Arun Gandhi, grandson of the legendary Mohandas K. Gandhi, urged students to work toward "constructing peace" in their lives during his keynote address for Mission Week 2005.

His lecture, entitled "Lessons My Grandfather Taught Me," began Thursday with a welcome by Matthew Manning, a College of Arts & Sciences junior and member of the Mission Week Steering Committee, which invited Arun Gandhi to campus.

"Today is a highlight of the theme of this year's mission week," he said.

"It was no sure thing that our speaker would follow in his grandfather's footsteps as a champion for nonviolence," said University President the Rev. Robert A. Wild while introducing Gandhi.

Growing up in South Africa during apartheid, Arun Gandhi experienced discrimination and "felt he had no choice but to respond in violence," Wild said.

At age 12, he was sent to India to live with his grandfather, where he first "discovered the belief that nonviolence was the way to achieve real societal change," Wild said.

Gandhi came with hopes of offering ideas on how to construct peace "in this world of violence," he said.

Like himself, Mahatma Gandhi first learned about nonviolence through anger, Arun Gandhi said.

"Much of the violence in our lives is generated by anger," and we must learn to deal with this anger constructively rather than destructively, he said.

"A lot of people think nonviolence is the opposite of violence. That's not true. We commit violence in many, many ways — ways that are not even recognizable sometimes," Gandhi said. "Every time we indulge in some waste, we are committing an act of violence. Every time we do something to hurt someone, we are committing an act of violence."

The other principle of nonviolence, Gandhi said, is learning how to build relationships and not focus on material goods.

"We must learn to use things and love people," he said. "Today, we use people and love things."

Our relationships are built on selfishness, for we are always asking ourselves what we'll gain from them, Gandhi said.

"We are not here by accident," he said. "We are here to fulfill a purpose, but we will only understand this purpose when we understand our connection to all of creation."

Gandhi said people need to learn to respect rather than tolerate each other, for we can have tolerance for others without having respect for them.

He then discussed passive violence, which is "something we ignore all the time," he said.

"Passive violence is the type of violence where we don't use any physical force, but nevertheless we hurt people one way or another," he said.

We can't change the passive violence within us until we become aware of it, Gandhi said.

"We commit passive violence consciously and unconsciously all the time, and that generates anger in the victim of the passive violence. To get justice the victim resorts to physical violence," Gandhi said. "It is passive violence that fuels the fire for physical violence."

Gandhi then concluded his speech by comparing peace to a grain of wheat.

If a grain of wheat is kept inside of a box, it will "rot and perish and that will be the end of the story," he said.

But if we plant it and allow it to interact with the world, it will "sprout and grow" into a whole kingdom of wheat, he said.

"That is the meaning of peace," Gandhi said. "If one person keeps it inside of them, that peace will perish with that person. But if we allow it to interact, it will sprout and grow and very soon we can have a whole world of peace."

Katherine Schwartz, a senior in the College of Communication, said Gandhi's speech was "very powerful."

"He had a lot of insightful things to say that are very relevant in our lives today," she said.

Aaron Morey of the Tribune Staff contributed to this report.

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on Feb. 8 2005.