Update: I’ve since updated the arti­cle to reflect the notion that this was not Kirti Menon, as orig­i­nally reported, but could have been Gandhi’s grand­son, Arun Gandhi. Thanks Kirti for clear­ing this up.

Mahatma Gandhi once said:

Non­vi­o­lence is the great­est force at the dis­posal of mankind. It is might­ier than the might­i­est weapon of destruc­tion devised by the inge­nu­ity of man.

He spoke of peace and tran­quil­ity, good-naturedness and love and shared these beliefs with whomever was will­ing to lis­ten and keep an open mind. When news spread across Asia of a large-scale attack against Hin­dus of East Ben­gal, Gandhi saw it fit to speak out against the back­lash. Accord­ing to Gandhi’s Life in 5000 Words:

At the age of seventy-seven, he went bare­foot from vil­lage to vil­lage, through a most dif­fi­cult coun­try­side, where low, marshy patches had to be crossed on pre­car­i­ous, impro­vised bridges of bam­boo poles. He lived on local fruit and veg­eta­bles and worked day and night to plant courage in the hearts of the Hin­dus and love in the hearts of the Muslims.

When my Math pro­fes­sor shared news the other day that he had inter­viewed Mahatma Gandhi’s grand­son I was just as esta­tic as he was. He men­tioned that he was for­tu­nate enough to secure a sit-down inter­view with her to edu­cate his 5^th and 6^th graders on the life of Gandhi, from none other than a flesh and blood rel­a­tive. As he described the expe­ri­ence his face lit up like a child eye­ing a new puppy, for he was excited to delve into the life of Gandhi through real-life expe­ri­ences on the man who stirred up con­flict and brought about peace.

Arun Gandhi, Gandhi’s grand­son, sat before his audi­ence of 5^th graders and shared with them sev­eral sto­ries of merit and obe­di­ance. He described one such story in which he was teased in school here in the United States by both white and black kids.

The white kids picked on him for being “too black” while the black kids tor­mented him for being “too white”. In his predica­ment there was no mid­dle ground, and there­fore (in rage) he decided to pump iron and build up his body to seek revenge on his tor­men­tors. See­ing as though he came from a fam­ily of peace invok­ing Hin­dus, to pre­vent such vio­lence his par­ents con­tacted Gandhi describ­ing the situation.

Gandhi, almost breath­lessly, told his rel­a­tives to send the boy to him and he promised he’d teach him about virtue. Every­day Gandhi took 2 hours and spent time school­ing the boy in ethics, patience and non-violence. When the boy was given a stubby pen­cil to write with, he took one look at it and tossed it. Gandhi shook his head and beck­oned the boy to lis­ten to what he had to say.

He told his grand­son that he shouldn’t throw away a pen­cil because for all the pen­cils in the world thou­sands of trees were torn down. In turn, trees give oxy­gen to the air which allows us to breathe. By throw­ing away a pen­cil, the boy was steal­ing a breathe of fresh air from human­ity and all because of vio­lent dis­gust and aggression.

Over the course of a sum­mer, Gandhi’s grand­son learned why his grand­fa­ther was such a pro­found and thought­ful indi­vid­ual. That he could take some­thing so small as a pen­cil and turn it into a les­son on non-violence showed how intel­li­gent and peace­ful Gandhi was by nature and I’m sure it was a sum­mer he never forgot.