Gandhi, who now lives in Memphis, Tenn., where he runs the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, is being brought to Abilene by the Unity Church of Christianity. The Rev. Floy Kelly, pastor, said the timing is in observance of the 31st and 51st anniversaries of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, both preachers and practitioners of nonviolence. Everywhere he goes, the questions and comments are basically the same, he said. Everyone is concerned about the growing violence at home and internationally. Gandhi said physical violence can only be understood when passive violence is understood.
Passive violence can include prejudice, hatred, and economic oppression.
If people are treated poorly long enough or if they suffer in poverty while seeing others around them getting rich, eventually their anger will turn to physical violence. Statistics show that in order to maintain their present level of affluence, Americans, who constitute 3 percent of the world's population, use 45 percent of its resources, Gandhi said. Gandhi said that problem isn't peculiar to the United States, even though it is the world's most affluent country. Even in India, where a great disparity exists between rich and poor, violence is often the result. Born in South Africa to the second of Mahatma Gandhi's four sons, Arun Gandhi lived there 24 years before moving to India where he lived 30 years.