Ethnic Groups Urged to Exchange Ideas

Arun Gandhi, grandson of spiritual and cultural leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, delivered his message of nonviolent social change Tuesday at Cal State Northridge to promote dialogue among ethnic groups.

Gandhi was the keynote speaker for the university’s Week of Dialogue event, which ends today with a town hall meeting on race and tolerance from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. in the University Student Union, 18111 Nordhoff St.

Calling the August shootings at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills a horrific example of intolerance, Gandhi challenged the 450 students gathered in the Performing Arts Center auditorium to celebrate diversity.

“We can build solid relationships based on the four principles of respect, understanding, acceptance and appreciation,” Gandhi said. “No one is independent. We are all interdependent and interrelated.”

Gandhi also encouraged students to reject what he called the nation’s “legacy of hate and violence.”

“You young people have a tremendous responsibility in shaping the destiny of tomorrow,” he said. “I hope you will do the right thing in making this a better world for all of us.”

In his hourlong speech, Gandhi related his personal experiences with racism as a youth growing up in South Africa under apartheid, a system of legalized racial separation.

“For the whites, I was too black,” he recalled. “For the blacks, I was too white.”

Gandhi said he became so enraged by racial injustice that he wanted to lash out against his oppressors. “That’s when my parents decided to send me to India to live with grandfather.”

During the 18 months under the tutelage of his legendary grandfather, Gandhi said, he learned to use his anger as a means to build rather than destroy relationships between people.

“Grandfather told me that anger is like electricity,” he said. “We must treat it with the uttermost respect and channel it for positive solutions.”

Gandhi said he has spent his life trying to build on those early life lessons.

Along with his wife, Sunanda, Gandhi founded the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, a think tank on the Christian Brothers University campus in Memphis, Tenn., where he is a scholar-in-residence.

After the afternoon speech, Gandhi hosted an evening dialogue with San Fernando Valley community and political leaders on “Nonviolence or Nonexistence: Options for the 21st Century.”

The CSUN events were co-sponsored by the President’s Advisory Board on Equity and Diversity and other university organizations.