In the early 1930s, a small Christian praying community near Kottayam, Kerala, called for the starting of a boys’ school. Upon the shudders of seeing urchins addicted to “ganja” and “beedies”, while fighting with “a mongrel dog for a few grains of rice,” K. K. Chandy knew his vocation. In 1934, he started the “Jubilee Home for Waifs and Strays” in Alleppey, and later moved the community to an ashram at Manganam in 1942. This would become Kerala Balagram, the foundation for a separate nonviolent Christian ashram called Christavashram beside it. Though K. K. Chandy is mostly remembered as a social worker, in the decades after WWII he dedicated himself to the cause of world peace.

From his initial base, K. K. Chandy became increasingly active in the international peace movement. The Christavashram group that had started Kerala Balagram increasingly turned to pacifist work in the 1950s and 1960s. Besides the series of lectures and talks that he gave across India and abroad on nonviolence and the relevance of “the Cross in the atomic age”, another noteworthy attempt to spread his nonviolent Christian message came during a second interview with Nehru.

This second meeting between K. K. Chandy and Nehru was set up by Indira Gandhi. It took place on the afternoon of 3 March 1964, slightly more than two months before Nehru passed away. During the meeting, Chandy attempted to convey to Nehru how the Christian tradition was one of truth and nonviolence, often translating the Christian message into Gandhian thought. He found the urgency of Christian nonviolence self-evident in the nuclear age. Quoting Shankarraoji, whom he had just met at the Delhi-Peking Friendship March, he noted that “He that takes up the sword, shall perish by the sword” becomes literally true in the atomic age.

The next fifteen minutes were mainly spent on Sino-Indian and Indo-Pakistani tensions. Chandy requested that Nehru improve relations with Zhou En-Lai, stating that the fallout between the two had been a key concern during discussions with Jayaprakash Narayan and Vinoba Bhave, in Patna and Balaghat respectively.

After making “a word of prayer” for the Father, Chandy lastly shared with Nehru the Fellowship of Reconciliation’s view that the Compulsory Cadet Corps program should be stopped. During Chandy’s own training, he had been abhorred by his experience, and it had brought him to “the Pacifist position”, leading him to join the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

This will probably be the first part of an article, so if you are more interested in K. K. Chandy, keep in the loop!