Interview: E.P Menon

Mr. E. P. Menon is a veteran Gandhian. He has spent a long time in Bangalore. He is well known for undertaking a peace walk between 1962-1965, a walk for nuclear disarmament where he walked from here to Afghanistan, Iran, Moscow and Europe and eventually took a ship to the U.S and back to Japan. This interview was conducted on 9th May, 2026 in Chitrakala Parishath Bengaluru by the Intercivilizational Dialogue Project team. We wanted to get a wider view of his life, his experiences and his philosophy. We are publishing a shortened version of the interview below which is lightly edited for readability.

Q) Describe your childhood and early years. Where did you grow up, and what experiences from your early childhood stand out to you?

A) I was born and brought up in Kerala. My father was a police officer serving the British Empire. By the time I became mature enough, he had retired. When I finished high school, I thought, what should I do? I should continue my studies. But he said he did not have enough money, so he told me to seek a job after SSLC.

I had a cousin in Delhi. He told me, "Come to Delhi. You can study here and live here." So I decided to go to Delhi. I took the Grand Trunk Express from Thrissur to Madras and then to Delhi. But when I looked at the map, I saw a place called Wardha. I thought, Wardha and Gandhi—I should get out there. So I got off the train. I wanted to see Sevagram. I had read about it. When I saw Sevagram Ashram, I was inspired. This was the place where Gandhi had lived and worked. Such small huts, small houses.
I went to the hut Gandhi had lived in. It was a very simple house: one bed, one bench, that's all. I sat there for an hour. I wondered, how did this man, living in this little hut, make history in India and throw out the British? How could he do that?

After that, I started walking back to Wardha. On the way, I saw somebody eating. He asked me, "Young man, where are you going?" I said, "I am going to the station." He said, "Come, have coffee and then go." He was a householder. He asked me about myself. I said I had gone to Sevagram and was now going back to the railway station to take a train to Delhi. "Delhi for what?" he asked. "For higher studies," I replied. Then he said to me, "There are no higher studies anywhere in the world except Wardha." That inspired me. So I stayed there. This is what happened the first time. I simply stayed in Wardha. I forgot about Delhi.

Q) When did you first meet Vinoba Bhave?

A) While I was staying in Wardha and Sevagram, there was a man called Ravindra Verma. He said to me, "There is a Gandhi Peace Foundation Research Centre here. Why don't you join as a research student?" So he appointed me as a research student in the Gandhi Vichar Parishad.
I heard about Vinoba and read about him. I stayed in Wardha for two years as a research student. I read a lot of books and learned thoroughly about Gandhi, Vinoba, and related ideas. Gandhi was no more, but Vinoba was still alive. I thought that one day I should go and meet him.

In the meantime, Vinoba started the Bhoodan walk from Kanyakumari. That was when I wanted to go and meet him. So I told my friend Ravindra Verma that I wanted to meet Vinoba. He said, "Okay, do one thing. There is an office in Bihar called Sarva Seva Sangh. It organizes many of these activities. Meet the secretary, stay there for some time, and then they will arrange for you to meet Vinoba."

So I went first to Gaya, to the Sarva Seva Sangh. There too, there was a lot of reading, writing, discussion, and seminars. Then I heard that a conference was going to be held in Orissa. It was called the Sarvodaya Sammelan. I went to Orissa and met Vinoba at the Sarvodaya Sammelan. Then I asked him, "Can I walk with you?" "Sure, you can," he said. So I started walking with him. He had only two sets of clothes and a small jhola. Every morning the walk would continue, village to village, village to village.

Q) Can you describe your experience in the Bhoodan movement?

A) In the Bhoodan movement, the daily routine was to get up at 4 a.m., leave by 6, and start walking. Every day, local people would arrange places for us to stay. The group was about ten people. Every morning we would walk for two or three hours. By 11 or 12 we would settle down. Then villagers would come, and discussions would continue throughout the afternoon. In the evening, every day, there would be a speech by Vinoba.

He used to say, "Land belongs to the people." All people, not individuals. Individuals should not own land. Land belongs to human beings just as the world belongs to birds and other creatures. The problem, he said, is land ownership. Land ownership must change. That was the basic idea. Vinoba would explain this through stories from the Ramayana, Mahabharata, Quran, Gita, and other sources. He was a very good speaker, and people liked him very much. His whole idea was Bhoodan, and people started donating land to him.

Q) How did Vinoba view religion, and how did you view religion?

A) Vinoba was a systematic believer in all religions. That was his way of thinking and speaking. He emphasized Sarva Dharma Prarthana and developed the idea of Sarva Dharma Samanatva. In my case, personally, I would sit and participate, but I did not have much attachment to religion itself. Ideas are important to me. I like many of the ideas found in religions. Human society everywhere should depend on justice, equality, fraternity, unity, and sharing. These are ideas I value. Then I asked: sharing what? That is where the real problem starts.

Vinoba's movement said land. Land should never be owned by individuals. Land is a public resource, and if any society can make that philosophy a reality, everybody will benefit from it. I think we would then have a better human society. That is my view.

Q) Between 1962 and 1965, you undertook your peace walk. Can you describe this experience?

A) In the meantime, I was reading a lot of books. One day I came across a book by Leo Tolstoy called What Then Must We Do? Then I read another short story, How Much Land Does a Man Need? These two works attracted me because Tolstoy believed that land is public property.

At that time, I also read a very interesting statement by the philosopher Bertrand Russell in Britain. He organized young people for peace. Why should we kill each other? All wars are bad. Russell encouraged British youth to oppose war and fight for disarmament. He called it individual disobedience.

The British government arrested him and put him in prison. From prison, he made a statement to the youth of the world. When I read it, I was deeply inspired. So I wrote a letter to Russell and also to Nehru. I received replies from both of them. Russell wrote to me, "You must act on your convictions." It was very simple, but I was inspired by it. Nehru also wrote in a similar spirit, though he said he was still not sure about certain things. But both letters were encouraging.

Then I decided that I should walk to four places. At that time, nuclear weapons were possessed by only four countries: America, France, Britain, and Russia. No other countries had atomic bombs. So I thought I should go to Moscow, Paris, London, and Washington, meet the leaders there, and ask them a simple question: Who gives you the authority to make atomic bombs?

So on June 1, 1962, I started walking from New Delhi. A young man named Satish Kumar joined me. We had no passports, no visas, nothing. We simply started walking. It took us about a month to reach the Pakistan border. Every day, the people of Punjab treated us very well. We said we did not need money. We would depend on people. We would live or die—that was all. Throughout the journey, people encouraged us. As we approached the Pakistan border, newspapers began asking us, "What will you do tomorrow? How will you enter Pakistan?"

We replied, "We do not recognize the border. Who created the border? We did not create it. Nature did not create it. Somebody created it." We spoke in this way, and the newspapers would publish it. By the time we reached the border, there was only one day left. The next morning, somebody arrived from Delhi with our passports, and Pakistan Radio announced that visas had been granted without passports. That is the strength of human goodwill.

Q) I want to ask you about Moscow and your trip to the Soviet Union. From what you describe in your book, you received a very friendly reception there. Yet there was so much propaganda about the Soviet Union—that it was behind the Iron Curtain and authoritarian. Many of us never saw the Soviet Union. What were your experiences there? What was it like as a place?

A) The first thing is that during the six months of our walk through the Soviet Union, all the way to Moscow and then on to Europe, I never saw a beggar. Not a single beggar. I wondered why and how.

There were no beggars because a certain level of social and economic justice was available to all. In the villages, everybody had a small house. Nobody was sleeping in the streets. This attracted me very much. If communism could provide that kind of justice, it was something worth thinking about. Those six months in the Soviet Union were a great education in themselves.

When we reached Moscow, Khrushchev had already left the city and would be away for two weeks, so we could not meet him. But he left instructions that we should be invited to the Kremlin and given a reception. The Soviet government gave us a warm reception. From Moscow, we went to Poland. Throughout our journey from the Soviet Union into Poland, I still did not see a single beggar. For me, that was fundamental.

No human being was begging in those countries.

I began thinking more deeply about it and reading about it. Of course, there were collective farms and state farms. If you examine the details, there were also injustices there, as in every society. But the basic necessities—food, clothing, and shelter—were available to everybody. That is something I can never forget.

Q) Could you describe your reception in Germany and France?

A) It took us three months to reach France, passing through Poland, East Germany, and West Germany. All across Europe we carried a simple message: there should be no atomic bombs in the world, no more Hiroshima. People welcomed it. Teachers, students, government officials, and ordinary citizens responded very positively.

When we reached France, we decided to go to the Palais de l'Élysée and submit a protest letter calling on France to support nuclear disarmament. We stood there holding signs that said, "No More Hiroshima" and "No More Atom Bombs." Within five minutes, about fifty policemen arrived, took both of us away, and put us in prison in Paris.

We were placed in a room with two beds, and that was all. We were in prison simply for asking a question and submitting a written protest. The next day they brought breakfast. I said I would not eat. I told them that we had not come to Paris to live in prison, and we wished to register our protest. The people had treated us well and we were grateful for that, but we objected to being imprisoned. One day passed. Satish ate on the first day, but on the second day he also stopped eating. One day, two days, three days, four days passed. I took only water. Then the police came, took us away, and put us on a train at midnight from Paris to London.

Q) Then you went to America, where you met Martin Luther King Jr.?

A) From London, we walked for a week to Southampton. From Southampton, we took a ship to New York. We boarded the ship around noon, and after about two hours at sea, the radio on the Queen Mary announced that President Kennedy had been assassinated.

You can imagine the atmosphere. What struck me was the unity of the people. On the entire ship, nobody ate after hearing the news. Nobody. That sense of human solidarity was remarkable. When we reached New York, I met a very famous African American leader, Bayard Rustin. He became one of our greatest supporters. A secretary representing President Johnson met us at the White House and told us, "You have walked here, and now you are going to Japan. If your movement succeeds, America will be the first country to sign a nuclear ban."

We received that promise on behalf of Johnson. Whether it meant anything or not is another matter, but it was said. We then asked our friends how we might meet Martin Luther King Jr. Local people arranged for us to visit him at his home. We went there and met him. He was very pleasant and very simple. We spent one or two hours with him. He spoke at length about how Gandhi had inspired him. We told him that we had come from India and had heard of him as one of the greatest advocates of peace in America. We wanted to meet him for that reason. It was a very good interaction.

Q) How do you see the difference between what was done in the Soviet Union through land collectivization and the Bhoodan movement? Were they similar or different?

A) I think they were very different because the Bhoodan movement was based on voluntary contribution. Vinoba Bhave said that land belongs to everybody. Of course, he expressed it in religious terms in the Indian context: Sabhi Bhoomi Gopal Ki. All land belongs to Gopal, to the Lord, to God. You cannot own it. That appealed to people in a nonviolent way.

Whereas in the Soviet Union, it was established by law that land could not be owned by individuals. There were collective farms and state farms. In state farms, you were a member of the state farm. In collective farms, people could keep a small plot, perhaps an acre; they made some adjustments. So voluntary donation, voluntary giving up of ownership, and compulsory surrender of ownership are different.

Q) Did you see a contradiction between the ideas of Marx and Lenin and the ideas of Gandhi, or was there any meeting point?

A) Of course there was one major difference. In Marxism-Leninism, there is a belief that violent change is a part of life, whereas Gandhi believed in the objective but not in the process of violence.Another difference is that Gandhi believed that through education, understanding, and awareness, people can learn to share rather than being forced at the point of a gun. That is the difference. I think that difference still exists between Gandhians and Marxists. Gandhians believe that you cannot bring about lasting change through the gun, whereas Marxists believe that revolution is necessary and that revolution cannot come freely. So that difference is still there.

Q) But do you think what Gandhi did was a revolution?

A) Of course. Gandhi insisted on nonviolent non-cooperation. Suppose I am a landlord and I have twenty slaves working for me. Gandhi would say that the workers should non-cooperate with the landlord. That is a nonviolent revolution. The other approach is to take over the land by force. There is a difference. So I believe the best way is a civilizational advance. That is nonviolent non-cooperation. Mere nonviolence will not do. Nonviolent non-cooperation against exploiting authority will succeed. Gandhi proved that during the independence movement. After that, I do not know what is happening.

Q) When you came back at the end of 1964, what kinds of activities were you engaged in?

A) After that, two different opportunities came to me.  One was that a large group of people in America were experimenting with world education. They asked me whether I could take responsibility, and I said yes. I became a faculty member of an experiment called Friends World College.

From 1965 all the way to 1991, for about twenty-five years, I was a faculty member there. The idea was that any student from anywhere in the world could join. It was a world college. There were faculty members from many countries, and we were a unique group of people. I was one of them in India. My responsibility was India and the neighbouring countries. I travelled extensively, helping young people. That was my work, and I spent twenty-five years doing it. After that, I left and set up an independent organization called the India Development Foundation. That was purely a personal initiative.

Q) What about Indira Gandhi? Did you ever meet her?

A) Oh yes, of course. And I will tell you about one very important meeting.I wanted to talk to her about world education. She was very happy about it. She said, "Well, if you are taking responsibility for these things, and if I can do anything, I will be very happy to help." So I told her, "Thank you very much." By that time, about half an hour had passed. Then I said, "Indira Ji, I have a fear in my mind." "What is that?" she asked. "You know, I follow Indian politics very closely. These days, my fear is that there are so many men in our country who are after your blood." I simply said that. She replied, "So what? They can only take my blood. My spirit is for India. Forget it. Forget them. You do your work. Young people should lead India. I am for that. Forget my blood and flesh. Do your work." That was the last thing she said to me.

Q) This was in 1984?

A) Yes. This was on October 19, 1984. So I left. Ten days later, when she was shot, I neither slept nor ate. I was in Bangalore. I kept thinking: why did I say that? Ten days earlier we had finished breakfast together in a very happy mood. She was happy, I was happy, the children were there, everything was good. Then suddenly I had said those words. Her response had been very powerful. And then, ten days later, what happened was something I could never forget. I wept that day. I kept asking myself, why did I say that? She lived her life totally committed to India. She was committed.

Q) You also met Fidel Castro at one point. Can you describe that meeting?

A) That was in an entirely different context. When I was a student leader, I was the president of Vidyarthi Jana Sabha and a member of AIPSO (All India Peace and Solidarity Organization). In 1966, I was invited to Havana as a participant. Romesh Chandra and AIPSO sponsored the visit. Romesh Chandra was the leader from Delhi. We all flew to Moscow and then on to Cuba. We stayed in a large hotel called the Havana Libre Hotel. One day, while we were having breakfast in the open, Fidel Castro suddenly appeared.

He stood there and said, "Young fellows, I have a problem. Who will come with me to climb that mountain? I want to discuss something." I was the first to get up. There were ten other young people, and eventually the group grew to about twenty. We climbed for about an hour and reached a flat area under a huge tree. There were some stones there, and Fidel said, "Okay, let us sit here." So there we were: about twenty young people and Fidel, all sitting on stones under the tree. Then he said, speaking partly in English and partly in Spanish, "I have a problem and I want your advice." Imagine that—the Prime Minister of Cuba asking for our advice.

"What is the problem?" we asked. He said, "Today in the world there is one country, Vietnam. The people are starving. They do not have enough food to eat. I have ordered fifty thousand tons of rice from China to Cuba. The ship is already on its way and will arrive in Havana next week. My problem is this: I think I can convince the Cuban people that we can survive with less food. Cuba has survived before. But today the Vietnamese are suffering. So my mind tells me that the rice should go to Vietnam instead of Cuba. Yet I do not know whether all my people will agree. That is my confusion. You young people have come from different countries. I need your advice."

All of us gave the same answer. "Fidel, your feeling is correct. You have built trust with the Cuban people. If you believe the Vietnamese are suffering most and that the rice should go to Vietnam, then do it. Your people will understand." That evening there was a huge public gathering, perhaps fifty thousand people. Fidel spoke, and so did several foreign delegates. During his speech, Fidel told the crowd: "Today I am happy to tell my countrymen that twenty young people from around the world have advised me to send the rice to Vietnam." He then asked for their support. Immediately the crowd began shouting, "Send it to Vietnam! Send it to Vietnam!" The next day the government ordered it, and the ship went to Vietnam. What leader would do that today? That was the kind of leader he was. That kind of leadership. Indira Gandhi also had that kind of leadership.

Q) How do you see your philosophy in the present time, when, as you say, the situation has changed so much and there is continuing war, poverty, and neocolonialism? How do you view your philosophy in today's circumstances?

A) First, there is a great deal of confusion in the country—in every sense: political, economic, social, and cultural. India is going through a period of deep confusion. We may recognize that, but then what? We all have a responsibility. Who is responsible for the confusion? We are responsible.

My feeling is that each individual should do whatever best they can. But that alone is not enough. We need people who understand one another. Such people should cooperate, collaborate, come together, meet together, discuss together, understand together, and write together. That, I think, is the path forward for India. But it is not easy. Our politicians today—and politicians in general—have a responsibility. There are some good individuals, of course. But I feel many are not nationalistic enough.

​When I say that, I mean they should think more as Indians. Instead, we often think of ourselves first as Hindus, Muslims, Kannadigas, Punjabis, and so on. That mentality is not changing easily, but it must change. A stronger sense of Indianness should come into our philosophy, our teaching, and our practice. That is the way forward. How to achieve it is a big question. It is our collective responsibility.

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