Rajmohan Gandhi is currently Research Professor at the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana. He has served as editor of the Indian Express, been a Member of the Indian Parliament, a leader of the Indian delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission, and a visiting professor at several American universities. He is co-chair of the Center for Dialogue and Reconciliation (in Gurgaon, India), he has written several biographies, including a comprehensive new study of his grandfather the Mahatma, Gandhi: The Man, his People, and an Empire (2008).

Guy Spiro: Rajmohan, I usually like to start by asking people to tell us briefly how they got to be who they are. But of course, you were born with a legacy.

Rajmohan Gandhi: I was born in New Delhi and my father was the fourth son of the famous Gandhi. My father was a newspaper man, a journalist, the editor of the Sun Times of New Delhi. I was twelve and a half years old in January, 1948, when the famous Gandhi was assassinated. During that last year or two of his life, when he was going from 76 to 78 and I was going from ten to twelve, I saw a fair bit of him.

GS: Were you close to him?

RG: During that period, the last two years of his life, I did get a fair amount of time with him, although, of course, I was young.

GS: Those were turbulent times.

RG: Those were turbulent times. They were glorious times because India was becoming independent after decades of struggle, but also sad times and violent times because Hindus and Muslims in different parts of the subcontinent were attacking one another.

GS: It’s good that they are getting along so well now.

[laughter]

RG: Well, in many ways, they are. The India of today, which has a 13% Muslim population and an 83% Hindu population, a 2.5% Christian population and 2.5% Sikh population, is by no means in complete harmony. None the less, there is quite an impressive coexistence, interaction, and democracy.

GS: I think India is remarkably tolerant. With all the violence that does go on, it’s still a model of religious tolerance.

RG: Of course, the violence does go on, and we must strive to reduce it. But we can at least occasionally feel that things could have been much worse. But to continue my story, I went to high school and university in Delhi and I spent a year in Scotland to learn about newspaper work. I was an apprentice at a newspaper called The Scotsman in Edinburgh, Scotland. Then in the mid 60s, I started my own weekly paper called Himmat. It was in the English language, although the title is an Indian word borrowed, in fact, from Arabic. In its Indian usage, “Himmat” means courage. We had this journal going for seventeen years.

     I got into serious writing and became interested in historical subjects, relatively recent history, the Indian freedom movement, Hindu-Muslim relations, India-Pakistan relations. I wrote about half a dozen wonderfully interesting figures in India and Pakistan, but a central figure in each story was Gandhi. So in the end, I had to write a proper biography of Gandhi, which is what I have recently done.

GS: Yes, quite a comprehensive, weighty and impressive tome.

RG: Well, it is what you might call a door stopper.

[laughter]

GS: A door stopper?

RG: A violent weapon against an intruder.

[laughter]

GS: Of course, the legacy is not to be violent. How has it been to live up to carrying this name?

RG: Well, I don’t try. I can’t try. It would be absurd to try. I try to live as I would like to live normally. I also find, of course, that people are nice to me, kind to me, respectful of me because of my grandfather. That is no hardship. I welcome that. If I were to try to live up to an image, live up to a legacy, I would be extremely unhappy and make other people around me uncomfortable, too.

GS: There is certainly wisdom in that. Tell us some of the things that people don’t know, and perhaps some of the things that people think they know that aren’t really true.

RG: One thing that is perhaps of some interest in our times today, when there is what is often spoken of as the Great Divide between the West and the Islamic world—Gandhi did spend a lot of his time trying to bridge that divide in India. Then it was not the Muslims versus the world, it was the Muslims versus the Hindus of India and he addressed that divide. He didn’t succeed entirely and India was divided despite his best efforts, but he succeeded to a remarkable degree. The fact that India’s constitution provides that India will not be a Hindu state, but it would be a state of all inhabitants, is a very important part of the Gandhi legacy that is not always known.

GS: That is remarkable.

RG: That, to me, speaks to our times globally. It is very much a Muslim world view, that there are these great suspicions towards the Western world. But in the Western world, there is also a lot of suspicion about the Islamic world. That is an aspect of Gandhi’s life which is meaningful for others.

GS: There is the famous story of the Hindu man and the Muslim boy—do you have a take on that story, in case our readers don’t know it?

RG: Of course, it is in the Ghandi movie, the scene is partly demonstrated. It was a very tough remedy in its time to this fellow who is eventually half mad because his child is killed and he doesn’t know what to do with his hatred. The advice given to him is that he should adopt a Muslim child who has been orphaned and raise him as a Muslim. That is the tough, tough love that he did prescribe.

GS: How did you like Ben Kingsley’s portrayal of your grandfather in the movie?

RG: Very impressive!

GS: I thought so.

RG: Yes, and I must also say that just before the movie was being made in India in the early 80s, he and I had a good conversation. Afterwards, he was kind enough, generous enough, to say that the conversation was of interest and even usefulness to him. But that is a minor point. I did feel that the film was quite powerful and his acting was most impressive.

GS: The two scenes that I remember most are that scene about the orphan, and his being thrown off the train in South Africa.

RG: Yes, and of course, he went to South Africa at the age of 23 to start a career as a lawyer. He went there just to pursue a career and see a new country and then this thing happens and he realizes that all the people back in India were being discriminated against and being quite harshly treated. Instead of returning soon to India, which was his plan, he stayed on and helped them to organize and fight. Then he had this incredible experience where he discovers that what is needed is a nonviolent way of fighting.

GS: I have wondered at times ... I know that the British did resist. They did deal very harshly. They did try to maintain their empire there. But ultimately, the nonviolent methods ended up working. I have wondered at times if it would have gone as well against a different empire.

RG: Probably not.

 [laughter]

RG: I think that although this is a perfectly valid statement, one should not underestimate the enormous hardship suffered. Thousands and thousands of Indians faced it as a result of their nonviolent fight. There were beatings, imprisonments ... sometimes very cruel treatment. It wasn’t a cake walk, but you are quite right to say that had it been an even sterner rule and a dictatorial, autocratic, tyrannical rule ...

GS: Had it been any number of other cultural empires ...

RG: ...  then I think the tactics might have been different. But I don’t think we should conclude that nonviolence can only work against “good people.” I think that what we can say is that against very tough opponents, even more ingenious strategies need to be devised. They have been from time to time. They have not necessarily always succeeded. Even in Nazi Germany, there were cases, quite remarkable, of local level attempts. In the former Soviet-ruled countries of Eastern Europe, there were amazing nonviolent attempts.

GS: What do you want people to know? What are the lasting messages?

RG: One would be that Gandhi was a remarkable human being. It wasn’t that there were sudden exceptional things that came to him along with his birth, and as a result of which, he did what he did. He was a man who had his weaknesses, but he faced up to them, and he had the courage to accept a very tough task and to prepare himself for it. It is a story of how any one of us, human beings like anybody else, can, if you want to, take on a very demanding goal. That is one thing that I would like people to understand.

     The other is that in times like today, with so much violent attacking taking place ... Yesterday and today we heard about these eight Israeli students killed. We heard about one hundred people in Gaza being killed and another explosion in Baghdad today. There is continuing violence in Kenya, in Somalia. It is indeed true that great and successful demonstrations of nonviolence are not very easy to recall or to point out. On the other hand, the failure of violent methods is so blatant, so plain for all of us to see. In such a situation, Gandhi’s record over a lifetime, first in South Africa and then in India, to gain considerable victories through nonviolence is something that our times need to recognize and embrace. We can take heart from that.

GS: Of course, we have a long history of violence across all cultures. What do you suppose is the matter with us that we don’t seem to learn? This cycle of violence is a global mental disorder.

RG: It is the victory of anger over calm that produces this, and we have to keep working at transcending it. It also means not just spelling out from a book or a public platform what the message is, but somehow identifying people, befriending, working with individuals and hoping they will work in their communities. This is a long process, but it is also an exciting one.

GS: What would be your prescription for fixing humanity’s’ condition in the world today?

RG: I think my answer to that question would be to remain totally and completely silent. But I think thereby I would communicate that through reflection you will find the answer, not through argumentation.

GS: I think you’re saying the same thing that is occurring to me, that it’s the individual.

RG: Yes, it is very much through the individual.

GS: Each individual needs to achieve their own version of an enlightenment.

RG: Then not imposing it on the people we meet, but helping those we meet to also find their own version.

GS: I think it is almost a mathematical equation, light obliterates dark. The more light of consciousness that gets generated, the less dark there can be.

RG: I couldn’t say it any better than that.

GS: Did your grandfather practice a particular type of meditation?

RG: No, he didn’t prescribe or ever promote a particular form of meditation, but he did acknowledge and from time to time even speak of the value of meditation, of silence, of reflection. He did not subscribe any particular method or technique. When he used to have these multi-faith prayer meetings, which became quite a standard feature of his life, it appeared as if silence was always part of that prayer. I think reflection, silence and a willingness to see the other person’s point of view ... examine your own possible error and then try to minimize in your own mind the errors of others. This is, of course, easier said than done, but this was his prescription.

GS: When reaching this point in conversation with someone I often think about ... remember Rodney King?

RG: Yes, my goodness, yeah. Can’t we all just get along?

[laughter]

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The Theosophical Society in America presents “The Gandhi You May Not Know” with Rajmohan Ghandi on Thursday, April 24, 7 p.m. The talk will bring to light lesser known or unexpected aspects of the man we think we know. It will also address the continuing interest in the United States and across the world in Gandhi sixty years after his assassination and speculate on approaches he might recommend on today's critical issues. $12 guests, $10 members. Book signing after the program. 1926 North Main Street, Wheaton, IL, 60126. Call 630-668-1571 for additional information.

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