Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is an epic figure of the 20th century. He was dubbed "Mahatma," great soul, by another remarkable Indian, Rabindranath Tagore. Gandhi led a unique struggle to free India from Britsih colonial rule. He decided to resist the British with, what he called, "satyagraha," or truth force. It was based on the principles of nonviolence and the tactics of civil disobedience. Gandhi's successful defiance of the British inspired and influenced liberation movements all over the world including Martin Luther King, Jr and the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. Einstein said of Gandhi, "Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such a one as this walked upon this earth."

Born in 1934 in Durban, South Africa, Arun Gandhi is the fifth grandson of India's late spiritual leader Mohandas Karamchand "Mahatma" Gandhi. In 1946, just before India gained independence from Britain, Arun's parents took him to live with his grandfather for eighteen months. At twenty-three, Arun returned to India, worked as a reporter for The Times of India, and cofounded India's Center for Social Unity, whose mission is to alleviate poverty and caste discrimination. Arun and his wife, Sunanda, came to the United States in 1987 and in 1991 founded the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence in Memphis, Tennessee.