Democracy Now! marks the 100th anniversary of Satyagraha, the modern nonviolence movement started by Ghandi. For the occasion, the hosts interviewed Ghandi’s grandson. The following excerpt was awesome, I thought.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you define Satyagraha for us?

ARUN GANDHI: Satyagraha is the pursuit of truth. My grandfather believed that truth should be the cornerstone of everybody’s life and that we must dedicate our lives to pursuing truth, to finding out the truth in our lives. And so his entire philosophy was the philosophy of life. It was not just a philosophy for conflict resolution, but something that we have to imbibe in our life and live it all the time so that we can improve and become better human beings.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And the spread of the concept and the movement around the world, looking back now at its impact, could you talk about how it spread and the impact it’s had on social change around the world?

ARUN GANDHI: I think it has had a tremendous impact, as you just said in the introduction. So many people around the world have used nonviolence as a way to resolve a conflict that they faced in their lives. And they continue to use it everywhere all over the world there. And I think, in a way, nonviolence is our nature. Violence is not really our nature. If violence was our nature, we wouldn’t need military academies and martial arts institutes to teach us how to kill and destroy people. We ought to have been born with those instincts. But the fact that we have to learn the art of killing means that it’s a learned experience. And we can always unlearn it.

And I’m always reminded of a very pertinent statement that my grandfather made. He said, “Violence will prevail over violence, only when someone can prove to me that darkness can be dispelled by darkness.” And I think that’s what we have to remember and try to imbibe in our lives there, that we can never overcome violence with more violence. We can only overcome violence with respect and understanding and love for each other.

(This marks the 100th blog post in the “News and Views” category, by the way.)