City Newspaper Archives - 2/2008

GANDHI: The Holocaust and forgiveness

Published on Feb 12, 2008
The best part of controversy is that it often leads into something deeper - in the case of Arun Gandhi's recent remarks relating to Jews and the Holocaust, an inquiry into what I believe to be the larger question that has been overlooked in this heated disputation: namely, what is the quality and power of true forgiveness?

It's an oxymoron, but the past is here to stay as long as it refuses to be forgiven and forgotten. The question is, can the unspeakable act that is the Holocaust ever be forgiven? And if it can, what good, if any, would it do the planet?

In defense of Gandhi, I found it "deeply disappointing" (UR President Joel Seligman's own judgment of Gandhi's remarks) that the head of a world-renowned institution of higher learning would fail to welcome diverse world views from members of its immediate academic family. After all, you can stumble upon a copy of Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in any good library, and truth is not threatened in any way by its being there.

If the UR sponsors a forum on these issues later this year, as it has announced, then the best outcome of this disputation would be that Gandhi is forgiven and reinstated as head of the MK Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, where I believe he belongs.

There's a beautiful line from "A Course in Miracles" quoted, on the subject of forgiveness, in Marianne Williamson's "A Return To Love":

"The holiest of all spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love."

DHANI SCHIMIZZI, IRONDEQUOIT

(Editor's note: Gandhi has not been a member of the University of Rochester's "immediate academic family." He was not on the university's faculty and didn't receive a salary from the UR. The university has provided space for the MK Gandhi Institute.)