A man who lives and breathes in Khadi

P. Gopinath Nair

Temple bells rouse Gopinath Nair every morning at the crack of dawn. Then the sound of the azaan drifts through his traditional Tharavada home in Netinkara, near Thiruvananthapuram. His wife already in the kitchen calls aloud for coffee. The two start yet another quiet day with one reading the Hindu and the other a Malayalam Daily. By the time the newspapers are exchanged, the guests come calling, everyone from friends and neighbors to social activists and the members of local associations. By 9:30 a.m. Mr. Nair leaves for his office at Kerala Gandhi Smaraka Nidhi in Thiruvananthapuram, 45 minutes away. Mr. Nair, who is 88, has served as chairman of the Nidhi for years. “Some days at work are more challenging than others,” Mr. Nair told me. “But every day is new for me.”

The desk in Mr. Nair’s office captures his dynamic personality. It’s piled high with newspapers in Malayalam and English, official documents, letters, meticulously labeled files, and an assortment of books, yet the table still appears organized. In one of the table’s corners sit a miniature charkha and a photograph of Gandhi ji, the man to whom Mr. Nair has dedicated his life. “My life is my message,” he quotes for me. “How many people in the world can say that?”

Born in 1921 in Netinkara, Kerala, Gopinath Nair spent his childhood in the lap of nature. “The Netinkara River is believed to have miraculous powers. I grew up hearing that people find ghee [clarified butter] deposits on the river banks. But as our negative karma grows the ghee deposits are depleting,” he laughs. Growing up in the years when the non-cooperation movement was at its peak, Gopinath was an extraordinary student who could study and appreciate the Upanishads at the age of 13. His father, who was a lawyer, expected him to follow a similar career pat

h. But Gopinath’s life changed in 1933 when Gandhi ji visited Kerala. His first memory of Gandhi ji is of the spritely old man navigating with agility through the eager crowds that had lined up to see him. “Seeing him running through the crowds to keep his time commitments, I realized the importance of discipline and the value of time,” Mr. Nair told me. “He was indeed an extraordinary man.”

In 1938 Mr. Nair joined the Maharaja College for Science in Trivandrum. During college he decided to immerse himself in the struggle for freedom. Dropping a midterm year at college, he joined the Congress and Quit India Movement in 1942, when most of the established leaders had been arrested. He and other students of the Maharaja College protested against the Raja of Travancore, a supporter of the British. Their group was jailed for sedition but released after a couple of days of imprisonment. The incident made Mr. Nair popular in his college’s Congress Youth Wing and he recognized his ability to organize. But at this time Mr. Nair lost his father; another kind of responsibility fell on his shoulders. While remaining active in student and youth affairs, he still studied enough to earn his Bachelor of Science in 1943.

He worked from 1943-46 for the student movement and with Congress the interim government, but also applied for a scholarship to study at Vishwa Bharti University (Shantiniketan). “During the time when ‘Direct Action’ was called [by Jinnah to push for Partition], I went to Shantiniketan looking for Shanti (Peace),” he said with a smile. “But as soon as I reached Bengal I saw dead bodies at the railway station. My introduction to Bengal was rather sad. Gandhi ji’s presence was a big stabilizing factor there. We take our inspiration from events in history like Naukhali, a predominantly

Muslim area where Gandhi ji was present during the

independence hour. He urged people to give up arms and spent his time at a Muslim house. Gandhi ji was deeply disturbed by the riots that broke out"

At the time of independence, Mr. Nair was in Shantiniketan. Even though it was a time of celebration, he remembers having mixed feelings about the achievement even then. In September 1947, Gandhi ji returned back to Calcutta. Mr. Nair went with a group of students from Shantiniketan to meet him. They could not believe their luck when their request to speak with him personally was accepted. Gandhi ji was distraught by the violence around him. He asked the students if they were Hindus or Muslims, but then replied himself: “You are neither Hindu nor Muslim. You are ‘Insaans’ (humans).”

When Gandhi ji was assassinated in January 1948, Mr. Nair was still at Shantiniketan. The tragic moment inspired profound reflection on how he should spend his life. In April, on his way back home to Kerala, he stopped at Gandhi ji’s Wardha Ashram. There he found the Mahatma’s spirit of service still alive. “Gandhi ji was and is not a person but a spirit,” Mr. Nair discovered. “He was not a human being but an embodiment of a spirit, the spirit of a movement that went beyond the struggle for independence.”

The great leader’s simple mud hut in Wardha, just as any other in rural India, moved Mr. Nair to work at the grassroots in his home state of Kerala. He was deeply inspired Gandhi ji’s conviction that the foundations of an independent India must be based on empowered villages. “Many years later, Vinoba Bhave asked me why I decided to quit Shantiniketan as I could have used the opportunity to spread Gandhi ji’s word by using the university platform. I never regretted my decision. Life has its own way.”

In 1950 Gandhi Smarak Nidhi was established as a national organization to preserve and spread Gandhi ji’s message. “I was amongst the first to join the Nidhi. In Kerala we started encouraging Khadi units and Gram Seva work. Later, as a Tatva Pracharak, we started to spread the essence of his message and his vision. I was in charge of organizing three main study centres at Trivandrum, Ernakulam and Calicut.” The Nidhi also organized youth camps and encouraged young people to serve their society. An important part of the camps were prayer meetings for peace.

In 1958 Mr. Nair became a member of the All-India Sarva Seva Sangh, a Gandhian service organization of which he would later become President. This role personally exposed him to the challenges of conflict resolution amid communal tension. “In Kerala, there was a constant tension between Christian and Hindu fishermen and we always felt that it was important to solve the problem peacefully. Even though our approach was seen as slow, one has to go to the core to understand and solve an issue permanently.” He focused on building a Shanti Sena, a nonviolent army of peace workers, to resolve communal conflicts.

Over the next two decades Mr. Nair’s understanding of peace and nonviolent conflict resolution strengthened. In the aftermath of the 1971 Indo-Pak War he worked at the refugee camps for Bangladeshis. He and his Bengali colleagues organized youth from Dhaka University living in the camps and encouraged them to volunteer as service workers. Together they addressed issues like communalism and management of the camps, including basic cleanliness and hygiene. It was a tremendous job that involved massive dedication from both the volunteer trainees and the refugees.

During the 1980s and 90s numerous communal riots broke out in different corners of India. In 1989 the town of Bhagalpur, Bihar, experienced intense violence. Mr. Nair and his team stayed there for six months intensely mobilizing the communities for peace. “It was quite challenging,” he remembers. “When people are angry and violence takes its course, only willpower and tremendous strength can bring a return to peace.”

Mr. Nair resolved to undertake a peace mission to Punjab during the height of the insurgency there. He remembers that on the day of his departure his relatives and friends were in an especially somber mood at the railway station. “They thought that was probably the last time they were going to see me!”

One of Mr. Nair’s biggest victories as a peace builder was in his home state of Kerala. In 2002 and 2003 brutal communal violence tore through Marad, near Calicut in northern Kerala. Arms were hidden at places of worship and the situation worsened as political parties and other vested interests encouraging the two sides in the conflict. “A violent riot had broken out there and it was a big showdown since no conclusion was being arrived at,” he said.

Mr. Nair and his team organized 100 meetings and conducted foot marches, vehicle yatras, and processions in the riot-infested areas. They held intensive workshops on how to preserve peace that were well attended by both Hindus and Muslims. “Another Kranti [revolution] has returned,” one newspaper exclaimed about the efforts. Hindu leaders recognized him as the principle negotiator for peace in the area and he helped broker a unanimous decision to stop the violence. “Gandhi’s way of peace brokering still works,” he told me.

After the violence subsided, he set out to bring back the 950 Muslim families who had been driven from their homes. “Our teams worked at this for long. Our biggest triumph was that we did not charge the state government a single rupee for putting up our men at Calicut [for this work]. When the first batch of Muslims arrived [back at their homes], there were festivities and a happy atmosphere. Peace is something that need not be government-enforced. People understand peace because it is natural to seek it.”

“With experience, we have realized that a lot of work can be done with little money and with smaller groups,” Mr. Nair told me. Since 2008 he has focused on counteracting local problems in Kerala like alcoholism and environmental degradation by developing small groups of proactive citizens. “We are called Mitra Mandal, a group of friends,” he said. “We organize meetings about issues that concern us deeply. Now and then some concerned groups of citizens come to me during evenings and we work together on how to mobilize people and address issues like environment and education more effectively.” Mr. Nair’s long years of experience as a Gandhian have given him insight into a wide array of social problems. Today he works with numerous different kinds of social organizations to improve the lives of Keralites. “Though disparate, all these programs, be it about prohibition, education, teachers’ training, or cleanliness, are influenced by Gandhi ji’s vision.”

“I like to work with people,” the tireless Gandhian told me. “After my office hours I work with villagers. We are trying to bring together nature clubs for the village youth.”

Doesn’t he ever need rest?

“Vinobaji said, ‘All this [work] that I do is rest.’ I enjoy my work.”

Though well into his eighties, Mr. Nair has never stopped focusing on young people in his work. “Young people have to become young first,” he told me. “I have realized how people are no longer young these days. They are either looking back to adolescence or busy planning for future. Vinobaji used to say that yuva (the youth) link the old and the future. They should be aware of the challenges that every generation has to face.”

I wondered whether youth today might face different challenges than in the India in which he grew up. “Time changes but fundamentals do not. Truth and love are the greatest fundamentals in a life and they apply to any time and age. The challenge is how to apply these fundamentals. It is important to commit three to four years of your life to service and public work and then to go back to cushioned jobs. A balance is important in every way.” He reminded me that though the outward crises of a society may change, the moral challenges we face are timeless. “Life is about moving from a lesser Truth to a higher Truth.”