Narayan Desai, a Gandhian

I had never heard of Narayan Desai. Learnt of him from my colleague and friend Nachiketa Desai, his son. 

A Gandhian, Narayan Desai spent his childhood with Mahatma Gandhi as his father Mahadev Desai was Mahatma Gandhi's personal assistant/diarist, and who for 25 years captured everything that happened until his death on Aug 15, 1942 in the Aga Khan Palace jail where he was imprisioned along with MK Gandhi and Kasturba Gandhi and others. 

I was going to meet a Gandhian. And someone who had actually spent time with MK Gandhi. I am thrilled and excited. Note that at no point in time did ND, that's how I called Nachiketa, made it seem like a big thing or overwhelming.  Imagine, father and grand father, both with close contact with Gandhi. 

I am blown by the fact that there are hundreds of dairies, some hand written and others, typed, that remain unknown to us. Conversations between the giants of those times. Anecdotes of those times. Setting up Sampoorna Kranthi Vidyalaya (Institute for Total Revolution) to impart training on non violence and the Gandhian way of life. Writer of a 4-volume biography of Mahatma Gandhi in Gujarati. 

Frankly, I think ND is wasting his life working as an assistant editor in a technology media company. He should be translating or even digitising all those precious content. 

I am not sure what I was expecting to see or even encounter.  For sure, the ashram and the state it was in was not quite what I had in mind. The 10-acre property was, for lack of a better word, rather unkept.  It seemed like a microcosm of a rural village in the hinterland of India with no access to electricity and modern amenities.  It somehow appeared frozen in time. 

We are supposed to bathe and be in the prayer hall by 5.30am for the morning prayer to nature-sunrise. I was glad that there was hot water, though one had to haul the bucket of water by one self. Everything was barely enough. The first class begins at around 6.15 am, post the prayer session. 

Narayan Desai himself wakes up at 3.30am every day, and bathes in cold water. Breakfast at 7am, Lunch at 12.30 and dinner at 7 pm with classes all day. he reads and writes in between. Retires at 9.30pm.

Sampoorna Kranti, the call of Jayaprakash Narayan, stands for grassroots level transformation of the people, and through them, the Nation. Clearly, Narayan Desai lives it. I also clearly see the challenges and why Nachiketa does not live it. More than anything else, I could see that despite the lofty goals, somehow a very important element of being a thinking, sentient being also means to carry elements of different aspirations, and I felt that this was ignored or dismissed as being irrelevant. 

Is living simply and frugal living one and the same? I didn't think so. 

The story of the village of Vedchi, on the outskirts of Surat on the Bombay Ahmedabad expressway, too is uninteresting bit of history. It witnessed the Bardoli movement. Remnants of the movement tell the story of Adivasis who live with dignity and pride, having been provided basic education. The village, however, stands isolated for reasons better known to politicians, business men, officers, bureaucrats...

We could/should have been a nation with far less disparity, in terms of income, class, creed, religion. Where did we go wrong? How did we go wrong? Can't figure out how we messed it all up so badly.

The answer perhaps lies in a statement of Narayan Desai in response to a question on why we responded the way we did despite being educated. "Because we are educated the way we are." 

May be. May be it is time we relooked at the word education and figured out what it is that we are telling our future generation. Are we subliminally teaching them to discriminate? Are these inherently woven into the very structure of the system meant to deliver education?

But it's not just the place that is frozen in time but people and their thoughts and attitude too seem frozen in time. Shouldn't we look at incubating those ideals in a new vocabulary, perhaps.  I don't know. 

Mixed feelings. Indeed there is so much to learn. Clearly, we need people from that era to teach us. I for one am glad that I had the opportunity to meet someone like Narayan Desai.

FG