Tamar interview transcription

29 May 2009 door Tamar van Steenbergen

As an assignment for the Journalism course at Utrecht University (department English Language & Culture), I have interviewed Arun Gandhi on Ascension Day, the first day of the Gandhi Tour, in Utrecht. This transcript is the basis for Which tiger do you feed?.

tamar-interviews-gandhi

Welcome to Holland.

Thank you.

How was your journey?

It's been hectic, really busy-doing two or three lectures every day for the last three weeks. So... but it's been nice that I have been able to get in touch with so many people and especially young people. I've been speaking at schools and colleges in Germany. A lot of young people were really interested and I'm sure some of them are influenced.

Because that's your goal?

Yes, planting seeds is my work [laughs].

Why did you decide to come to the Netherlands?

Well, some of my friends, when they heard I was coming to Germany, said, "You must come to the Netherlands as well." So, I said, "Okay." (So it was more of a coincidence?) Yeah.

I was wondering... Do you ever worry-when you're travelling the world like this, do you ever worry about possible attacks on your life? Because, well, you make a clear statement and not everyone agrees and especially... I don't know if you've heard about it, the attempted attack on the Dutch Royal Family? Do you worry about those kinds of things?

Well, you can't worry about these things. If they happen they will happen. I don't put it in my mind at all.

Why and when exactly did you decide to follow your grandfather's footsteps?

Well, I think it was partly from childhood, because I saw my parents following my grandfather's footsteps, so we were brought up in that kind of atmosphere. So when I grew up and I saw, in India, poverty all around me, I couldn't just ignore it. So I decided to do something about it, and my wife and I got involved and started various programmes, economic, social and medical programmes to bring change to the poor people. One thing led to another. We just went on doing it.

I read that your grandfather advised you to draw a violence tree at the end of every day. What exactly is a violence tree and how do you draw one?

Well, this was a way of doing introspection. He wanted me to see how much violence I commit all the time. When we talk about violence, we only talk about physical violence, but we also commit a lot of non-physical violence, passive violence. So he said what I should do was-on the principle of a genealogical tree, with ‘violence' as the parent, and ‘physical violence' and ‘passive violence' as the two branches... and every day I had to examine everything I had experienced during the day and put them in their appropriate places on that tree. So physical violence is all the kinds of violence where physical forces are used, so murders, killings, beatings, rapes, and all wars and all that, but passive violence is something we tend to ignore because half of the time we don't even know that it is violence. It's like... calling names, and teasing and looking down on people, and discriminating against people, consuming resources, over-consuming resources, and wasting resources, all thousands of things you do every day consciously and unconsciously. And when I began to do this introspection, I found that within a few months, I had filled up the whole wall in my room with acts of passive violence, and that's when I became aware of how much passive violence I was committing. And so it's really important for all of us to do that kind of introspection, because if we really want to create peace in the world, we cannot create it until we create it within ourselves, and we can only create it within ourselves if we stop committing violence, passive or physical, against other people.

Does passive violence include negative thoughts we have about someone?

Well, that is the starting point, negative thoughts about other people, and that is the breeding ground for hate and prejudice. So yeah, we should not have negative thoughts about other people. We should have more faith in people and respect for people. So, the way to find out if something is passive violence or not-my grandfather had asked me to just ask myself a question: would the action I am planning to do now... is it going to hurt somebody or help somebody. If I can honestly say it is going to hurt somebody, then that is passive violence. But if it's going to help somebody, it is fine. So, that's how I create a tree of violence. You have to be honest and... you know... do it with diligence. (Don't hold things back.) Hmm.

Nowadays, do you notice yourself committing passive violence? Are there things you really hate, or that really anger you? And how do you deal with those feelings?

Well, anger is good. It's not bad. What is bad is the way we abuse anger. But anger is something that motivates us-it's like the fuel you put in a car; it drives the car. So anger drives us to do good things, but when we abuse anger, it drives us to do bad things, and that's why we... In the Hindu-tradition, they say that in every one of us there are two tigers, one that represents evil and one that represents good, and they are constantly at war with each other. And one grandson asked his grandfather, "Which one wins the war?" and the grandfather said, "The one you feed." We unfortunately feed the wrong tiger.

How difficult was it to make the decision of not taking revenge after your grandfather's assassination?

It was very difficult in the first instance. I think if my parents had not been there to advise me and show me the way, I may have not been able to do that-to forgive someone who has done something so horrible. It's not very easy. But because they were there and helped and showed me the way, I was able to forgive, move on, and dedicate my life to creating the kind of atmosphere where things like that won't happen any more.

Then what are your views on the fact that-at the memorial for the victims of the Queen's Day drama-only six candles were lit, six candles for the people who died because of Karst Tates, but no candle for Karst Tates himself, who had died as well?

Well, that wasn't right. I think they should have lit a candle for him as well. That would have been a good gesture, but you know, we-and this is what I keep saying to everybody-we have created a whole culture of violence and that culture dominates us to such an extent that everything we do-our thoughts, our attitudes, our relationships, everything-is controlled by that culture of violence. And through that, our justice system also becomes a victim of that culture of violence. And today our justice system-and everybody tells us we cannot expect to have justice if we don't make somebody pay for what they have done, so we catch the person and punish them. And that doesn't help anybody, because the person that suffers the punishment comes out and just becomes another criminal. What we need to do is to help that person realise that what they did is wrong and try to transform them and change them. I think that in a culture of nonviolence, a prison is a place where we educate and transform people, and not where we punish people.

Is there a difference between nonviolence and peace? Or are they the same? Or does nonviolence create peace or the other way around?

Well, I say the difference now, in terms of... in modern times, people seem to believe we can create peace through violence, and that's why, like in the United States, the presidents used to build up this whole arsenal of weapons of mass destruction-that's the only way we can have peace. So that is one way of looking at peace, and maybe that is a quick way of getting peace because you put the fear in your opponents and they won't attack you. But that is not a lasting way of peace, because people have a tendency to overcome fear and get out of it, and that is why in a culture of violence we have to keep escalating the level of violence all the time to keep that control through fear, and you reach a point at some stage when you can't escalate any more, when you can't get any more, and then you have this situation like terrorism, where they completely rejected the rules of combat and created new rules. And now the state, like the government of the United States and others, they don't know how to combat this, because there are no rules and no game plans. It's not a conventional war. You don't have a conventional enemy. So, everything has changed. And this is a very frightening picture, because if this is going to be the trend, what is going to happen in the next 15, 20, 25 years? Where is this violence going to end? How is it going to escalate? It's very frightening.

Do you support the current president of the United States, Barack Obama, for trying to talk to the countries the US was previously at war with?

Yes, I think so. I supported Obama and I voted for him, so I'm very happy that he's become the president. I'm hoping that he will be able to change the system and that more negotiations and discussions will take place. But it's more important to remember that when talking is good, listening is also equally good, and you're supposed to have the ability to listen, not just talk. And I hope that he will recognise that and be able to listen to other people and their points of view and find a middle way out of it.

You integrate concepts of different religions to create a kind of universal religion, but in all religions you find fundamentalists and people who commit a lot of violence. Isn't that awkward? Why would people still do those kinds of things when they are violating the core principles and values of their religion?

Well, that's the tragedy, you see? The cultural violence has seeped into religion too. And so there's a lot of competition between religions and especially between Christianity and Islam. Both of them want to convert the whole world to their way of belief and I don't think that is right. I don't think that anybody can work the whole world into one religion. We have to respect all the different religions and their way of worship and practice. And learn about each other, you know, enhance your own religion through learning about other people and respecting other religions. And that is what we have been trying to promote in the culture of nonviolence. The relationships that we must build between people and individuals must be based on respect and not on selfishness. Similarly, religion also-and philosophies-should be respected.

What about this philosophy: if there is no evil, there is no good, and one cannot exist without the other. So, if there's no violence, peace cannot exist either.

Well, I think peace can exist without violence. What may happen is that we won't appreciate peace as much, because we are not experiencing violence. And that's a very different proposition all together. That is because we have become conditioned to that kind of duality. So we need to experience something bad to appreciate what is good, but I don't think that should stop us from achieving good. And you know, we don't have to reinvent the [club] and like I said to some of my friends in Germany, the intellectual learns from his own experience, but the wise one learns from other people's experience. So, if we're going to have to do everything ourselves to learn what the experience is and then become good, then we are automatically intellectuals. But if people would see that, you know, this has been the consequence of what this person has done, and "I don't want to do that, then I want to avoid that. So, I learned from that experience and I avoid going that way." So, we don't have to experience all the bad in the world to appreciate what is good.

You will go back to America, to the United States, after your European tour?

Yes, I live in the United States. That's where I have my home, and my work is mostly in the United States.

What will you do after you've come home? Will you continue...?

Yeah, I have many lectures planned, so I'm probably going to get about three days rest at home before I travel out again. That's been my life; come home, do my laundry, rest for a couple of days, re-pack my bags, and off I go.

When will you stop doing it? I can imagine you want to continue for as long as possible.

Yeah, well, I'm 75 now. My children say it's time for me to retire, but I don't think I am the retiring type. I can't see myself sitting at home, not doing anything. So, I am blessed with good health so far and I feel that as long as I can do this, and as long as people want to listen to my stories and my message, I should do it.

I admire you for continuing to tour around the world and give lectures at the age of 75.

Thank you very much.

[...]

Are there any questions that have never been asked you, but that you would love to answer?

I can't think of any at the moment. What about you, Steve? You've covered all of the important points. [Steve Engelking: I'm trying to think of something. You can ask him about his work in India.] Yeah.

[laughs] Well, what about your work in India?

Well, there's been lots of work in India. I lived in India for 30 years before I moved to the US. During that period, as I told you, my wife and I did a lot of social work for the poor people. One of the things that we did was that we found a lot of newborn, unwanted babies, who abandoned on the streets just days after they were born. Obviously, these babies were born to unwed mothers and because there was a big stigma and there still is these days-a stigma for women who get pregnant before marriage; they would have a pregnancy quietly. They would deliver the baby and then abandon them on the street and walk away from them. We found, over a period of about ten years, nearly 127 such babies. And those were alive, many of them died, so there could have been a lot more. But we gave these babies to adoption and some of them in Sweden, some in other countries, France and Canada, quite a lot in India too. That was one part of our work and the other part was to help the poor people in every way we can. They can stand up and make a living for themselves and not depend on handouts either from the government or other charitable institutions. And that self-help programme succeeded very well. But recently, after my wife passed away two years ago, my children and I decided that we will create a memorial for her because she was so considerate about the poor all of the time. And we thought of creating a school for the very poor children. And while we were planning this whole concept, it suddenly occurred to us that we couldn't just take a child from their family and give that child education and hope that it will benefit the whole family. Because our experience in the past was that once a child gets education, they are too ashamed of the poverty and they don't want to go back to the conditions in which their parents are living, and so they break away from their families and go into the city and make the life that they want. And the families don't benefit from it at all. So, instead of breaking up families, we should do something, which would keep the families together, and help the entire family. So, this school would be rather unique. We would be trying to lift the whole family out of poverty by giving them basic education: reading, writing, doing arithmetic, and then... vocational training, in various types of vocations, so that they can select which one they like most and learn more about it and then, you know, be able to start some small business and make things themselves and sell it, and make a life. It is a very difficult job and it's going to be quite a challenge, because I think this will be a unique school. I haven't come across any of such schools. But challenges are good for life.

Do your children and grandchildren help you with this project?

Yes, they do.

Do they agree with everything you do?

Well, I think they agree with most of it, but of course there are some things they don't like. We find ways of dealing with that. My son does in India what I do in the West. My daughter helps me in the US. She lives in Rochester, too. And I have two grandchildren of each of them, so four grandchildren now. (How old are they now?) My daughter is older, so her boys are older as well; the oldest is 29, his younger brother is 27. My son's kids-one is 18, the other 16. They're still studying, but in little ways they help us.

How do other people respond to them (their name)? Do others accept them?

Yeah, I think. They're not complaining about not being accepted. They do complain sometimes that there are too many expectations of them, the kind of thing I also went through myself. And I think my kids went through the same thing as well. But I was given a bit of advice by my mother, which I thought very useful. She said, "If you consider this to be a burden, it's just going to become heavier and heavier every year. If you consider this legacy to be a light that is illuminating the path ahead of you, it will become very easy for you to be you. So I have done that all my life and that's what I advice them. Don't look at it as a burden. If somebody has some expectations, let it be. (Or tell them those kinds of expectations can't be fulfilled) Yeah, but especially schoolchildren can be mean sometimes. It's very unfortunate, but it does happen.

Do you have any wishes for the future other than creating a world of nonviolence and peace?

Well, I cannot think of any specific wish that I have. But, you know, my grandfather always told me not to have many big expectations. Just be happy and content to change one life at a time. So, I go around to all these audience that I speak to, not expecting people to change overnight, but hoping that at least one of them will change and that'll make it worthwhile. So, when I have low expectations, I won't be disappointed. When one person comes to tell me how much they are affected by the things I said, I am happy.

Thank you so much. I really enjoyed talking to you. It's a big honour.

Thank you. I enjoyed it too.

Posted in EMMA, Interview