Satish Kumar

Satish Kumar (born 9 August 1936) is an Indian British activist and speaker. He has been a Jain monk, nuclear disarmament advocate and pacifist.'' ''Now living in England, Kumar is founder and Director of Programmes of the Schumacher College international center for ecological studies, and is Editor Emeritus of '' Resurgence & Ecologist'' magazine. His most notable accomplishment is the completion, together with a companion, E. P. Menon, of a peace walk of over 8,000 miles in June 1962 for two and a half years, from New Delhi to Moscow, Paris, London, and Washington, D.C., the capitals of the world's earliest nuclear-armed countries. He insists that reverence for nature should be at the heart of every political and social debate.

Defending criticism that his goals are unrealistic, he has said,

Early life

Kumar was born in Sri Dungargarh, Rajasthan, India. At the age of 9, he left his family and became a Jain monk. At 18, after reading a book by Mahatma Gandhi, he ran away from the mendicant order, to become a student of Vinoba Bhave, an eminent disciple of Gandhi and his nonviolence and land reform ideas."Walking the World for Peace," Context Institute.
Accessed: 15 September 2012.

Peace walk

Inspired by Bertrand Russell's civil disobedience against the atomic bomb, in June 1962 Kumar and his friend E. P. Menon decided to dedicate themselves to undertaking a peace walk from India to the four capitals of the nuclear world: Moscow, Paris, London, and Washington D.C. and decided to carry no money on their trip. They called it a 'Pilgrimage for peace' and it took two and a half years.

Vinoba Bhave gave the young men two 'gifts'. One was to be penniless wherever they walked. The other was to be vegetarian. They first travelled through Pakistan, where they met great kindness from a country with a huge historic conflict and antipathy towards India. Leaving Pakistan via the Khyber Pass, they continued through Afghanistan, Iran, Armenia, Georgia, and the Caucasus Mountains. They visited Moscow, Paris, London, and Washington, D.C. Travelling on foot and carrying no money, Kumar and his companion would stay with anyone who offered them food or shelter.

While on their way to Moscow they met two women outside a tea factory. After explaining what they were doing one of the women gave them four packets of tea, one to be delivered to each of the leaders of the four nuclear powers and to also deliver a message, "when you think you need to press the button, stop for a minute and have a fresh cup of tea". This further inspired their journey and became in part the reason for it. They eventually delivered 'peace tea' to the leaders of four of the nuclear powers.BBC World Service radio broadcast, '' BBC Outlook'', 2015 October 25, 0830-0900 GMT, United Kingdom. The journey is chronicled in Kumar's book, ''No Destination: Autobiography of a Pilgrim''.

Professional career

Editor

Between 1973 and 2016, Kumar was editor of '' Resurgence & Ecologist'' (combining the former ''Resurgence'' magazine, which had been described as the artistic and spiritual flagship of the green movement, with ''The Ecologist''). He contributed an essay to '' The Society for Curious Thought'' entitled "Focus on Food". He has also been a contributor to the BBC
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