It's a pleasure to be with you, Dr Wadhwa. It's a delight! I look forward to our conversation.

My fondest memory of him is his hug; his warmth. When I was going from 10 to 12, when he was going from 76 to 78, shortly before he was killed. It was often in Delhi, which is where I was raised, where my father was a journalist. He was editing the "Hindustan Times." That was the period when I saw a lot of my grandfather. He and I were in the same city. Of course, not living in the same place. But I saw a lot of him. His warmth was particularly remembered by me because my meetings with him were relatively short. I didn't have long one on one sessions with him because that was a time when India was becoming independent. India was being partitioned. There were refugees in Delhi, Sikhs and Hindus from West Pakistan. The Muslims of Delhi were feeling very uneasy because they felt they were being pushed out of Delhi. So people of all kinds were surrounding my grandfather. My siblings and I had to fight for our time with him. But whenever he saw my siblings or me, the affection with which he greeted me - in terms of the fondest memory - that is what I remember. But there are other things to remember from the time, which I can speak of.

I did spend this time with him when I was between 10 and 12. But then I've also done a fair amount of study of his life. I've met numerous people who knew him over a longer period. I've read what critics and adversaries, or his opponents have written about him, journalists who interviewed him, and many others. One thing that occurs to me is that I don't think that at any stage, he said, "How can I make an impact on this world?" He tried to do his best as circumstances confronted him. And the result was that he made an impact. It isn't as if at some point early in his life he said, "Okay, here I am, how am I going to make an impact on the world? I want to have a career of making an impact on the world." That is not how I come across Gandhi's progress in life. But, I think at some stage, at different stages, he made different personal decisions. It has been recorded and he himself has spoken so much about it; how timid he was as a boy. He would stammer. He couldn't speak. In those days, people were married quite young. His wife, Kasturbai, was much braver than him. He was very embarrassed when he found that he was timid. He was afraid of the dark. He was afraid of serpents. He was afraid of thieves. But here was this young woman, she was fearless. This timid fellow at some point decides that he is going to conquer his fear; that he will not be governed by fear. Then at another point in his life, he is treated horribly by this chief British officer in his part of Gujarat, a man called Oliver. Gandhi was born to a prestigious family. His father was a minister or a prime minister of a princely part of Western India. His family was of great dignity. They weren't rich, but they had very great honor. When he was so roughly treated by this man, Oliver, Gandhi had to deal with another emotion closely allied to fear, the emotion of hatred. And he seems to have said, "No, no, I'm going to conquer this as well." It is his decision to confront situations where he finds himself in, and if he's blocked by fear, if he's blocked by hate, he's going to fight those. So, it is by responding to - the phrase you used early on about the soul, the innermost. Gandhi also had this eagerness to return to his soul for a response that he should make. I will fight fear. I will fight hate. There were other instances like that. This is one way in which I could describe; and the result of his doing this was the impact.

I think he was the first to say that he was never perfect. He was always conscious of his imperfections. He was a human being with all the flaws that all human beings have. But, I'll just make a couple of comments on what you have said. First of all, Hindu-Muslim unity, fighting for the rights of the untouchables, fighting British imperialism, all these were very early passions in his life. Very deep passions and early passions. They remained his passion throughout his life. But, he was having to deal with great challenges, great difficulties. Some of these goals of his Hindu-Muslim unity, fighting untouchability, fighting for India's freedom, there was some tension between these goals. Because he needed the support of the so-called high castes. They were keen on Indian independence. They were not keen on fighting untouchability. Some of them were not keen on Hindu-Muslim unity. Some of them were. Some of them were not. Many Muslims were happy with the idea of Hindu-Muslim partnership, but they had reservations about other things.

So, in order to fight these goals, which at times had tension between them, he again needed to return to his soul, not so much to his mind for wisdom, although that too; he was a shrewd man. He felt that the human mind was also given by the Almighty to be used. He was a very astute man in his dealings. But, when it came to these very big tensions, which had great consequences also in his family life, there were threats to his life. His existence was at stake again and again, and his progress was impeded again and again. As he was returning to his soul all the time, every day, all his life, maybe he could have done a better job of it. He himself feels that he could have done a better job of it at different stages.

I might also add that he had these very great goals early on in life, but these great goals didn't encompass everything in the world. For instance, when he was in Africa for 21 years or so, that is where he found this idea of nonviolent resistance, satyagraha. Great changes in his life. But, raising the African people to great levels of justice and dignity was not the passion of his life in South Africa. It was the Indian community in South Africa, the Hindus, the Muslims, the Parsis, the Sikhs, but not the Africans. So, it isn't as if early on in his life he embraced all of humanity as his concern. Maybe he should have. Not many people did that. Certainly, he did not. Anyway, those are some remarks that I have.

21 out of which about 2 were spent in India. So actual months were months of 19 years.

Yes, he did say that. By the way, I had the chance to meet Mandela on that visit to India that he made as a member of parliament. But that's another story. You're quite right about that, and incidentally, during his time in South Africa, there is one very remarkable talk he gave in the year 1908. This was published at the time in the newspapers of Johannesburg. This is an unusual statement that he makes where he envisions a future where the Africans, the Chinese, the Indians, the Asians, the Europeans all form together. They commingle together to form a new humanity. Although I have pointed out the limitation in Gandhi's time in South Africa, that he was largely confined to the Indians of South Africa and their rights, he did articulate in 1908, an incredible future vision of a commingled humanity of all the races. This is the point that you were making.

It is easily accessible.

I think that's a very fine way of understanding all human beings, great people, small people, all of us, that our aims are very large or quite small. We have to have a limited focus. It's essential if we are to achieve anything solid in any one area. No matter how gigantic her or his heart may be, it's impossible for a human being to embrace every crucial cause in the world at the same time. It's just out of the question. Your point about it being a net additive is a very good one, too. I like that phrase.

It's more a commitment than a technique, as I understand his life. He wasn't looking for techniques in that sense. He had his commitment to these great goals that I'd mentioned, but also to his soul that he was not going to disobey his conscience. This was a fundamental resolution made early on in life and repeatedly made and renewed several times in his life. That he is not going to disobey his conscience was the commitment. To implement that commitment, yes, he prayed. He took moments of silence. But, he also often used to say because when there were times when some people were not happy, especially with his idea of Hindu-Muslim unity, that India belonged to everybody. And so when violence occurred in 1947 and many Hindus and Sikhs suffered, of course, many Muslims also suffered. But, the many Hindus and Sikhs who suffered since Gandhi was a very devout Hindu, were very unhappy with his attempt to take on the sufferings of everybody. They were urging him, you are as you say you are a religious man, a spiritual seeker, you go to the Himalayas, go to the caves. Don't bother with all of us and these worldly pursuits. You want to go to the soul, then go to the Himalayas'. Gandhi's answer was, "I carry my Himalayas with me wherever I go and my soul tells me to be here".

Popularity, of course, is a very unsatisfactory metric for success. But, nonetheless, it's very important to recognize that despite the violence that took place, and despite the unhappiness that many Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, all - it isn't as if the unhappiness was only felt on the Hindu and Sikh side. Incidentally, one of my more recent books is a very detailed study of Punjab, of the partition and the killings of the Hindus and Sikhs and the Muslims in Punjab and their whole history. Not just the immediate prior history of partition, but 240 years of Punjab's history. In there, you find evidence of how Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims in different parts of Punjab all suffered very greatly.

The point I'm making is that Gandhi's life actually was an enormous success in the sense that for 40 or 50 years after partition, Indians wholeheartedly, as a people, as a nation, as a state, as parliament, as intellectuals, accepted the idea that India belongs to everybody. Yes, some Hindus or many Hindus, at different stages, were unhappy with some of Gandhi's passions: his passion that Muslims should have equal rights in India and his passion against untouchability also, was not popular. He had assassination attempts on him in the 1930s on the untouchability question much before the final successful attempt to kill him. But, I think it's important when we think of effectiveness, popularity, and success. These are all very not so unambiguous words, but nonetheless, they are often meaningful words.

The fact that for such a long time there was considerable, if not unanimity, overwhelming consensus in India, in favor of India being a secular state. Today, it isn't. Today, there is another. But, I think that 50 years is an enormously long period. So I would not understate the effectiveness of what Gandhi's life achieved.

That's a very important point you make. It wasn't a minor thing at all. In the early years of India's independence, before Gandhi was killed and shortly after he was killed, many critics or many analysts of the world said that there was no way in which this unwieldy democracy with so many languages, so many religions, so many castes, could possibly survive as a democracy. It has survived as a democracy, not just by holding elections every 5 years, but also through independent media, through an independent judiciary, through an independent, active civil society, through vigorous debates. As you pointed out, there have been very few countries, 1 or 2 small countries, that can claim that kind of record. But, India is a unique example of an enormously large country, now, of course, the world's most populous country with a diversity that can't be equaled. And yet, it has been vigorous. But, here I must point out that in recent years this proud record is now in very great danger. There is a very strong opinion in India that equality, democracy, are things for weak people. Strong people should have supremacy, that the "legitimate citizens" of a country, the rightful, should have supremacy. I have to point out that this is a very deeply concerning development today.

There's no doubt that there is in many areas of Indian life, the economy, a lot of vibrancy and many people are optimistic. This is not just the last 10 years or so; in the last 35 or 40 years, there has been steady economic progress, which has continued in recent years also. There is undoubtedly great optimism among many very capable people. Another thing, by the way, that has happened is that the Indian people have increasingly reminded themselves that the whole world is their home, not just India is their home, but the whole world is their home, which can be witnessed now in many parts of the world. But along with this sense of optimism and vibrancy in large and significant and gifted sections of the Indian population, very large sections of the Indian population are feeling terribly frightened. This is a cause for very deep concern. After all, the Christians are about 2-2.5%, the Sikhs are about 2-2.5% and Muslims are about 14-15% of the Indian population. But when you realize that India's population will soon be 1.5 billion, these 2 or 3 percentages and 14 or 15 percentages really describe scores of hundreds of millions of people. And if hundreds of millions of people feel that they can't say what they want to say then it is a very sad state of affairs. Both things are there. There is very great vibrancy among large sections of people and very deep unhappiness.

That's absolutely right!

I'll mention first a few insights that I have acquired over time, then I'll mention a few practices. Some insights. This applies to India, but perhaps applies to the world as a whole. One weakness that I find in large or important sections of India's society and politics is as follows: many people band together for some good cause and sometimes succeed. But very quickly the logic turns into something like this: 'Forget your foes, finish your friends.' So good people are not able to stick together for a long time - forget your foes, finish your friends - is a very strong tendency. This is one insight.

Yeah, ego clashes. There have been many in the last 30, 40 years' time, democratic people wanting to conserve democracy from different backgrounds have come together, but they haven't been able to stick together over a long period of time. Ego clashes have brought governments down and so forth. So forget your foes, finish your friends seems to be a weakness historically and in recent years. Then another general insight I would make, which is a very obvious one. For many of us in India, no matter what our background may be, whatever religion, caste it may be, we have opinions about other groups, but we don't have knowledge about other groups. We have opinions. We don't know our neighbors. We don't listen to people who are different from us by caste or by religion or whatever language. We don't read what they write. We don't befriend them. Our circles don't intersect. But although we have no knowledge, we have very firm and sharp opinions. This is something to recognize.

I think that's a crucial point. Reading. Researching. Discernment. We don't practice these arts or these activities. And we rush to judgment. We don't reflect. We don't research. This is, of course, one result of the pace of our lives these days. But, this is absolutely true. Reading, reflecting and discernment.

Well, maybe I'll just tell a couple of stories about my own life that may be of some interest.

Early on, I had a neighbor my age in New Delhi. We were about the same age. We had the same interests. We were very good friends, but he was a very good cricketer and I was not. He was good at batting and bowling and I was very envious of him. Occasionally, when he did not do so well on a particular day, I would go to his apartment, which was literally next door to us, and say to him, Arun, what happened today? And rub in the fact that he hadn't done so well, which was of course a horribly mean thing to do. Then a friend pointed something to me, that appreciation, not comparison, can be one way to lead your life. Appreciation, not comparison. This little tip helped me a lot, and of course, I was able to be frank with my friend and tell him that I had these silly and petty thoughts. Of course, he was more than generous and our friendship ripened and his children and our children continued that. That simple idea of appreciating not comparing has helped me a lot, not only in personal relationships, but in other kinds of ways of understanding what's happening in the world. I'll mention 1 or 2 other little examples.

That's exactly what I mean and you put it in better words than I have. It also then means that you are taking yourself out of the picture, too. Me or mine is not there. Because, comparison often brings you or people like you or people you belong to: your type, your group, your nation, whatever. But, put that aside and appreciate it. That has helped me again and again and continues to help me because it's something I have to remind myself of all the time. I'm glad that seemed to mean something to you.

Then something else that happened to me when I was quite young. I was in Scotland trying to learn something about journalism. I was training with a newspaper there. I was about 21 at the time, and I went to a store to get a New Year card to send to my family. I'm talking about 1956, it was a long time ago. It was a very crowded store. Everybody was collecting cards for the year end. I found that a child grabbed my hand because this child had got separated from her parents and she just grabbed my hand. I was just 21 and this young white Scottish girl of about 3 or 4 trusted me so completely and implicitly. That to me was a reminder that really humanity was one, the white race, the black race, the brown race, the colonized, the colonizers. It made no difference. She was a child who was looking for her dad or mother or uncle or whatever. She found me and she grabbed my hand. That was a tiny thing that has also reminded me early on that, yes, I feel for India very deeply and continue to, but really, all the races of the world, all the nations of the world, we are bound together.

Let me give you one more little story again from my younger days. In my college in Delhi, ages ago, there were 2 or 3 African students and I was quite friendly with them. However, I had imbibed this from God knows from where this notion that Africans weren't that smart. Then in the mid-50s, I saw a fantastic film that some Africans had made. It was a wonderful film. And, I somehow told myself they couldn't. Some white man or some other person must have written this script. Then I heard the man who had written the script and he made a short speech and it was such a brilliant talk. I felt absolutely ashamed of the prejudice that I had imbibed. But, there was a prejudice and something had to happen that enabled me to recognize my prejudice. These tiny incidents I'm mentioning have helped me along the way.

Of course yes. To me, a person's willingness, ability to think of others, to let others occupy their minds and hearts, is far more important than alleged IQs or alleged smartness. Am I living for myself? Am I thinking about myself? Or do others enter my mental world? My emotional world? Of course, what you say is absolutely true. IQ may be important, alleged smartness. When I related that story, it wasn't so much about smartness. It was a story about prejudice. How prejudice enters the mind. What you say is so true. My goodness!

Let me first of all say that the word 'leadership' and the word 'success' are not my favorite words. That's just another prejudice that I may be nursing in my mind. But I know what you're getting at. Of course, my long experience in India and many other parts of the world, has told me that people with care, with compassion, who have a genuine interest in others, are certainly far more effective in whatever they are doing. This may be the moment where I should mention what I wanted to mention early on. This place in western India that, along with some wonderful friends and colleagues, I had the privilege of creating in the mid-1960s. It's still there, in Panchgani not far from Pune. It's a beautiful hill town and our center is called Asia Plateau. We wanted it to be not just Indian, we wanted it to be Asian, we want it to be for the whole world, actually. It's a beautiful spot. It's also environmentally rather attractive. This is a space where dialogues and conversations for reconciliation, for mutual understanding, for partnership, for healing, take place. And training sessions also take place. Of course, I'm now no longer very active there, but whenever I'm in India, I do support some wonderful colleagues who run this place. I would want all your listeners and you yourself to be aware of this place. If you're ever in that region, you would find that this Asia Plateau Center of Initiatives of Change will hearten you.

Initiatives of Change or Asia Plateau will lead you to the website.

Some events are organized by the center. At other times the place is given as a location, as a venue for similar like-minded groups to hold their workshops or sessions or conferences. Sometimes dialogues take place between different groups that have had a history of misunderstanding or even hostility. This takes effort to bring people from both sides. But this has happened over the decades and quite usefully, too, especially in the northeastern part of India, where we have so many different ethnic groups that are in conflict. Then there is also some very effective work there for women's empowerment and for involving the villagers in the area. A number of them have been given training here in the center, and they have gone on to produce some remarkable changes in their villages. There's some impact of this idea of taking time out to listen to the inner voice.

The quiet time. Listening to the conscience, listening to the inner voice. This notion has been embraced by people in many of the villages nearby with some noticeable results.

The core of that re-centering in this experiment that you describe is a time of silence, some quiet time and listening, and in my experience over my longish life - listening to other people, listening to your soul or to the inner voice. Those are terribly helpful.

Yes, I would. And then obedience to the thought that comes.

Very often, when we listen in silence, after some altercation or some anger or passion or whatever, thoughts may come to us to meet somebody from the other side, or it could be to express regret that you had said something that you need not have said. These are just small examples, but more than that, or in addition to that, it could be also to speak out, and nobody else is speaking when there is a fear in the atmosphere. I seek your permission to again return to the point I had earlier made. You mentioned your family suffered during partition. I hope their lives were spared. Those injuries are very real and one can understand the unhappiness of people of any background who harbor for some time, a memory or even unhappiness or even anger at horrible things done to them or to their family. But today, what is happening in many parts of the world is tremendous anger felt at certain groups when there is no personal injury faced. Either by the person concerned or their family, but there is this very deep sense that there is some kind of enemy out there or some horrible group out there that is so bad that it should not be given equal rights. Whether it is Afghanistan, whether it is Iran, whether it is Turkey, whether it is Hungary, whether it is India, whether it is Brazil, whether it is the United States. It is this pretty strong feeling, a negative feeling about some people without any personal injury experienced. This is something I want scholars like you, gifted men like you to give thought to; how this thing can be defeated in the world, because it is a very sad reality today.

That's absolutely it. But, I would just add this, that there is also a trend now in several parts of the world for governments in partnership with sometimes vigilante groups to prevent the expression of ideas. What you say is absolutely true. It is the most important truth. But when a time comes that intellectuals or others can't even express what they are saying, then it requires not listening, but speaking out. And when speaking out is not possible, at least speaking inside one's own mind that this is not right.

Well, I can speak from what I want to cultivate in my own life. I would like thoughts of anxiety and worry not to preoccupy my mind. I would like my mind to be free to focus on the really important things, to identify the good things that happen every day. Despite signs of sad things happening, horrible things happening, to maintain my faith that things will improve in both the countries to which I feel connected to, India and the United States and the world as a whole.

Many thanks. I've appreciated this time.