Gandhi Speaks About His Grandfather

Brut India

Was Mahatma Gandhi a badass?! His grandson offers a surprising portrait of this Independence hero.

Transcript

00:00We assume that he was born a great person.

00:05He was not born a Mahatma.

00:07He was born just an ordinary person.

00:10When you look at his early life,

00:12he was a scamp.

00:14He was lying to his parents.

00:16He was stealing money from home.

00:19He was eating meat.

00:20He was smoking cigarettes

00:22and doing all kinds of things.

00:30He had all the weaknesses of any teenage kid.

00:41But the difference between him

00:43and the rest of us

00:45is that he realized

00:48that these are weaknesses.

00:50He was a very loving grandfather

00:52and he was very approachable.

00:54That is what I think about now

00:56and wonder how he was able to

01:00give me the same amount of time

01:02and respect and attention

01:06as he would give the leaders of the movement.

01:11When they came to him

01:13with sometimes ridiculous questions,

01:18he never laughed them off

01:20or got annoyed or anything.

01:23He very patiently answered those questions.

01:33In non-violence,

01:35if you don't go and suffer

01:37and lead the protest from up front

01:41like Gandhi did,

01:43then it can't succeed.

01:45You can't sit in your office

01:50and command other people to do something

01:53which you are not doing yourself.

01:56One of the reasons why we perpetuate violence

01:59is because we always want to control people

02:03at every level.

02:05And the easiest way to control people

02:07is through fear.

02:09It's quick.

02:10Politicians are controlling the nation through fear.

02:14We are controlling other nations

02:16through fear of armed forces.

02:19Fear is the basis of control.

02:21But non-violence requires us

02:24to build a relationship of love

02:27and mutual respect.

02:30And that control through love and mutual respect

02:35is a much more lasting

02:38and much more civilized way of dealing with it

02:44than controlling people through fear.

02:54I think it's our own weaknesses

02:57that make us criticize.

02:59We haven't really understood

03:01what he was trying to do

03:03and how he was trying to do it.

03:05He didn't force anybody

03:07to do those experiments with him.

03:11They did it with understanding and agreement.

03:16Some people have even accused him of being a racist

03:20because he used the derogatory terms of CAFR

03:25in his early writings.

03:28I wouldn't call it racism

03:30because racism is where you believe in what you hate

03:34and you perpetuate that hate.

03:37In his case it was ignorance.

03:45The structure, the morality, the values in India

03:49are deteriorating and going down the drain.

03:53And nobody talks anything about that.

03:56We have this kind of rampant rapes going on

03:59all over India

04:01and the women are still being treated

04:05as second class citizens and even worse than that.

04:09Why aren't they doing anything about that?

04:12Why aren't the Rajputs taking that issue up?

04:16True religion is about morals and values

04:20and they don't have any labels.

04:23There is no such thing as Christian morals

04:26or Muslim morals or Hindu morals.

04:29Morals and values and all of these things

04:32are common to everybody.

04:35For more UN videos visit www.un.org

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