Non-violent Power

In his lecture at the University of Puerto Rico, Dr Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and founder of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Non-Violence, shared the folowwing story as an example of non-violence in parenting:

I was 16 years old and living with me parents at the institute my grandfather had founded 18 miles outside Durban, South Africa, in the middle of the sugar plantations.

We were deep in the country and had no neighbours, so my two sisters and I would always look forward to going to town to visit friends or go to the movies.

One day, my father asked me to drive him to town for an all-day conferencem and I jumped at the chance.

My mother gave me a list of the groceries she needed. And since I had all day in town, my father ask me to take care of several pending chores such as getting the car serviced.

When I dropped him off that morning, he said, "I will meet you here at 5pm, and we will go home together."

After hurriedly completing my chores, I went straight to the nearest movie theatre. I got so engrossed in a John Wayne double feature that I forgot the time.

It was 5.30 before I remembered. By the time I ran to the garage and got the car and hurried to where my father was waiting, it was almost 6pm. He anxiously asked, "Why are you late?"

I was too ashamed to tell him I had been watching a western, so I said, "The car wasn't ready, so I had to wait."

What I didn't know was that he had called the garage.

My father then said: "There's something wrong with the way I brought you up. It did not give you the confidence to tell me the truth. In order to figure out there I went wrong with you, I'm going to walk home and think about it."

Thus, dressed in his suit and dress shoes, he began to walk the 18 miles home in the dark, on ostly unpaved and inlit roads. I couldn't leave him, so for five-and-a-half hours, I drove behind my father, watching him go through this agony for a stupid lie that I had uttered. I decided there and then that I would never lie again.

I often think about that episode and wonder: If he had punished me the way we punished our children, would I have learned any lesson at all?

I don't think so. I would have suffered the punishment and gone on doing the same thing. But his single non-violent act was so powerful, it is as if it happened yesterday. That is the power of non-violence.

Taken from Starmag