PROFILE
Two octogenarians in Gandhi
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Shunning the limelight, two men who look to Gandhi for inspiration continue to lead lives that ought to inspire a new generation of youngsters. GOPAL GANDHI writes of Narayan Desai and Enuga Sreenivasulu Reddy.
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THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY
NARAYAN M. DESAI and Enuga S. Reddy turn 80 this year. They know each other by reputation rather than personal contact, Narayan being based in the remote town of Vedchhi in Gujarat and Enuga in New York.
But Gandhi links them. In fact one can imagine him linking arms with them when they were little boys and walking briskly on the dusty lanes of Valsad, Gujarat or Gudur, Andhra.
Enuga Reddy would not, however, like to be termed a "Gandhian" in any sense; he is not. He can, however, be described as a Gandhist, a Gandhi-reservoir.
And, for that matter, Narayan Desai, though as "homespun" and sun dried-in-Sabarmati as anyone I know, is a Gandhian according to his own lights.
Neither have time for the fetishisms and shibboleths of ritual "Gandhism". ES (as I know Reddy) had just about one exposure to the Mahatma.
The year was 1933 when freshly released from Yeravada Prison where he had signed the famous Poona Pact with Dr Ambedkar, Gandhi set out from Wardha on an intensive tour of the country by train for Harijan relief.
His one-point agenda was collecting donations of cash and jewellery for Harijans. This included the auctioning of framed welcome addresses and mementos — even garlands — presented to him at each venue.
Gandhi was a skilful auctioneer. In the Hindi-speaking country he would hold up the garland, for instance, and shout "Do rupiya ek bar...panch rupiya do bar..." In the Tamil region, this call would promptly become "oru rubayi, oru daram".
S. Mahadevan of Andhra Patrika covered the tour and has a nugget of a book on it. He tells us that in Kavli, Nellore district, a number of women presented currency notes. "Nagalu (jewels)," the Mahatma said, "All are giving notes but I want nagalu."
And, seeing jewellery on women extended his hand with a virtual order "pettundi" (put).
The party with its swelling collections reached Gudur on December 30, 1933. Enuga Sreenivasulu's father was President, Gudur Town Congress Committee, and, quite naturally, on the platform. One does not know whether the distinguished raider noticed a nine-year-old in Gandhi cap going round the audience collecting donations, mainly coins.
He had a keen eye and may well have. If he did he would have been seeing a future Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations and a veritable storehouse of Gandhi-related history.
The Gudur welcome address and presents were promptly auctioned by the Bania and "Harijan by adoption". There was virtually no speech. The concourse wanted but the darshan and that obtained, it dissolved.
One cannot be sure that even the message of Harijan uplift had been absorbed.But ES, for one, was to remember the experience. Not just in his decision to turn a vegetarian (against the wishes of his Congressman father) but when under the influence of a relative — Sundararama Reddy later to become celebrated as P. Sundarayya or simply `PS' — he was drawn to the thinking of the Congress Socialist Party.
Narayan, as the only child of Gandhi's secretary and alter ego Mahadev Desai, had many occasions to observe and be observed by the Mahatma.
When he was eight and had acquired skills in the art of carding cotton, "Bablo" (baby boy) as he was called by the entire Gandhi "family" in the ashram and outside, wrote to the Mahatma, signing himself as "Narayan".
He received, in response, this letter of felicitation and "promotion" from Bapu who was in the Yeravada Prison with Narayan's father, Mahadev:
March 11, 1932
Chi. Narayanrao,
Now that you have graduated from Bablo to Narayan, I suppose I may go further and make you a "Rao". Besides, Mahadev tells me you seem to have learnt carding only recently. If that is true, it' s proper that you should be addressed as "Raosaheb"...
Blessings from
Bapu
But no, Bablo was not to be patronised. He objected to the new name and said he would prefer to be called by his full name, no matter who the person addressing him was. The following letter ensued:
April 17 1932
Chi Bablo,
Because you signed yourself as
Narayan, I added "rao". Now you say you would like to be addressed as "Narayan Desai". What is wrong with "Bablo" then? I will call you "Desai" after you have invented a prize-winning spinning wheel. The first Desais were called so in virtue of the posts, which they held. How good it would be if you also became a Desai by rendering some great service! There is no fun for a son to be called a Desai because his father is called that...
Blessings from
Bapu
But in subsequent letters for a while, Gandhi took care to address his young correspondent as "Chi Narayanrao alias Narayan alias Bablo". Perhaps Gandhi was trying to tell Bablo that he was no baby boy any more and to tell Narayan that he must aspire to something even higher. The name-employings were not idle! The following letter from the Yeravada Prison followed:
October 12, 1932
Chi.Narayanrao alias Bablo
COURTESY SURENDRA GADEKAR
Narayan Desai ... a life of service.
I did receive a complaint against you. All children play, but they should play when it is time to play and should work when it is time for work...
Bapu
The message went home and, at age 12, Narayan gave up school to become secretary to the most important secretary in the India of the time, his father, Mahadev Desai. He typed letters for his father, articles, and even sometimes letters for the Mahatma. One of these, he recalls, was the controversial communication addressed to Adolf Hitler shortly after the outbreak of World War II. When Narayan was 17, Gandhi thought the young man's skills in spinning and weaving should have a wider reach and asked him to go to Afghanistan as a khadi teacher. Narayan, never one to be told what to do (or what to be called) declined, giving the reason that the opportunity might place unknown temptations in his way and if he fell for them, he would be an unworthy representative of Gandhi. Accepting the decision, Gandhi wrote saying he did so "only because you have a moral reason for refusing to go". The following year, on August 15, 1942, Mahadev fell dead of a stroke in the Aga Khan Palace prison, where he had been jailed just the prior week with Gandhi and Kasturba. "Bapu has lost both his right hand and his left hand!" the insightful Kasturba moaned. It is not widely known that Narayan being away, Gandhi performed his secretary's obsequies himself in the prison grounds and, after the collection of the asthi, very reflexively, smeared his forehead with the ash that had remained on his fingers. Sanatanists would not have approved. But did that matter? Secretaries did not come like Mahadev often. No, nor secretaries who were like younger brothers or sons.
Enuga Sreenivasulu was not one to take kindly to patronising advice on what is good for him. But, unlike the young Gujarati, the young Andhra went unerringly through regular academic courses. Under a somewhat fading aura of the prevailing Gandhism and Congress socialism through college, he left the country for the United States in 1946. On his way, in Calcutta, he met Nikhil Chakravartty who became a lifelong friend and later, Yusuf Dadoo, the firebrand South African of Gujarati descent, who was to be a reference point in the world's combating of the Pretoria regime. Both Chakravartty and Dadoo were firmly of the Left but they were not impervious to Gandhi's global impact. Dadoo (whose father had been a client of M.K. Gandhi, Attorney, in Johannesburg at the turn of the century) had come to India in 1947 with fellow doctor of medicine, Monty Naicker, and met Gandhi in Bihar and Delhi, over March, April and May that year, to discuss the South African situation and the role of the Indian community in the growing resistance of the blacks. Dadoo and his colleague Dr. Monty Naicker attended the The Asian Relations Conference called by Jawaharlal Nehru in Delhi in April 1947, and inaugurated by Gandhi. All this made an impact on 23-year-old old Sreenivasulu's world view as he commenced his study of international relations for a Master's degree in New York in 1948 and joined the very first group of international interns at the UN secretariat the same year, a defining entry, for he went on to serve that body uninterruptedly for thirty seven years thereafter. South Africa enlisted his attention from the start and Enuga Reddy, as he now came to be known in most African countries, was to be Principal Secretary, Special Committee against Apartheid and later Director of the UN Centre against Apartheid. From March 1963 to the end of 1984 — over two decades — ES was in charge of UN-coordinated action against apartheid and a figure to reckon with in anti-apartheid circles the world over. In 1982 Reddy was awarded the Joliot-Curie Medal of World Peace Council in recognition of his contributions to the struggle against apartheid. Writing thousands of pages of reports, documents, resolutions and speeches for others, including Indian leaders, on apartheid, Enuga Reddy kept bumping into "Gandhi" through the Mahatma's published and unpublished references to the South African question and his correspondence with South Africans. These have crystallised into an outstanding work by him, "Gandhiji's Vision of a Free South Africa".
Enuga Reddy, though relatively little known to Indian politicians, is arguably the best-known living Indian (barring incumbents of our high offices) in the circles of Africa's senior political leadership.
Narayan, meanwhile, had plunged headlong into the national movement with a vigour that only increased with the passing of his father. After Gandhi's release from his last incarceration, he asked Narayan to join him. This time, Narayan did not decline the request and worked with the Mahatma until 1946 when he decided to take to teaching in a school in tribal Gujarat. On his second day at school, Narayan saw that 60 of the 63 children in the school had no change of clothes. That spurred him to introduce spinning and weaving in the school. By the end of that year, the children had at least one pair of clothes made by themselves. Gandhi would most certainly have confirmed Narayan in his raohood at this point and Narayan would most certainly have disavowed the honour. Declining Vinoba Bhave's offer of the General Secretaryship of the Hindustani Talimi Sangh in 1948 on the ground that he should know the country more intimately before accepting a national responsibility, Narayan added that he was planning to work in some Indian village for some years to understand the realities of rural India. But he did join the Bhoodan Movement, pioneering its activities in Gujarat. Walking almost alone, he managed to collect some 3,000 acres of good arable land and have them distributed to the landless of whom the vast majority were Harijans and Adivasis. In 1960, Vinoba asked Narayan to move to Varanasi, then the headquarters of the Sarva Seva Sangh and train peace volunteers. Jayaprakash Narayan, meanwhile, was asked by the Sarva Seva Sangh to accept the position of Chairman of the Shanti Sena. JP said he would do so only if Narayan was to be its National Secretary. The two Narayans worked closely, inseparably, from 1960 to 1976. During this period Narayan worked with JP in Nagaland and in the ravines of Chambal where hundreds of dacoits surrendered their arms. The Shanti Sena's work in the northeast is one of the unwritten success stories of India. Setting up the Tarun Shanti Sena, Narayan established social work centres along the Sino-Indian border. Who would have even dreamt of attempting such a thing? When the Bangladesh war erupted, the Shanti Sena under Narayan's "command" worked among 80,000 refugees in 23 camps. And, simultaneously, he agitated for world recognition, starting with India's, of Bangladesh as a sovereign nation. Later, Narayan was to participate in quelling riots in Ahmedabad, Baroda, Bhivandi and Surat. He narrowly escaped death when intervening between a stone-throwing crowd and firing policemen and during a fast-cum-prayer for peace in Ayodhya when a bunch of hooligans attacked him. Nothing in the career of his "Narayanrao" would have pleased Gandhi more than these real-life contributions.
If Enuga Reddy was galvanising governments and civil society the world over for action against apartheid, including campaigns for economic sanctions against Pretoria and the release of prisoners like Mandela, Narayan also saw world events claim his time. The Shanti Sena played a role in the setting up of the World Peace Brigade in Lebanon (1962) and the Cyprus Resettlement Project, a pioneering experience of an international team of peace volunteers conciliating two warring nationalities. JP and Narayan Desai were among the (unrecognised) first to propose to the United Nations the idea of a UN Peace Keeping Force without arms. The proposal was not taken seriously at the time but now there is a revival of interest in the idea as the work of international bodies in conflict areas becomes far more diverse and complex than adversarial balancing.
Neither Desai nor Reddy can countenance retiring. Gandhi, for one thing, will not let them do so. Soon after superannuating at the UN, Reddy wrote a paper on India and South Africa. This led him to study Gandhi and South Africa. He found reading the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi tedious "like reading Genesis," he says. But he persisted and was caught by the magic of the Mahatma's life. He has since then made it a passion to collect Gandhi works missed by the Collected Works and the major Indian archives. Searching through numerous books and magazines at American libraries and South African libraries, he has found a fairly sizeable number, not a few of which are really important. One thing Reddy has certainly imbibed from Gandhi is a sense of his money being a resource for the cause at hand. He would not like me to mention the amount he gave to Sabarmati Ashram so that it can computerise its invaluable but far-from-error-free Register of Gandhi Correspondence. He has been engaged for 10 years now in correcting that database for typing and other errors. He found, for instance, it contained an entry "Letter from P.K. Naidu", the South African satyagrahi, dated years after his death. Reddy checked and found the letter was from Sarojini Naidu! (A separate book by him, with Mrinalini Sarabhai, on Gandhi's correspondence with the poetess has resulted). Countless Gandhi scholars turn to Reddy for facts and insights. He is today, veritably, a one-man-Open University on Mahatma Gandhi.
COURTESY SHAFIUR RAHMAN
E.S. Reddy at a demonstration.
And Narayan, despite his almost frenetic pace of activity — he has just done a padayatra in Gujarat — wields a formidable pen himself. I will mention only two of his works — his Sahitya Akademi Award-winning biography in Gujarati of his father Mahadev Desai and his just-published biography in Gujarati again, of the Mahatma. This latter work is likely to be a standard reference work on its subject, being based in large measure on Mahadev Desai's diaries. You cannot get a more authentic primary source.
Both shun the limelight — one of the reasons prompting me to write this! After the liberation struggle in South Africa had reached its goal and the work of the U.N. Centre against Apartheid could be said to have come to an end, one would have thought Enuga Reddy would want to take the first plane to South Africa and greet the many persons whose release from prison was his full-time occupation for two decades. But no, this son of Pallaprolu, Andhra Pradesh, closed that chapter as if in a book and when he did visit the country he knew intimately from distant study; he did not even seek an appointment with the new President. Narayan knew JP, as we have seen, intimately. In 1977, anyone who was even remotely connected with any of the "victims of the Emergency" acquired a sudden swagger. Not this son of Valsad, Gujarat. In fact, not many in the capital city of India recognised his name when it was listed among those who with Prime Minister Morarji Desai survived the famous aircrash in 1978. Narayan had accompanied the Prime Minister to the northeast, which he knew better than many of those "in charge" of the subject in Delhi.
May Enuga Sreenivasulu and Narayan Desai live for many more years in happy work and research!
E. S. Reddy's 80th birthday falls on July 1, 2004 and Narayan Desai's on December 24, 2004.
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