see the harm that prejudice causes, admit the wrongs they have done in the past, and embrace others rather than shun them.

Bapuji said often that a society cannot be measured by a material yardstick but only by the depth of its love and respect for all. He often referred to the Sanskrit word sarvodaya, which means “welfare of all.” He believed everyone has the right to decency, happiness, and freedom from want. We are all at least partially motivated by self-interest, and he understood that. But instead of focusing exclusively on ourselves, we would all feel better and worthier if we looked beyond our own needs and desires. Bapuji used the word swaraj to describe the freedom that all people deserve—and that we have to help each other achieve. He spoke of it as more than just political freedom; he yearned for “swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions.”

Bapuji had a very simple test for deciding whether or not an action was right. He said that whenever you were in doubt you should “recall the face of the poorest and weakest person whom you have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to her or him.” Will it help that person gain control of his or her life, dignity, or swaraj? If so, he said, “you will find your doubts and yourself melt away.”

Whatever is happening in politics or the greater world, we can each still have an influence. Every time I go to India, I am overcome by the extent of the poverty—and then equally overcome by the determination of many individuals to change lives and lift up the most needy.

A woman I met many years ago named Ela Bhatt began arranging microloans to women to start small businesses, such as selling fresh fruits and vegetables. Over the years the program encompassed more than 9 million women in all parts of India. After a while some of the women told Ms. Bhatt they were not happy depending on the commercial banks for their microloans; they suggested starting their own cooperative. She kindly explained how difficult that would be. Most of the women were illiterate and couldn’t even sign their own names. “We want to learn!” they told her.

So, with the women gathered in her living room, she began an impromptu class that lasted all night. The next morning she gathered the necessary forms and watched proudly as each woman signed her name to the incorporation papers. They dubbed themselves the Self-Employed Women’s Association and soon launched the SEWA Cooperative Bank. It has since become a flourishing institution that helps poor women become more independent.

When the bank began back in 1974, some four thousand women became members, paying the equivalent of less than a dollar to buy a share. Now there are nearly ten thousand active depositors, and in addition to offering savings and credit, SEWA provides supportive services like health care and legal aid.

Indira and Pushpika Freitas, two sisters who live in the Chicago area, started a program designing fabrics and fashion and sending the designs to Mumbai, where women living in slums are taught to tie-dye, block print, and sew. They make beautiful clothes that are then sold through a catalog, and 80 percent of the profits go back to the women themselves. This program too has expanded tremendously and now supports child care and health programs for the women, who are raising themselves up from conditions of dire poverty. I have known the Freitas family for a long time, and the parents are also devout and socially conscious. Even in a difficult world, we can teach our children what matters and watch with pride as they grow up to make a difference.

Making personal connections with people who are different from us is crucial to overcoming prejudice and recognizing our commonalities. I admire organizations like the Institute for International Education. Among its many programs, IIE oversees scholarships for students around the world to study in different countries. While some of their programs, such as the Fulbright fellowships, are given for advanced work, IIE also encourages college students to study internationally and gain a broader view. Allan Goodman, the distinguished professor who heads IIE, sees the broad implications of education. In the midst of the Syrian crisis, he was focused on helping the hundreds of thousands of displaced students from that country continue their education. “If we don’t get to them, ISIS will,” he warned.

Dr. Goodman understands on a very deep level the close connections between nonviolence and education. People who try to change the world with weapons and hate will ultimately destroy it. Those who seek change through education and understanding give us hope.

Dr. Goodman has also started programs at IIE to encourage college students to take a semester abroad, and other organizations offer programs allowing high school students to experience life in another country. Often they live with a family and attend the local school. People who have these international experiences describe them decades later as being transformative in their lives. They lived every day with a family who had different customs and traditions and outlook than they did. By sitting with them at dinner each night and celebrating holidays together, these students felt part of a bigger world. Years later, when they hear politicians decrying the dangers of immigrants or foreigners, they will have a different, broader, and much wiser perspective. Instead of being afraid of “those people,” they remember fondly the exchange-year dad who cooked them dinner or the sister who walked with them under the stars.

A woman who lives in Manhattan told me about an experience she had a few years after 9/11, when the city was still reeling from the attacks. One of the pleasures of the city is the vendors who have licensed carts in even the fanciest neighborhoods, giving a small-town feel to a very big city. She worked in a glossy skyscraper in Midtown and stopped every morning to buy a banana from the fruit vendor across the street. Over many months she came to admire how hard he worked—getting up before dawn to buy his fresh fruit at the market, and then standing outside with his cart well into the night on even the coldest and hottest days. “I have two young children, and I want them to have a chance in life,” he told her, explaining why he worked such long hours. They talked often, and she came to depend on his encouraging spirit to start her day. One morning he told her that the work had paid off and he was leaving for several months to return home and bring money to his family.

“Where is home?” she asked.

“Afghanistan,” he said.

She jumped back as if she’d been burned and looked at him in shock. He had a heavy accent and swarthy skin, but with his kindness and good nature, she had never thought of him as the enemy. And suddenly she realized that he wasn’t. She looked at his smile and felt his eagerness to see his wife and children again, and she realized he was just a man like any other, who happened to live in a dangerous country. Impulsively she gave him a hug. “Tell your family that we wish them health and happiness,” she told him.

Bapuji often said, “An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of teaching.” We can talk about understanding each other and ending bigotry, but it doesn’t mean very much until we do something to make it happen. That might mean studying in another country or recognizing the humanity in a person who doesn’t look like you (and giving him or her a hug). Most of us want the chance to have better lives for ourselves and our families and a chance to be on equal footing with others in the world. Taking action is the best way to change your own heart and influence other people’s. As Bapuji put it, “Practice is the best speech and the best propaganda.”

When Bapuji spoke of nonviolence, he meant much more than putting down our weapons. His focus was how to resolve a country’s larger problems and inspire respect for all. As I learned on the ashram when I searched for a pencil nub in the dark of night, true nonviolence has a broadly expansive meaning. It requires us to understand the negative repercussions of waste and materialism and the positive values of treating everyone with dignity. Paying attention to only one piece of the philosophy—the absence of physical assault—can reduce the idea of nonviolence to a mockery. Those who participated in the intifada in Palestine consider themselves nonviolent because even though they pelted Israelis with stones, they didn’t use guns. A group called the Ruckus Society in Berkeley, California, claims to be nonviolent because it doesn’t harm people outright, though it doesn’t hesitate to destroy objects and smash shop windows. This kind of behavior attracts publicity but not sympathy and understanding. You can’t achieve an individual or societal transformation with baseball bats.

Our world has a long history of violence and wars and attacks by one group against another. Millions of lives have been lost to violence, and millions more have suffered from the indignities that come from bigotry and hatred. So many people throughout history were denied the good and peaceful lives they wanted. We can look back on episodes like apartheid in South Africa and know how wrong and destructive it was. Yet we find excuses for our own, equally bigoted behavior every day.

When I am frustrated by people’s unwillingness to see the obvious destructiveness of their actions, I take a deep breath and remember Bapuji’s calm smile. He knew that change doesn’t occur quickly. The struggle for freedom and equality and peace can be long and tiring. For Bapuji, working toward an ideal meant being imprisoned many times and watching his wife and best friend die in jail.

But I think he would tell all of us now that his struggle was worthwhile, and ours will be too. A nonviolent approach to change takes time and patience. Bapuji is a reminder to all of us that equality and dignity for all is always worth fighting for—nonviolently.