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