Gandhi Searches for Truth: A Practical Biography for Children

By Stephanie N. Van Hook

I have enormous faith in children: such keen observers and indefatigable idealists. Our job as adults is not to fill their heads with “facts” or their schedules with entertainment. We need only to remove the obstacles that might get in the way of the fulfillment of their full development as healthy, creative beings. Hands down, the greatest roadblock to the full development of the child is violence, because all forms of violence, from the inside out, crush the spirit and harden the heart of the child. And my guess is that violence only continues to exist because we are not fully awakened to the power that lies within us called, for lack of a more succinct term, nonviolence.

Children have a right to know that such a power exists, and that they have access to it.

Enter Gandhi.

I didn’t know much about Gandhi for most of my life. No one taught me about him as a child or young person. I heard his name in passing, like a whisper in an otherwise violent world, drowned out by cynicism and the loud hum of violent media. He stood for peace. I couldn’t tell you any more. I couldn’t tell you about his nonviolence, or even really define the term. I couldn’t tell you about his background, his influences, and I wasn’t really even sure if his name was spelled Ghandi or Gandhi. (For those who still may wonder, it’s the latter!) He was a bumper-sticker. A college wall poster. Not much else. And, was that his first name? Or was Mahatma his first name? On and on… I know I’m not alone in this, because a middle-aged person asked me only a few years ago if Gandhi spoke English.

Fast forward. When I was in graduate school, earning my M.A. in conflict resolution, I decided I would specialize in Gandhian philosophy. Know what I learned? Gandhi’s philosophy meant action. No armchairs allowed, unless they were for meditation to fuel the work. Soon, with the mentorship of leading Gandhian nonviolence scholar Michael Nagler, I joined the team at the Metta Center for Nonviolence, whose mission is to promote nonviolence worldwide. Drawing from the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, we work with activists and agents of cultural change around the world. Nonviolence, we believe, should be a household word. Soon thereafter, I earned a certificate in Montessori Early Childhood Education, and began teaching at a local school in my free time.

The children were eager to learn about Gandhi as I would refer to him often. I wanted to find a good resource to help children understand who Gandhi was, to empower their understanding that there are ways out of violent conflict and ways to live in alignment with our highest ideals. But I could not find a book that told Gandhi’s story while also highlighting along the way some of the key ideas of how nonviolence works. I took on that job, but with a change in approach after working with children for several years in the classroom. My take on Gandhi had changed: Everything that he had learned later in life about nonviolence was really the fulfillment of what he had learned as a child. I begin the story of his life like this: “When Mohandas K. Gandhi was a little boy, a desire began to awaken in his heart: he wanted to discover Truth.” After all, as he attests in his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, he was a Truth seeker. Truth, he even went so far to say, is God, not the other way around. And nonviolent resistance? He coined a new term for it, satyagraha, which means holding fast to Truth. These are huge concepts--but I have faith in children, a faith rooted in experience, that these are not concepts beyond their grasp. Indeed, it’s our responsibility to share them with children. Not to mention that even us grown-ups need refreshers.

Gandhi Searches for Truth: A Practical Biography for Children is my first book--12 illustrated stories starting from Gandhi’s childhood that take us through his life in chronological order (it is a biography, after all), while highlighting the development of his nonviolence. It’s meant to be read slowly with children, to engage with them about big ideas, and to deepen our relationship to children in our lives around meaningful material that can make the world a better place. They don’t need to wait until they’re grown-ups to start.

Stephanie N. Van Hook is the Executive Director of the Metta Center for Nonviolence and is trained in Montessori Early Childhood Education. She is the author of Gandhi Searches for Truth: A Practical Biography for Children (Person Power Press, 2016).