So I raise the question: did Gandhi actually make this statement? Unfortunately, I do not have an answer to this. I also asked at the Denver Public Library and was unable to find a reference to it in standard collections such as Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Gandhi Institute, founded by Arun Gandhi, asking about this quotation, over a year ago, but never received a response. But these two articles were published in 20 - over 50 years after Gandhi’s death. 6.)Īrun said that he heard this saying from his grandfather’s mouth himself. See also “Be the change you wish to see: An interview with Arun Gandhi” by Carmella B’Hahn, Reclaiming Children and Youth Vol.10, No. A34 Arun Gandhi indirectly quoting his grandfather. (Wikipedia gives these two sources: as quoted in “Arun Gandhi Shares the Mahatma’s Message” by Michel W. It is to interviews of Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi. The earliest reference I can find is actually rather recent. But when I tried to track down the source, there was a problem: no one seems to know where the quote came from, or when and where Gandhi actually said it. A Google search on “we must be the change” gets 176,000 hits, and a Google search on the slight variation “we must become the change” gets 115,000 hits. Governor Joe Manchin of West Virginia has an article on the internet about it. I have since seen it in print in various places. At the time, I didn’t even realize that it was attributed to Gandhi. I first heard the slogan “Be the Change” in conjunction with the Senate candidacy of Mike Miles, who ran in the Democratic primary in Colorado in 2004. This quote seems to be everywhere in various forms. One of the most widely-quoted aphorisms of Mahatma Gandhi is, “We must be the change we want to see in the world.” But when, and where, did Gandhi make this statement? Or did he say it at all? But I include the present article in case people are interested in how I reached my conclusions. I’ve now rather substantially changed my ideas on this subject Arleen Lorrance is the author of the earliest written source of this saying, from 1971. He travels the world sharing the lessons from his elders.NOTE: I first published this on my web site on June 5, 2009, as a static file. Robin Rose, CEO of the agency at the time, was a longtime friend of Arun Gandhi, the subject of her doctoral dissertation and she once ran his nonprofit in Denver. In 2017 one of Gandhi’s grandsons even visited Jacksonville to speak at a Girls Inc. Augustine hastened passage of Civil Rights Act of 1964 Vintage Times-Union: Martin Luther King Jr.'s stop in St. "Violence is rampant in today's society." "His values are so relevant in today's age," he said. Ramesh Vashi, also of the society, noted that Gandhi’s philosophies are and will always be needed across the globe. Today, just beyond the white-washed cottages of the independence leader's ashram, Muslims and Hindus have turned on one another with a ferocity not seen in a decade. Gandhi's wooden spinning wheel still stands among the simple throw pillows where he once sat cross-legged, threading cotton, receiving world leaders and promoting his vision of a unified, secular India. Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi sits and spins cotton in Ahmadabad, India, in this file photo taken circa 1931.
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