Thank you for visiting my Honouring Peace website.  For those who are unfamiliar with my background, I offer the following overview of my life and work:  I am Chairman of the Indian Council of Gandhian Studies, and founder of the Gandhi Peace Mission. As an academic and peaceworker, I’ve dedicated much of my life to training the world’s topmost nonviolence activists, and I’ve run regular training programs in Nonviolent Conflict-Management, organizing workshops on Gandhian philosophy and creating a Culture of Peace. As a Gandhian scholar, educator and author of 75 books in English, Hindi, Malayalam and Tamil on Gandhi, Peace, Education and Harmony, I’ve also lead hundreds of Global Gandhi Assessments/Culture of Peace Lecture Series.

I was born in the family of Mahatma Gandhi’s associate Neelakanta Pillai, and my early schooling was in a Gandhi Constructive Workers Home, which my father ran in the southernmost state of Kerala in India. I’m a proud graduate in Literature and Social Change from the University of Kerala, and I earned my Ph.D. on the literature of Social Protest from Annamalai University.

As a student activist protesting against unjust policies of the then state government, I courted arrest from the age of 15. All through my student days, I was active in campus issues and held important positions in student bodies, most significant among them was the chairmanship of the College Union and Best Actor Prize (1967).

My professional career began as a school teacher, and after a brief stint in a newspaper as sub-editor in Malayali, I joined the Gandhigram Rural Institute during the Gandhi Centenary year (1969) to teach languages and train students in Gandhi’s Peace Army, the Shanti Sena. A theatre enthusiast right from childhood, I maintained links with the Theatre for Social Change group and designed and presented several stage performances espousing social issues.

I served at the Gandhigram University the next 21 years under Mahatma Gandhi’s disciple G. Ramachandran. Besides training youth in conflict management and community work, and setting up village youth corps in conflict zones, I also held such positions in the University as Head of the Department of English and Foreign Languages; Director of Public Relations; Controller of Examinations; Chief of the Examination Reform Unit; Convener of the Martin Luther King Jr. Study Centre; and Dean of Languages.

As a national recognition to my work and leadership, the Government of India appointed me as Director of Gandhi Smriti, the premier Gandhi Institute and Gandhi Memorial established at the erstwhile Birla House in New Delhi where Gandhi was assassinated in 1948. This period offered opportunities to broaden my networking for peace, nonviolent training, and conflict management both at national and international level.

In a major national initiative during the 125th birth anniversary of Gandhi, I was delighted to design an exhibition on Gandhi and Global Nonviolent Awakening on behalf of the Gandhi Smriti and put it up at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris where the Prime Minister of India, Mr. Narasimha Rao, was chief guest. I also chaired an International Youth Conference at the UNESCO Plaza at that time. My interactions with and teaching of youth in several countries continued, later with the guidance of Prof. Glenn D. Paige (Hawaii), Gene Sharp (Einstein Institute), Rev. Bernard LaFeyette and Captain Charles Alphin, Mubarak Awad, Ariyaratne, Chaiwat Satha Anand, the assassinated Columbian leader Guillormo Gaviria, Bagoes Oka, Petra Kelly, Charles Collyer, Lester Kurtz, and Richard Deats, all of which led to the emergence of my global network of nonviolent trainers and practitioners.