Speaker Biography
“Fulfilling Gandhi's Dream at the End of the 20th Century” Watch Video
The fifth grandson of Mohandas K. Gandhi, India’s late political and spiritual leader, Arun Gandhi (b. 1934) has followed in his grandfather's footsteps as a distinguished advocate of peace and nonviolence throughout the world.
Born in Durban, South Africa, Gandhi grew up amidst the era of apartheid and, as a person of Indian descent, experienced racial discrimination from both Europeans and Africans. Gandhi also lived with his grandfather in India in 1946 and 1947 during the height of the Indian independence movement. During that time, the liberation campaign and the teachings of his grandfather both strongly influenced Gandhi's belief in nonviolence.
In 1960, while working as a journalist with the Times of India, Gandhi created India's Center for Social Unity, which worked to provide economic self-help models to communities of the impoverished untouchable caste. Gandhi moved to the United States in 1987, and in 1991, he and his wife founded the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence in Memphis, Tennessee. The institute, devoted to applying the values of nonviolence at both local and global scales, moved to Rochester, New York following the death of Arun Gandhi's wife in 2007.