Remembering Peace Brigades International co-founder Narayan Desai on the 10th anniversary of his passing
Photo: Narayan Desai spinning thread, a symbol of the non-cooperation movement, during a public meeting in February 1992. Photo by Yann Forget.
Ten years ago this month, the Mumbai, India-based newspaper The Economic Times reported: “Noted Gandhian and former Chancellor of Gujarat Vidyapith [university], Narayan Desai, died at a private hospital in [in the city of] Surat.”
Image by mkgandhi.org.
At Peace Brigades International (PBI), we remember that Narayan was one of the five original signatories of a letter dated January 12, 1981, inviting people “to attend a conference to revive the idea of an international organization committed to unarmed third party intervention in conflict situations.”
That conference took place eight months later, starting on August 31, 1981, at the Quaker Peace Education Centre on Grindstone Island, about 110 kilometres south-west of Ottawa. It was the meeting that founded PBI.
His formative early years
Narayan Desai was born on December 24, 1924.
The Journal of South Asian Studies notes: “He spent the first decade of his life at Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram under the watchful eyes of his father and the Mahatma instead of receiving a formal school education. The next decade was spent at Gandhi’s ashrams at Wardha and then nearby Sevagram.”
His father died on August 15,1942 when Narayan was 17 years old. He was being detained at that time in the Aga Khan Palace with Gandhi for their role in the “Quit India Movement” demanding an end to British rule in India, launched just days before at the Bombay session of the All-India Congress Committee.
Narayan’s role in naming Peace Brigades International
PBI co-founder Daniel N. Clark has written about the naming process that appears to have taken place on September 2, 1981. Clark notes: “During a coffee break, ‘Peace Brigades International’ was first voiced by Narayan, seized on by Charlie [Walker], and on reconvening accepted by everyone.”
Given Narayan’s involvement with the “Shanti Sena” movement, we can presume that this influenced his suggestion. The Sanskrit or Hindi words “Shanti Sena” can be translated as “Peace Army” or “Peace Brigade”. Narayan had also been a delegate at a conference in Lebanon in 1961/62 where the World Peace Brigade was founded.
“Shanti Sena”
The Global Nonviolent Action Database has explained: “After India’s independence [from the British Empire was won in August 1947] Gandhi had the idea of creating Shanti Sena … an army of nonviolent soldiers that could keep the peace [between Hindus and Muslims]. Gandhi planned a conference [that was to take place on February 8] 1948 at his Sevagram Ashram to discuss the organization of the Shanti Sena, but he was assassinated [on January 30, 1948, just days] before talks began.”
The Sevagram Ashram where Gandhi’s “peace brigade” conference was to take place is one of the ashrams where Narayan lived at that time.
The idea of a Shanti Sena was later revived in 1957. The Global Nonviolent Action Database further notes: “Under the leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan and Narayan Desai, the Shanti Sena became a group of about 6,000 Shanti Sainiks (peace soldiers) in the mid-1960s at the height of its membership.”
Narayan has noted that when Jayaprakash was the president of “Shanti Sena”, Narayan was the secretary of the organization. Jayaprakash was a Gandhian-Marxist revolutionary who was sentenced, at the age of 29, to a year’s imprisonment for his participation in 1932 in the civil disobedience movement against British rule.
The Institute for Total Revolution
The concept of “total revolution” has been attributed to Jayaprakash.
The War Resisters League notes that at some point after October 1979, less than two years before the founding of PBI in September 1981, Narayan established the Institute for Total Revolution (“Sampoorna Kranti Vidyalaya”).
A Desh Gujarat news article explained at the time of Narayan’s passing that: “The Institute imparts training in non-violence and Gandhian way of life.”
The Journal of Resistance Studies also provides this commentary about Narayan and the concept of “Total Revolution”: “This overt mixture of Marxist and Gandhian philosophies began to forge a new, people’s power approach to liberation theory (Girdner, 2013), and – as a core organizer in both the Boodhan land gift movement of the 1950s and a leader of the Shanti Sena Peace Army of the early 1960s – Narayan Desai became closely affiliated with these attempts at implementing revolutionary aspects of the nonviolent campaigns. The work of Shanti Sena, building a highly disciplined peace force to stand up against actual military opposition, was the leading Indian version of an idea being taken up globally at the time.”
Narayan’s call for “south-south dialogue”
The Journal of Resistance Studies has also noted: “Perhaps the most significant project Narayan embarked on as WRI [War Resisters International] Chair was a 1991 tour of eleven Latin America countries, sponsored by Servicio Paz y Justicia (SERPAZ).”
That article continues: “Organized as a bilateral, mutual exchange program, the three months of conversations exploded a number of myths that Desai had been prepared for, including that Latin Americans would not be interested in Gandhi or nonviolence per se… The need for greater South-South work came into even sharper perspective for him, as did the more substantial differences between the movements of the North and South.”
At that time (1991), Narayan commented: “A sort of violence which is not generally perceived in the west is the structural violence of the society. During the past years, many Latin American countries have seen political change from dictatorship to so called democracy – that political change has not satisfied most people and they want deeper change. And they associate that deeper change with Total Revolution…The exploitation, the colonization, the insults, their dignity being attacked is something that they thought was violence much more than the killing of a few people here or there… We in the South have so many things in common and yet know so little about each other…I always begin: ‘My objective is south-to-south dialogue’… and they say ‘That is exactly what we want.’”
Ten years after the passing of Narayan, we continue to be informed by his political life, his fundamental contributions to Peace Brigades International, and his subsequent theoretical thinking on nonviolence and social change.
Photo: Narayan Desai.
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