Trust cemented on road less travelled

Every step on the 'peace pilgrimage' from India to the United States strengthened Satish Kumar's conviction to the cause of global amity

The story of the "peace pilgrimage" Satish Kumar and his friend undertook from India to the United States could easily be mistaken for fiction. But the events Kumar relates in this interview with Weekend Review did take place and it all began over a protest against nuclear weapons.

Kumar was 9 when the atom bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "People were devastated," he recalls. "How could a country such as America, which is supposed to be civilised, use atomic weapons?"

Years later Kumar was sitting with a friend at a café when he read about the arrest of British pacifist and philosopher Bertrand Russell for protesting against nuclear weapons. "I thought: 'Here is a man of 90 going to jail for world peace. What am I doing, sitting here and drinking coffee?'"

So Kumar and his friend, E.P. Menon, decided to walk for peace from New Delhi to what were then the four nuclear capitals of the world: Moscow, Paris, London and Washington.

Following the advice from Kumar's guru Vinoba Bhave, who was a follower of Mahatma Gandhi, the duo decided they would not take food or water with them on the journey. "He [Bhave] said if you go with money that means you lack trust," Kumar says. "If you have no money then you have to trust people and trust in the process of the universe. And trust that people are good. And trust that God will provide everything. The route to peace is trust and the route to war is fear."

Their "pilgrimage" began from Raj Ghat, the memorial raised where Gandhi was cremated, and they headed for India's border with Pakistan. It was in 1962 and relations between the neighbours were strained. Many of Kumar's friends had come to the border to see them off. One of them was particularly worried. "He said: 'Satish you are going to Pakistan? It is an enemy country and you are a Hindu. You are walking, you have no food, you have no money. You may be in danger.'"

The friend had brought some packets of food and wanted Kumar to take them. "I said: 'These are not packets of food, they are packets of mistrust. What am I going to say to my Pakistani friends? That I did not trust them to feed me?'"

Unlike the friend had feared, Pakistanis extended their hospitality to Kumar and Menon without restraint. "If you go to Pakistan as Indians, you meet Pakistanis; if you go as Hindus you meet Muslims; but if you go as human beings you will meet human beings," Kumar says.

He recalls another incident that occurred when they were trudging through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. A car passed Kumar and Menon and the American driving it stopped the vehicle and offered them a lift. When they declined, he enquired where they were going.

"On hearing his accent, I said: 'As a matter of fact sir, we are walking to the United States of America,'" Kumar says. When he heard this, the man got down from his car and said: "Gentlemen, do you know where the United States of America is?"

Kumar replied: "We have never been there, but we believe it exists and we have seen it on the map."

The man was puzzled and told them he did not think they could make it to the US. However, he gave them his card and asked them to call him if they succeeded. They kept the card.

Kumar and Menon traversed Afghanistan and Iran into what was then the Soviet Union. There, by the Black Sea in Georgia, they met two women in a factory who invited them for tea. The women were curious to know what they were doing walking all the way from India. On hearing their story one of the women got up and left the room and returned with four packets of tea.

"These are not for you," she told them. "One packet is for our premier in Moscow, the second is for the president of France, [the] third one for the prime minister of England, and [the] fourth for the president of the United States. And I want you to give them the message that this is no ordinary tea. It is 'peace tea'. If you ever get a mad thought of pressing the nuclear button, please stop for a moment and have a fresh cup of tea from this packet, so that you [are reminded] that your nuclear weapons not only destroy your enemy's armies but will also destroy men, women, children, workers, farmers, peasants, animals, birds, lakes, forests, insects, worms, butterflies and bees, and nothing will exist. So [refrain from pressing] the nuclear button."

The message gave Kumar a moral boost. "Now we were the messengers of these women and had to deliver 'peace tea' to the leaders of the nuclear world," he says.

The first to receive "peace tea" were the authorities in the Kremlin, Moscow, who were curious to know what it was. "I said this is a magical tea," Kumar says. "It is 'peace tea'. Whenever you have thoughts of war, nuclear war especially, have this tea."

Passing through Belarus, Poland and Germany they reached France. Unfortunately president Charles de Gaulle did not warm-up to the idea of nuclear disarmament and test ban. Kumar and Menon held a demonstration in front of Elysée Palace and ended up in jail. "We were happy because we were following in the footsteps of Bertrand Russell," he says. "If he would go to jail for world peace, why can't we?"

They were then given two choices, either stop demonstrating in front of the palace or prepare to be sent back to India. The men chose to continue the journey.

They crossed the English Channel and delivered the third packet to the British prime minister in London. There they got to meet Russell. "He said, when you were starting from India you wrote to me and I thought 'I was 90 I am never going to meet you. But you have walked fast and I am delighted to meet you. You are working for peace. We need more young people like you,'" Kumar recalls.

Russell wanted to help them with some money so that they could get to the United States. But they refused. Instead they allowed him to help them buy the ticket. They sailed on the Queen Mary to New York. From there they walked to Washington and delivered the fourth packet to the representative of the US president.

Kumar and Menon then remembered the man they had met in the Khyber Pass. When they got to Philadelphia where he lived, they gave him a call. It was 1964, a long time since their meeting in the pass. "We asked him 'Do you remember the two Indians you met in the Khyber Pass?' And he said: "Yes I do, where are they? And I said: "We are right here, in your town.' And he was thrilled." He took Kumar and Menon to his house and introduced them to friends he had invited over.

The peace pilgrimage ended at former US president John F. Kennedy's memorial "to make the point that if you trust the gun, it kills not only bad people but also a Gandhi or a Kennedy. The answer to the problems of the world lies in non-violence."

But what about the argument that possession of nuclear weapons has prevented a third world war? "It may have prevented what you can call a third world war. We don't know. But it has not prevented many mini wars from taking place," Kumar says. "Look at Darfur and what is going on there. Look at Bosnia and Yugoslavia. Look at Palestine and Israel. ... Wars are going on and millions of people are caught in it."

Can Kumar undertake another pilgrimage for peace today? "I am 72 and no longer have the strength. I would do it again if I had the energy." he says. "I can imagine young people doing it because there is no reason for anyone not to do it."

But is the world a safer place today than it was in the 1960s? "Yes it is," he says. "The Cold War has ended. In 1962 the Soviet Union was such a powerful entity, that has ended. The Berlin Wall - I walked through it - has come down.

"When I walked to the US in 1964, I went to a whites-only restaurant. I was thrown out at gunpoint. At that time black people had no vote. Now we have President [Barack] Obama in the White House."

He expresses optimism about President Obama's statement regarding nuclear weapons and hopes sooner or later nuclear disarmament will be achieved.

But if nuclear disarmament takes place, how can one trust that a country would not somehow cheat and secretly keep its nuclear weapons? "Are you suggesting that all the 120 nations in the world should have nuclear weapons?" Kumar asks. "If America has [nuclear] weapons, what right does it have to stop Iran, North Korea or Israel from possessing nuclear weapons? [It is] hypocrisy. You cannot have one rule for America and another for North Korea. You will have to have the whole world following the same rule. You have to create a culture, a norm, by which every country says nuclear weapons are not right. It is barbaric, it is uncivilised. So you have to trust."

Syed Hamad Ali is a freelance writer based in Cambridge, UK.