Grandson of Gandhi speaks to local high schoolers
As talk of the Sept. 11 attacks and troop levels in Iraq continue, area high school students got a different world view Friday -- one of peace.
Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, whose nonviolent resistance helped India gain independence, spoke to students as part of the Naperville and ThinkGlobal Arts Foundation's monthlong Celebration of Peace.
Gandhi, 72, is a visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for the Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and co-chair of the Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation in Gurgan, India. He also is a journalist and author who has penned biographies of both of his grandfathers.
On Friday, he visited Naperville Central where he talked to hundreds of students from Central, Naperville North, Waubonsie Valley and Neuqua Valley high schools about the life of his grandfather and the importance of acceptance, especially in a time of mistrust between the Muslim and Western worlds.
"I think we will learn from Gandhi's life that personal relations and personal contact is supremely important, but yet there is something more than that," he said. "There is such a thing as international relations. Such a thing as interracial relations. Such a thing as intercultural relations. And those, too, are important, and that is a lesson we can learn from Gandhi's life."
While living in South Africa, Mahatma Gandhi gathered Indians together to discuss how to use civil disobedience instead of violence to fight against anti-Indian laws the government was imposing.
"He decided he would fight for the rights of his people, but he would not let anger and violence control him, and forgiveness would be something he would try to cultivate in his life," Rajmohan Gandhi said.
That meeting occurred Sept. 11, 1906. Mahatma Gandhi later brought that same nonviolent approach to India, and the country gained its independence from Great Britain in 1947.
After his talk, students asked Gandhi how their generation can improve relations between the Western and Muslim worlds.
"Go out of your way to build not only friendships but form partnerships and alliances with people across the cultural divide," he said. "People of goodwill of different religions who trust one another will surely overcome and defeat those on both sides who are spreading dissonance and suspicion."
After the event, a small group of students joined district administrators for lunch with Gandhi at Waubonsie.
Sitting at his table, they discussed both his life and their own lives and had a chance to tell him about their goals for the future. Each received a signed copy of "The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work and Ideas."
Waubonsie senior Monica Sood said meeting Rajmohan Gandhi was an honor and called his talk enlightening and insightful.
"The way he spoke to us, it was just incredible to listen to his experience and his grandfather and what his grandfather did for India as a country," she said. "Being that Hindu is my religion, I'm really excited to read this book … and learn more about my culture," she said.
The longtime rift between Hindus and Muslims hasn't stopped her from having Muslim friends, and she plans to spread Gandhi's message of accepting others.
"We're all people and we all breathe," she said. "Just because we have different religious views doesn't mean we have to dislike one another."
Gandhi will give another speech at 7 p.m. today at Pfeiffer Hall, 310 E. Benton Ave., on the campus of North Central College. The event is free and open to the public.