http://sacw.net/article15002.html
Kishore Saint passed away on the morning of the 15th of August in his home in Udaipur. He is survived by his wife Sudesh ji and two children, Tarun and Amita, son-in-law Roopen Arya and grandson Karan Arya (14).
He was 90 years old. He came to Udaipur at the behest of Dr Mohan Sinha Mehta to head the Vidya Bhawan Rural Institute in 1972. He then went on to be the chief executive of Seva Mandir, a voluntary organisation in Udaipur, for many years. He left Seva Mandir in 1983 to create a tribal-led institution called Ubeshwar Vikas Mandal.
Kishore bhai was a nationally and internationally known Gandhian thinker-practitioner. He was friends with people like Ashok Chatterji, a pioneer in the field of design and development communication, Ashish Kothari, an innovative environmental activist and author. He was a close member of the Lokayan/ CSDS group that consisted of public intellectual like Rajni Kothari, DL Sheth, Asish Nandy, Smitu Kothari and Vijay Pratap. He brought Kamla Chowdary, head of the National Wasteland Development Board, Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Sundar lal Bahuguna and Anil Agarwal to visit Udaipur to support a peoples movement to afforest degraded lands.
He spent his life implementing Gandhian ideas, advocating for local self-governing institutions of tribals and local people. He was a patron of local culture and spiritual practices. He deeply respected their ethical outlook to nature. He would host the performance of “Gavri,” a 40-day tribal dance ritual in praise of Shiv-Parvati, in Udaipur City to make urban people aware of the richness of tribal culture.
Despite many odds and disappointments in his life, Kishore bhai never gave up his faith in the wisdom and integrity of local communities and Gandhian thought. He bore no bitterness towards those who had wronged him. He was a man of great refinement and compassion.
People gravitated towards Kishore ji for good reason.True to his name he displayed a child-like curiosity towards life and this showed clearly in the way he always showed a genuine interest in every person he met. He had an infinite capacity to give of himself and shared of himself to everyone alike.Each person would know and feel that they were important to him and that he valued them.
He belongs in the league of Sarla Behn, Chandi Prasad Bhatt and Sundarlal Bahuguna as pioneers in protecting the environment and believing that grassroots work is the key to making our society decent, self-governing, and democratic.His legacy in Seva Mandir of seeing development in ecological terms and self-governing communities endures.
In the last few years, he increasingly turned his energies to the urgent problem of climate change at the global and local level, a theme that embodies his lifetime concerns regarding nature and communities.Well into his old-age, he engaged and challenged as many youth as he could to think with full attention and engage the world, to understand and act.
He was a person ahead of his times. A tragic hero in some ways. He has left us all with a great responsibility – to /feel/ the crisis that is on hand and face it with all our best efforts.
/Bichhdā kuchh is adā se ki rut hī badal gaī
ik shaḳhs saare shahr ko vīrān kar gayā /
Khalid Sharif
Translation:
"He parted in such a way that the season has changed
A whole city stands deserted by one man's departure"
- Ajay Singh Mehta
We are mourning the loss of our dear mentor and elder gandhian Kishore Saint in Udaipur. He crossed the border during partition, worked with teachers in Kenya, participated in co-creating the Friends World College experiment in the usa, spent time with Ivan Illich in CIDOC Mexico, started Ashoka in India, was CEO of Seva Mandir, engaged in Lokayan dialogues, worked for a new paradigm of swaraj with tribal communities, mentored our work in Swaraj University and much much more. He was a grassroots intellectual and a true ecological patriot. He had encouraged us to move
back to India from the US more than 25 years ago. Whenever we would meet,
he loved to talk about the latest books, Urdu shayari, the possibility of
new social movements and Hind Swaraj. Over his 90 years, he touched many
lives and inspired many people across 4 continents. We celebrate and honour
him and his commitment to a continued freedom struggle for social justice
and ecological regeneration. He keenly followed Vikalp Sangam online and
was able to attend our gathering in Udaipur.
Kishore bhai you will always be in our hearts!!!
- Manish Jain, Vidhi Jain and Shikshantar Andolan