The grandson of spiritual leader and outspoken pacifist Mahatma Gandhi will speak at the University Saturday and Sunday to promote non-violence.
The speech is held in conjunction with “The Festival of the Millennium: Waging Peace Through the Arts,” a four-day celebration promoting peace through music.
But Gandhi’s grandson, Arun Gandhi, didn’t always subscribe to a philosophy of non-violence, according to an official biography compiled by the MK Gandhi Institute.
Growing up in South Africa, he toned and built his muscles so that he could one day fight back against the children who beat him black and blue because he was Indian, the biography said. His parents did not approve and sent him to be with his grandfather.
After 18 months with his grandfather, Arun Gandhi’s outlook changed, creating the foundation for his life of promoting peace through lectures, workshops and community outreach.
He brings this message to the University in a free speech at 8 p.m. Saturday in Beall Hall and in a workshop from 2 to 5 p.m. on Sunday, also at Beall Hall.
“Any time you get to hear a great speaker of international stature … issues of international concern are brought to a local level,” said Scott Barkhurst, publicity director for the University’s school of music. “To see them and to hear them in person, it adds more impact to the message itself.”
Associate professor of music Robert Kyr organized the event, which he said is an opportunity for people to explore the concept of peace in a new way.
“Having just completed a century filled with war, there is no better time to focus on a new direction,” Kyr said. “This theme relates to the striving for peace in one’s own life, community, region, nation and throughout the world.”
Kyr said people should not underestimate the ability of the arts to mend severed borders and ideologies.
“When music brings us into the ‘right relationship’ with one another as musicians and audience members, then peace is being waged,” he said. “Whenever the theme of the work is related to peace itself, then even more so.”
Kyr’s honors orchestra will perform his Symphony No. 9, “The Spirit of Time,” from 8 to 10 p.m. at the Silva Concert Hall in the Hult Center for the Performing Arts.
The combination of music and speech on a scale of this magnitude is rare, said Lori O’Hollaren, project coordinator for the Savage Endowment for International Relations and Peace, which arranges educational speeches and workshops by international figures.
“You learn so much more about how music makes a statement,” she said. “My phone has been ringing off the hook with people wanting to find out more about this.”