Arun Gandhi - Click to see all titles by this author.

“Use your anger for good. Anger to people is like gas to the automobile—it fuels you to move forward and get to a better place.”

Born in Durban, South Africa, Arun Gandhi spent his formative years under South Africa’s cruel apartheid system, in a culture of discrimination and racial strife. Although raised to practice nonviolence in the tradition of his father, activist Manilal Gandhi, and grandfather, famed Nobel Prize-winning humanitarian Mohandas K. “Mahatma” Gandhi, Arun was so angered by the ill-treatment he received that he began fighting frequently.

At age 12, Arun’s parents took him to India to meet, and be raised by, his famous grandfather, in hopes the elder Gandhi could teach the boy to positively channel his anger. Thus began two years of companionship and training in nonviolence with his beloved “Bapuji” (grandfather), who demonstrated his love and compassion by working with Arun to help transmute his anger into a productive force. Arun recalled that his Bapuji always had time for him, despite being inundated by constant visits from heads of state and others seeking his wisdom.

As an adult, Arun Gandhi made it his life’s work to continue spreading his grandfather’s global message of nonviolence while working as an author and journalist, mainly at The Times of India, where he retired after 30 years as deputy editor, and as a contributor to The Washington Post. In 1987, he and his late wife, Sunanda, moved to the United States so Arun could work on a study of prejudice at the University of Mississippi. Soon after, the two relocated to Memphis, Tenn., where they co-founded the M.K. Gandhi Institute of Nonviolence at the Christian Brothers University. The Institute moved to the University of Rochester (N.Y.) in 2007, and Arun retired as director in 2008.

In later years, Arun wrote books that spread the message of nonviolence to new audiences, including You, Me, We: A Celebration of Peace and Community, for young readers. Through it all, he fulfilled his life’s goal of spreading the principles and wisdom of nonviolence as a “peace farmer.” Arun Gandhi passed away in May of 2023 at the age of 89.