One God, Many Images By Arun Gandhi   

Gandhi's reply was prophetic. He said "The day you stop talking about how good Christianity is and start living it, everyone will be willing to convert." I believe the answer to the present spiritual crisis that we face lies in this sentence. In a manner of speaking, we are all standing on street corners denouncing others and proclaiming our superiority without proving it in action.

It was his early experience with religious exploitation, on the one hand, and religious unity on the other, that inspired Gandhi to work to change the culture of violence that dominates human civilization to a culture of nonviolence.

Gandhi says in his autobiography that as a little boy walking to school, he would see Christian missionaries standing on street corners denouncing Hinduism. This experience turned him against Christianity to the point that he began to hate Christians. However, at home, Gandhi was at the same time exposed to spiritual openness and tolerance, because his parents were very interested in learning about different faiths. They invited religious leaders of various faiths home to have dinner and engage in dialogue, and little Mohan was present for these discussions. This friendly dialogue encouraged him to develop respect for all religions.

Much later, Gandhi was moved to say: "A friendly study of all the scriptures is the sacred duty of every individual." He emphasized "friendly" studies, as opposed to critical ones, which frequently dwell on the differences between scriptures. When we stop dwelling on where our faiths diverge and focus instead on the similarities, we will find that religion is like climbing a mountain. If we are all attempting to scale the same peak, why should it matter which side of the mountain we choose to climb?

Religion, Gandhi believed, must unite and civilize human beings and not divide people and turn them into savages. At the root of many of our spiritual problems today is the strong belief that each of us "possess" the truth. No one "possesses" the truth. We can only "pursue" the truth with all sincerity and diligence. There is a vast chasm that separates these two concepts. When we feel we possess the truth, we shut our minds and live in ignorance. This leads to disrespect for others, discrimination, oppression and aggression. If, on the other hand, we are committed to pursuing the truth, our minds are open, accepting, respectful, and welcoming.

Gandhi perceived the culture of violence as the root of all contemporary evil. He saw violence in many forms, not just the physical violence that concerns us today. Violence exists in all aspects of human life--spiritual violence and exploitation, economic violence, social violence, cultural violence, political violence, educational violence, and much more.

When I lived with Grandfather between the ages of twelve and fourteen, he taught me to ask myself everyday, in fact at every moment, if what I was contemplating to do would help or hinder other human beings. If the honest answer was that it would harm others, then I was committing an act of violence.

On one occasion he made me go out into the streets at night and search for a little three-inch stub of a pencil that I discarded on my way home from school. When I brought the stub to him two hours later, Grandfather sat me beside him and explained why it was important that I find the pencil. He said when we waste little things, we get into the habit of being wasteful and begin to waste larger things. Besides, he said, wasting natural resources was violence against nature and over-consumption of these resources led to a global imbalance that meant some people lived in poverty and others in luxury, and that would be violence against humanity.

For almost a year after this incident, Grandfather asked me to build a genealogical tree of violence with "physical" and "passive" as the two branches. Every night he helped me analyze my day's experiences and put them down on the tree. Passive violence was where physical violence was not employed but nevertheless what I did or did not do hurt someone somewhere. In a few months I filled up one wall in my room with acts of passive violence and the experience has remained with me ever since.

Later, Grandfather explained to me the connection between passive and physical violence. Passive violence, he said, generates anger in the victim, and because justice in modern times has come to mean revenge, the victim resorts to physical violence. Thus passive violence is the fuel that ignites physical violence, and since all of us contribute to passive violence in substantial measure everyday "we must become the change we wish to see in the world."

It is for these and many other reasons that I reject the concept that nonviolence is a strategy to be used according to convenience. As Gandhi would say, "Nonviolence is not a coat that one can wear today and take off tomorrow." Although many people tend to regard nonviolence as the opposite of violence, and, therefore as passive, I am convinced it has a positive effect, because it appeals to the good--love, respect, understanding, and compassion--in a human being, while violence appeals to the worst aspects of human nature--anger, disrespect, hate, prejudice, and aggression.

Gandhi always believed one must live what one wants others to learn. We cannot tell others how they should live when they see us doing just the contrary. In his attempt to replace the culture of violence with a culture of nonviolence, Gandhi chose to do it one person at a time beginning with himself.

He lived a Spartan life because he said: "The world can produce enough for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed. If all of us simplified our lives and stopped wasteful expenditure and consumption, we would be able to share the resources with so many more people around the world."

To bring about religious understanding, Gandhi's daily prayers in the morning and evening, attended by thousands, were simple and inclusive. The prayers were held in an open ground or in an auditorium without any religious symbols and included hymns and prayers from every major religion. During his lifetime, millions of people like myself were brought up singing each others' prayers with respect and understanding. It did not mean that we rejected the religion of our birth. In fact by understanding other religions, we enhanced the meaning of the religion of our birth. If a religion does not teach and promote respect, love, understanding, and acceptance of each other and each other's faith, then it cannot be a worthy religion; for no God can profess or promote hate, prejudice, discrimination, or violence.

At an adult-education class on religion at the Christian Brothers University in Memphis, a Muslim, a Jew, and I were invited to explain our respective religions. The Muslim gentleman began his discourse by saying "We Abrahamic religions have something in common. We have the word of God in a Book, whereas you Hindus are pagans who believe in 50,000 or more Gods." This, unfortunately, is a universal misconception. It is not that Hindus believe in multiplicity of gods, but rather that we cannot afford to reject any image because no one knows what the true image of God is. Hence Hindus accept all images of God as being true. My fellow presenter's view was the result of ignorance and an outstanding example of "possessing" the truth as opposed to "pursuing" the truth. Respect for all religions will come only when we make concerted attempts to replace the present culture of violence with a more inclusive and positive culture of nonviolence.

Arun Gandhi is the president of the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence in Memphis, Tennessee and the grandson of Mohandas Gandhi.