Desai, Jyotibhai

Desai, Jyotibhai

Jyotibhai Desai

1 December 2001Feature

What are the positive aspects of prison? What can being imprisoned or working with people imprisoned offer nonviolent activists? Jyotibhai Desai offers three short tales of the use of prisons in creating a humane society.

A scholar of Gandhi and Tolstoy from the US asked the founder of the Vedchhi Ashram “How do you decide when to offer Satyagraha and when to continue with constructive (village development) work?”

"I never went to prison, the prison came to me!", he answered, and added “we do not seek issues nor do we seek confrontations. Ours is a way to life. So live; So live! that the perpetrator of injustice, be it the state or the landlord, may understand how to correct…