Gandhian and Indian Influence in the Nordic Countries 

When the Indian and muslim Sheth Habib on September 11 in 1906 raised his voice against the British empire and the new racist laws a new modern popular movement was born that still is of global importance. At a mass meeting with 3 000 participants and the police present at the Empire theatre in Johannesburg Habib said that in the name of Allah he would resist the new law discriminating coloured people and making it illegal to not carry pass ports declaring your race. He also told others to do the same. Mohandas Gandhi organised the meeting but had himself not the idea to go as far as making illegal actions. But overwhelmed by the Muslim initiative to not obey the law in a nonviolent manner he soon followed and became the organiser of the first campaign using Satyagraha, the ethical force of those who have the truth on their side resisting oppressive opponents with open collective nonviolent actions. Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs joined hands and mobilised against the oppressive laws that made it easier to exploit their indenture labour. After 10 000 were sent to prison the government had to give up and the nonviolent movement was succesful in stopping the rasist laws. The British empire had been defeated.

Nordic connections with this movement started in 1917 in the midst of brutal wars among imperialist states. These contacts started after the first succesful Satyagrahacampaign in South Africa but before this way of changhing society was used in India. Two Danish women, Esther Faering and Anne Marie Petersen both interested in education met with Gandhi in January 1917 shortly before he started his nonviolent civil disobedience campaigns in India and later became the leader of the nationalist movement 1919. Since this meeting Gandhi and Indian popular movements have continiously influenced Nordic popular movements and societies. This is especially the case when core values of the society are at stake. When issues as freedom of speech, global justice, environmental devastation and the role of the Nordic countries position in the global imperialistic system have been addressed in both Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. To some degree influence has also come from the Nordic countries to India at crucial stages in the struggle for equality between men and women and the liberation of the country.

Gandhian and Indian influence is still important in the Nordic societies and especially among popular movements engaged in the struggle for global justice and responsibility. This text primarily deals with the political influence, especially when people are mobilised in societal conflicts. Indian influence culturally, at the official political level and economically are of importance but is outside the scope of this study. 

The Gandhian and Indian popular movement influence on other societies is of global interest. The predominant view on social change and popular movements is that they start in modern Western societies, preferably Great Britain or the US, and then are spread globally. But if the case can be proven that some of the most crucial societal conflicts in Western modern states have recieved some or its main influence from Indian popular movements through lalf a century or more, than there is something wrong with the idea that liberation and democratic challenges starts in the rich countries in the North.

The findings of this study thus challenges the present academic, governmental and corporate Western world view. It has been carried out voluntarily outside full-time job as a teacher and commitment to voluntary work in the environment and solidarity movement. Under these limitations it has only been possible to cover the development in so many countries during a period of almost a century without going into details. Especially the first period of Nordic-Gandhian relationships have been very well studied by Holger Terp and E.S Reddy. But the following periods lack systematic studies. Due to the dependency of the American university system scholars dealing with nonviolent movement in the Nordic countries knows very much about the connections between Gandhi and the US and how the US influenced the Nordic countries, but much less about the direct contacts between Indian popular movements and Nordic popular movements. 

Much of the history her presented is with other words never before told. The knowledge on most of the connections have been scattered and is for the first time here gathered. Some of the most crucial mass mobilisations in the Nordic countries for freedom of speach and solidarity with the third world were started by a group inspired by Indian thought and values but the story have never been printed and only existed in oral form. International academic studies claim that the kind of actions undertaken by the Indian inspired group in Sweden to defend freedom of speach were of crucial importance for the whole youth and student movements of the 1960s, but wrongly states that this took place for the first time in the US 1964 when the same thing took place in Sweden 1961. Nation-wide massmobilisation for the third world at schools also started by the Indian inspired group before similar actions has been documented in other countries also has been ignored by academicians who either do not see this kind of actions as important or focus on actions undertaken by established organisations in smaller scale. 

This study concentrates on how Indian inspiration has influenced movements that are in conflict with the dominant order in society and its place in the world order. The criteria for being included and seen as relevant thus stems from two judgements. On the one hand, and primarily, if the movement and conflict presented can be shown to be historical both in terms of a high level of confrontation seldom or never seen in the Nordic countries before or after and in terms of creating new public space and awareness of profound societal and ecological problems. On the other hand to what degree the movement was explicitly aware of its Indian inspiration and acted accordingly. 

In other words this is not a study on how Gandhian or other Indian thoughts best have been recieved in the Nordic countries, rather how popular movements in India continously have influenced popular movements in the Nordic countries and in this way both have contributed to the common aim of global justice and preventing the planet from ecological disaster. I am not a specialist in Gandhis writings, my primary interest is how popular movements evolve locally, nationally and globally. This means that if and Indian environmental movement partly inspired by Gandhi have strong connections to the Swedish environmental movement when there is a mass confrontation with the state is this of more importance than when smaller groups makes actions strictly according to the percieved rules of Gandhian nonviolence. The main focus of this study is on greater impact in strong societal conflicts or movements that grow from a small beginning to larger participation rather than on groups able of preserving Gandhian thought and make nonviolent actions in a small scale. Of course these smaller groups as well as the philosophical work is also of crucial importance. As both Gandhi and those studying popular movements know, smallness is not a criteria for being unimportant when society needs to be challenged. But the history of smaller Gandhian and nonviolent action groups in the Nordic countries is more well described already while the Indian influence in wider societal conflicts and the building of mass movements is not. 

The Gandhian and Indian influence on Nordic countries can be summarised into four periods. The first is the dialogue, school building, work camp movement and liberation struggle period beginning with Danish women dialogue and pedagogic initiatives and continuing with international work camps and support for the liberation struggle. The second period is the anti-imperialism and peace struggle of the World Youth Festivals in the late 1940s and 1950s as central together with small but crucial alternative movements struggling for peace and global justice with inspiration from India both strands ending with joint mass peace, freedom of speech and solidarity mobilisations in the 1960s. The third is the global environmental movement period 1970-1990. The fourth period beginning at the shift of decades between the 1980s and 1990s is to early to put a label on but can be described as the antineoliberal global democracy period. Finally the present situation is dealt with more in detail including World Social Forum connections and recent initiatives to translate Hind Swaraj and organise Salt march jubilee in Nordic countries. 

Definition of popular movement…

Dialogue, Constructive Programme and Liberation Struggle 1917-1947

The first Danish - Indian encounter took place when Esther Faering and Anne Marie Petersen visited Gandhi’s Satyagrahaashram at Kocharab, Ahmedabad, for three days January 6 to 9, 1917. There was immediate mutual understanding and care for each other. In a letter Gandhi wrote to Faering soon after they left. ”You were hardly guests to us; you had become members of the family.” It was followed by a continously growing South-North dialogue through correspondence with Gandhi, visits and organising practical solidarity work in India and the Nordic countries.

Anne Marie Petersen was a woman of strong persuasion and practical mind who already when she arrived in India 1909 had a vision of establishing a Christian National School. She had studied at a free school and a folk high school and was greatly influenced by Niels Fredrik Severin Grundtvig, a philosopher, priest and educator. Grundtvig started a movement to set up folk high schools all over the country for people in common that should avoid focusing only on academic subjects and authorian methods of learning but be based on oral dialogue and include practical knowledge. The first folk high school was set up in 1844 and within half a century  the idea was spread to every corner in all Nordic countries strongly contributing to democratising the society and making small farmers capable of joining hands and renewing technology thus modernisising agriculture and at the same time spreading welfare to more people. Later it also became the tool for workers movment to Grundtvig also streesed that the gospel should be taught in the mother tongue respecting each persons community. His views gave rise to a church movement within the Danish Lutheran State Church, the Grundtvigians,

Anne Marie Petersen was in 1916 entrusted by the Danish Missionary Society to prepare plans to establish a high school for girls and was authorised to visit many educational institutions in India. Petersen felt that the church needed to be based in Indian culture in order to influence the nation to accept Christianity. Students in missionary schools should not be forced to adopt the Western way of life and become alienated from their people. 

Petersen took the younger missionary Esther Faering with her on the tour and thus they jointly arrived at Gandhi’s Satyagrahaashram to observe the small school there. They were greatly impressed by Gandhi and the life at the ashram. His views on education and the way the school worked they found in harmony with the ideas of Grundtvig. 

A strong relationship developed between the two women and Gandhi. In the midst of his great struggles for peasants and workers that during the rest of 1917 filled his days he found the time to send at least 23 letters to Esther Faering and continued to do so at times like in 1920 when Faering was under great pressure due to her support of the Indian liberation struggle even more frequently, other years less often. 

In February 1917 Petersen wrote a report to the Danish Missionary Conference stating that teaching of students in English created alienation and learning problems. She proposed a national Christian girls’ school with both practical and academic subjects teaching in the language of the people with emphasis on the history and culture of India in accordance with the views of Grundtvig. The board of the Danish Missionay Society approved her ideas and soon she left for Denmark to find financial support among Grundtvigians. 

Left alone in India Faering continued her work as teacher in a girls’ boarding house at Tirukoilur while adopting more to the Indian way of life wearing khadi and becoming a vegetarian. In 1917 she wrote her first article in the Danish missionary magazine Dansk Missions-Blad titled A Visit to an Indian Ashram, probably the first time Gandhi’s Indian work was brough up in the Nordic countries. 

She wrote frequently to Gandhi and began to identify herself with India and the struggle for freedom. This put her under severe pressure from the British authorities and the Danish Missionary Society. The board of the Danish Missionary Society disapproved of her correspondence with Gandhi and prohibited her from visiting Gandhi’s ashram during Christmas 1917 and 1918. The missionary authorities tried to persuade her to stop all correspondence with Gandhi. In 1919 when Gandhi was involved in organising national mass resistance against freedom of speech by the British authorities Faering refused to dissociate from Gandhi. She wrote to Mahadev Desai, secretary to Gandhi, also called Bapu among friends, on March 24, 1919:  

“When I came to India, I felt at once at home; and here I have found my living ideal, the incarnation of God in man. So next to the great experience when Christ became a living reality in my life, I have no other event for which I am so happy and thankful as the day when I first met Bapu; here I found the divine love shining forth clearer than the brightest star; and truth and humanity I found in him as nowhere else, and so I bow down in deepest reverence, love and admiration for true greatness. Bapu became for me the manifestation of the love of God and His aim with regard to man, so he came into my life as the living ideal, for which I have been seeking for years”.

Faering came under suspicion by the security police who inquired in Tirukoilur on her role in the ongoing campaign. In a new letter to Desai on May 4 she wrote:

”For me they can do as they like, only as I said before, I should rather stay several years in prison than leave India; I do not know how I should live outside India without having my heart completely here.”

In June the head of the Danish Missionary Society under pressure from British authorities asked Faering to cease all correspondence with all who were connected with any political work. In the same time Faering met E. Kuhni Menon, a Hindu medical student from Kerala. They fell in love and were soon to be engaged to be married. This was strongly opposed by the Mission. This made her to submit her resignation in August 1919. The Mission asked her to leave for Denmark but she refused. Gandhi tried to intervene by writing to the governor of Bombay and Madras allowing her to live at his ashram assuring that he had not the slightest desire to avail himself of her services in the political field. He requested his friend C.F. Andrews to go immediately to Madras to prevent her banishment. Faering recieved permission to travel to the Bombay Presidency which the ashram at Ahmedabad at this time was part of. 

Meanwhile Petersen had gathered financial support in Denmark and came back to India shortly after Faering resigned from the Mission. Petersen stood by Faering, invited her for Christmas and began to correspond with Gandhi. In an interview with Gandhi in Danmarks Verdensmission Gandhi stated that:

“I would like to go to Denmark. It is one of the countries in the world we can learn most from. India is a large farming country; we need to learn from Denmark agriculturally, we need good public education, and we need unions, loan banks and cooperative societies as in Denmark”.

Petersen strongly supported equality between Europeans and Indians in the missions and opposed racism. When the Danish Missionary Society rejected a proposal for equality between Danish and Indian missionaries she too resigned in January 1920. Both Petersen and Faering now came under heavy pressure, while Faering’s health also detoriated. Faering left for Denmark and was later followed by Menon were they both could marry without the immediate pressure from his family and the Mission who both had opposed the marriage. 

In India Petersen continued her struggle for establishing a school for girls. She also became a strong supporter of the Indian movement for freedom and its constructive programme. She began to spin, wear khadi and use Indian products as much as possible according to the ideas of the nationalist movement. She saw the necessity of Christians participating in the freedom movement as essential to pave the way for Christianity in India.

On August 14, 1920 she participated at a public meeting in Vellore addressed by Gandhi. This she said in a letter to him shortly after had ”more or less decided my future”. The moral attitude of this Christian faced with repression from her Danish organisation and the British she expressed in these words:

”Truly it matters little what I, a lonely and insignificant person, may say or do. What is my protest against common current the race to which I belong is taking and (what grieves me more), which the missionary societies seem to follow? Even if a respectable number protested it would not be of any use. Yet were I alone against the whole world, I must follow my conscience and my God.”

Her relgious beliefs and her relationship with India she spelled out clearly:

“I have thrown myself at the feet of India. At the same time I know that in Christ alone is my abode and I have no longing and no desire but to live Him, my crucified Saviour, and reveal Him for those with whom I come in contact. I just cling to His feet and pray with tears that I may not disgrace Him as we Christians have been doing by our behaviour in India… If we who bear His name were true to Him, we would never bow ourselves before the Powers of this world, but we would always be on the side of the poor, the suffering and the oppressed. But we are not, and therefore I feel myself under obligation not only to Christ but to India for His sake at this time of momentous importance for her future”.

Gandhi’s call to boycott government schools and establish national schools as part of a constructive porgramme especially appealed to her:

“Only by indigenous education can India be truly uplifted. Why this appeals so much to me is perhaps because I belong to the part of the Danish people who started their own independent, indigenous national schools. The Danish Free Schools and Folk-High-Schools, of which you may have heard, were started against the opposition and persecution of the State. The organisers won and thus have regenerated the nation”. 

Her letter was published in Gandhi’s paper Young India to show that the nationalist movement was neither anti-Christian nor anti-European. 

On September 17. 1921 Petersen founded Seva mandir (Temple of Service) and a school for girls, the National Christian Girls’ school, att Porto Novo (Parangipettai), south of Madras. Gandhi laid the foundation stone for the school att a large public meeting. It was organised like an ashram. Here pupils got an intercultural education which combined the work of the hand with the work of the spirit. They learned to spin in order to produce their own clotches; grew their own food and learned to read and write as well as they had lessons about Indian history, religions and culture, much inspired by Gandhis as well as Petersens own ideas.

In November 1921 the government asked the missionaries to sign a declaration of loyalty. Petersen signed with a declaration that as a Christian she would collaborate with everything good and promote loyalty to God and not the kingdoms of the world. She was blacklisted by the authorities, made subject to restrictions and her school was excluded from government grants. 

The school had hard times and was a small institution. In December the Menon couple came back from Denmark to Porto Novo and could not find any other ways of surviving than rely on the mission which put an extra burden on the economic situation for the school. But like no other of the national schools inspired by Gandhi’s ideas it was able to continue exist until liberation came and then finally became a centre in a new national education system. It survived on modest contributions from Denmark. From the beginning it was placed in the home of Petersen and had only 13 pupils in 1924, the year it was officially opened with its own building. 

Meanwhile the support group in Denmark started to criticise Petersens effort. She was accused of making the school more part of the Indian national movement than a Christian mission. When she visited Denmark 1926 – 27 the support group dissolved itself. She was able to establish a new support group that agreed to give missionaries freedom of work but there was a drop in contributions from Denmark when the needs of the mission increased. 

Soon after Petersen arranged for Esther Faering to travel to Denmark for health reasons. Here she gave a serie of lectures on Gandhi on the Danish radio 1928 and wrote a biography of Gandhi published in 1930 – Gandhi: En Karakteristik og Fremstilling (Gandhi: a Sketch and a Portray). 

Ellen Hørup was another Danish women that wrote extensively on Gandhi, Indian liberation and other international affairs in Politiken, a main daily in Denmark at the same time. Contrary to Esther Menon and Anne Marie Petersen who were devote Christians she was a modern feminist. Her first 40 years she had been very active in sports and not involved in politics or journalism. But when she got into writing her pacifism and radical anti-fascism made her the foremost if not the only female journalist writing on international affairs. As a daughter of the anti-militaristic and liberal founder of the influential newspaper Politiken she was given space in spite of that it had turned less radical since its pioneer time and that women rarely if ever before the second world war in Denmark were allowed or asked to write about foreign politics in the press.

Hørup became interested in Gandhi in the 1920s when she lived in Rome. In January 1929 she travelled to India and stayed at Gandhi’s ashram at Sabarmati for over a week. In the late twenties the first meetings about Gandhi and non-violence were held in Copenhagen.

In India the numbers of students at the ashram in Porto Novo fell to six but Petersen did not give up. When Gandhi launched the Civil Disobedience movement in 1930 and started the Salt march, she offered her services, and gave refugee to families of volunteers who went to prison. At a rally inaugurating the movement in south India she said Christian prayers. 

In Denmark Hørup established Indiens Venner (the Friends of India Society) in Copenhagen in October 1930. She also established the first monthly magazine with the same name devoted fully to the Indian liberation struggle and Mahatma Gandhi outside South Africa and India that was issued during the years 1930 – 1938. In this first issue she reflected upon the importance of the independence movement:

”The opening of a new chapter in the history of the human race, were violence and weapons are abolished, and antagonism between races and nations do not anymore put an hindrance to understanding among people.”

The Indian struggle for independence created great hopes but also acts of solidarity. There was censorship on news from India after the Salt March of 1930. Ellen Hørup, Carl Vett, a Norwegian barrister of the Supreme Court, his wife, Edward Holton James, an American barrister from Boston and Caroline (Bokken) Lasson, a Norwegian singer, actress and writer “created a little self-constituted commission, whose members all travelled to India on their own”, meeting once in a while in India. The group took an interest in the severe repression against the Indian freedom movement during the civil disobedience movement led by Gandhi. Together with Bokken Lasson Hørup stayed in India for four months 1930-31 meeting not only Gandhi but also other Indian leaders as Jawaharlal Nehru, Moulana Abul Kalam Azad and Subhas Chandra Bose as well as visiting Anne Marie Petersens school in Porto Novo. The members of the informal international group distributed the surpressed news that they could find in other countries thus breaking the iron curtain the British had sat up to isolate the Indians and make their liberation impossible. 

A feverish solidarity activity developed. In 1931 Hørup wrote the book Gandhis Indien (Gandhi’s India), together with the Danish painter Cathinca Olsen she went to meet Gandhi again during the Round Table Conference on Indian constitutional reform at the end of 1931, Caroline Bokken Lasson set up a Friends of India Society also in Norway and on October 6, 1932 Hørup organised an International Conference for India in Geneva. At the conference an International Committe for India was established with Hørup as honorary secretary. She soon moved to Geneva and became the organisational force behind the international solidarity movement for India. 

A second conference was organised in March 1933, mostly with people based in Geneva and a third International conference on September 19, 1933. The speakers included Bhulabai Desai and Subhas Chandra Bose, leaders of the Indian national Congress and Mrs Hamid Ali with delegates from many European countries attending.

The committee published the magazine the “Indian Press”, the first international magazine to support the Indian cause abroad with Hørup as a a main contributor. There were problems though with the interest in India for international solidarity causing the magazine to close down 1935. The last number of the “Indian Press” quoted the Modern Review (Calcutta): “It was a mistake on the part of the Congress to have given up foreign work… It is true, we must win freedom mainly by our efforts. But the sympathy and at least the moral support of foreign nations are valuable” (August 1935). Ellen Hørup then wrote, “Because of the decision taken by the National Congress of India, we have decided to suspend the publication of our magazine for the time being. We will take it up again as soon as the Indian organizations themselves recognise the necessity of a propaganda campaign in foreign countries”.

Hørup was one of the few contemporary Scandinavian friends of Gandhi who dared to voice criticism of Gandhi: 

“Gandhi enters the great and admirable fight for the untouchables. He fasts for their right to get into the temples for which he is subject to attempted assassinations, and he gets the entire priesthood on his back. Gandhi has declared that there is no such thing as an untouchable in the holy writings, and even if there was, it would conflict with all humanity and therefore could not be divine truth. Everybody enthusiastically follows him on his Harijan-tour. But the untouchable is a by-product of the caste system, and Gandhi fights for the untouchable but wishes to keep the caste system.” 

In a speech to Indiens Venner in Copenhagen 1936 she explained her position. Gandhi was to her ”the apostle who would bring, not only to India but to the entire world, the gosple of the future – the abolishment of violence from mankind.” But she said also that she had her differences with Gandhi concerning many issues as regarding rights of women, birth control, class struggle, industrialisation and other matters that also were expressed by many contemporary Indian radicals. 

In 1937 Friends of India society in Norway nominated Gandhi for a Nobel peace prize and Hørup gave full support. She wrote to a number of influential persons and organisations and recieved positive replies but the initative did not succeed in spite of wide-spread support. 

In India Anne Marie Petersen continued her efforts. As a member of the Rural Reconstruction Workers Association, Petersen was in 1939 invited to speak at the conference for the rural reconstruction workers at Kengeri. She was the only women at the conference. Mrs. Petersen spoke of the need for educating women teachers and suggested that her school in Porto Novo was developed into a women’s teacher training college. During the war the school had to close for a while as money collected in Denmark during the nazi occupation could not be sent to India. But Gandhi sent a small grant to show his support. 

After Indian Independence in August 1947 the Madras provincial government gave Petersen her rigth of residence without any restrictions and the school was recognised by the authorities and provided grants. In Denmark Ellen Hørup was one of the founders of the Danish-Indian friendship association and Fédération Démocratique Internationales des Femmes.

January 1951 Anne Marie Petersen, lovingly called Periamma, (great mother) died in India. Ellen Hørup died 83 years old in 1953 after having devoted her life to the treatment of children during the German occupation of her country which made it impossible for her to write about international issues and after recently had started a new magazine 80 years old. Esther Menon had to return to Denmark in the 1950s due to bad health that had followed her and her children during hardships in different places in India. She died unknown 1962. A first generation of Nordic people devoting much of their live in solidarity with the struggle for freedom for India passed away seemingly lieving no traces behind. One exception was the school at Porto Novo. After the death of Petersen a trust with two Danish and four Indian members ran the school that in 2000 had more than 2 000 pupils and 60 teachers. 

Terp and Reddy concludes in a first version of their book Mahatma Gandhi and the Nordic countries on this first Danish-Indian encounters: 

”Within the framework of the struggle for Indian political and social liberation Anne Marie Petersen and Gandhi pioneered a North-South dialogue. They were in India, but came from different cultures. Also it was an early North-South dialogue including development aid, because Anne Marie Petersen couldn’t have made her school (as big) as it became, without financial support from Christian friends and friends from the Folk High school movement in Denmark. Some of the concepts and terms they used in developing an national Indian school were later used in the development of the pedagogy of liberation, based upon ’the ethical indignation, the preferential option for the poor and finally the liberation of the poor and oppressed - and of the oppressor’.” 

The dream and the reality, to the left an illustration of Anne Marie Petersens early vision of a national school for girls and above the result many decades later.

Although other Nordic countries were involved Denmark continously was the most advanced in all aspects, publishing books and articles by Gandhi and on the Indian situation, corresponding with Gandhi and organising public solidarity work. But also in Finland a similar development took place with the interest in pedagogy as central. Here the missionary Lorenz Zilliacus left Finland to devote his life to education in India where he stayed until his death in the 1950s. 

The key lasting Gandhian influence in all of the Nordic countries came in the late 1930s and during World War II through the international working camp movement and Pierre Ceresole, the Swiss founder of Service Civil Internationale. But also this movment seemed to almost disappear before it later reemerged. Ceresole met with Gandhi during his visit to Europe 1931 and got so inspired that he 1934 organised the first secular volunteer project in the Third world. Together with three others he went to Bihar in India for three years working side by side with local inhabitants rebuidling the community after a nature catastrophe. During his stay in India Ceresole became a quaker. 

Back in Europe Ceresole was invited to Denmark and Sweden. In Copenhagen there was already a great interest in his vision:

”I wish bringing to mee the peace and joy, which can only be mine only if at the same time it belongs to all humans, and which I otherwise abstain from. National satisfaction and safety only for my country, while misery reigns in other – that is abominable.”

In Sweden German political refugees were spreading the idea, among them the radical pacifist Ulrich Herz. He together with Lennart Bergström, Inga Thorson and others started to collect money to enable to invite Cérésole to Sweden. Soon members were organised in a Swedish section of Service Civil Internationale and Swedish volunteers could be sent to work camps around Europe helping areas hit by severe natural or social problems while Inga Thorson kept the office in a shoe box under her bed. 1937 a first training camp could be set up at Tostarp in the region of Scania in Southern Sweden before embarking assignments in Europe. A similar organisation started in Norway 1939. The quaker and German-Jewish refugee Wolfgang Sonntag succeeded in organising a Norwegian work camp team bound for helping Finland after its war with the Soviet Union. He had been inspired by the English section of the International Civil Service which he had met during his flight through Europé. When travelling through Norway making speeches at Folk high schools about nazism he was able to engage young people to the volunteer peace corps. But before the group could go to Finland he had to flee agaain to Sweden when Germany invaded also Norway in April 1940.

When the war came the Swedish Section of Service Civil Internationale withered away. Herz was put in a concentration camp by the Swedish military as the 7th inmate among other pacifist social democrats and communists who the military saw as a threat to the state. Meanwhile policemen and military on private assignment burned the communist daily Norrskensflamman in Luleå in the North of Sweden killing five persons. The Swedish military together with ministers used all possible means to support the Northern front in the German invasion of Soviet union through Northern Finland in Operation Barbarossa, an invasion which had the goal to diminish slavic people with 30 million and all communist functionaries and jews, a goal that on occupied territories almost was reached. Radical pacifist and German refugees opposing Hitler was not very popular among the authorities in a nation afraid of getting invaded by the Germans and afraid of the Soviet Union. Surrounded on all sides by Germany and their allies the government and the population excepted many German demands like tranporting German soliders and weapons through Swedish territory. 

In this situation Sonntag vigourosly tried to reestablish interest in building a movement of peace volunteers willing to train themselves for international work camps reconstructing countries destroyed by the war. He was heavily guarded by the police and met almost no interest. Among established youth organisations there were no interest in how peace should be constructed outside Sweden after the war. Sweden seemed top be ”the country without volunteers”. But finally Sonntag found Frisksportarna (Healthy sportsmen), a popular movement that promoted simple lifestyle, healthy food and had nothing against practical work. 1942 a study circle on the work camp issue recieved interest in this movment but the first enthusiasm faded away quickly. 1943 new intiatives were made and Internationella Arbetslag, International Work Camps was born with both young and grown-up volunteers and quakers as supporters. 13 ”peace volunteers” pledge themselves and urge others to do the same by participating in training courses and set up teams that when the war was over should be sent abroad. In an appeal the 13 peace volunteers declared it was necessary to ”abstain from your privilegees and your satisfied safetiness in the ’neutral’ Swedish society.” When peace came 20 courses had already taken place, many that had helped refugees practically in Sweden. But it was not easy. There was a tension between those that wanted to build a popular movement for peace and those that seemed more interested in adventure or practical work without any goal to also create knowledge and understanding among people from different nations. 

In Norway the situation was more severe. Here both armed resistance and nonviolent civil disobedience was launched in a large scale against the German occupation. The Germans tried to turn the schools into pro- Nazi by crushing down on what they percieved as the weakest lenk in the chain. They picked …, a handicapped teacher who had to support also his..  If the weakest of the weak had resisted, how could anybody else with their moral and social respect intact not do the same? In short time most of all teachers in Norway were sent to concentration camps under hardships were many died. It is not known if nn had recieved any inspiration from the thoughts of Gandhi, but never before or after has Satyagraha been used as strongly in the Nordic countries. … The leader of the radical pacifist organisation in Norway was killed by the Germans in a concentration camp. (This text on Norway needs to be complemented.)

Finland struggled for its survival against an invasion of an overwhelming Soviet union army. A population with 4 million people without any allies except some few Swedish volunteers stood alone against 1 million Soviet soldiers. In a courageous defence they at first stopped the invasion and caused severe losses for the Red army. But without foreign support the country had to make a peace treaty with the Soviet union abstaining from parts of Carelia and its access to the Arctic Sea. Half a million internal refugees had to fleee from these lost areas and find their living within the new borders. A year later Finland allied itself with Nazi-Germany against Soviet Union. The Northern sparsely populated and harsch part of the country became territory for the German army and its invasion of the Soviet union in an attempt at cutting the support lines from Arctic harbours to Russias mainland. The Finnish army remained in control in the South and invaded the Soviet union. In recapturing the lost land the nation was united behind the army and the government but when Finland started to occupy also further into Russia there was some opposition. In these Eastern parts of Carelia half the Russian population was put into concentration camps and a racist administration was set in place. The Russian population was discriminated and food ransons was differentiated so that many Russians died in the concentration camps. The reluctant Finnish-speaking local Ortodox population were subject to Lutheran propaganda and nationalist Finnish teachers. Nonviolence had in such a time great difficulities. Many but not all consciousness objectors were executed. The Soviet Union used more or less all its force against Nazi-Germany but towards the end of the war the Finnish army was attacked 1944. Finland once again had to make a peace treaty accepting the loss of land that was forced upon them during their first war with the Soviet union and once more taking care of half a million internal refugees.  

The situation in Denmark had some similarities with both Sweden, Norway and Finland. The country did not resist the German invasion, and could hardly had any chance to do it with its small size. The government stayed and accepted the German occupation. Denmark could thus gain economic profit from the war which made its position similar to that of Sweden. German political refugees were immediatly sent to Germany and killed. Making resistance to the German occupation was at the same time declaring civil war. This de facto civil war made denmakr close to the history of Finland with its civil war in 1917 that for a long time shaped its political culture. More Danish volunteered for the Nazi-SS troups than the armed resistance. After some time also communist members of parliament was sent to concentration camps and in 1943 the Danish authorities refused further collaboration and Germans administrated the country but with less severe repression than elsewhere in occupied Europe. Due to the German occupation Denmark all the time in this respect was similar to the Norwegian situation and in the end of the war also came closer when the collaboration ended.  During the whole war this situation gave room for radical pacifism who did not resist the German occupation but could start the International work camp movement in Denmark. The radical pacifist movmetn No more war was strong in Denmark building on a more Tolstoy inspired nonviolence appeal to the individual to not bear arms. 1943 the radical pacifists could set up a fund for volunteer reconstruction work after the war, Fredsvenners Hjælpearbejde (Friends of Peace Aid) to wokr according to Servic Civil internationals inentions. When peace came the initiative from the radical pacifists had gained wide support and 150 persons were traioned to start working. When the government called for a meeting to organise post-war reconstruction abroad it was concluded that Fredsvenners Hjælpearbejde was best prepared and the courses recieved state funding. In June the first group of volunteers was sent to Northern Norwya to take care of sick prisoners of war on Northern Norway. Contrary to the Swedish initiative put emphasis on being both practical and a popular movment built on ideas the Danish put the empahisis on the practical and soon became more or less part og governmental efforts. Fredsvenners Hjælpearbejde was soon well established and the radical pacifist origin was soon forgotten.

Iceland had a different story from the rest of the Nordic countries. It was occupied by the allies and could with this help rid themselves of Nordic internal imperialism. 1944 the small country with 250 000 inhabitants gained their freedom after almost 1 000 years of Danish rule. 

New national working camp organisations thus started to prepare for reconstruction work after the war built on volunteer efforts and international solidarity for peace. IAL started in Sweden 1943, Fredsvenners Hjælpearbejde in Denmark 1944, in 1949 renamed Mellomfolkelig Samvirke, Internasjonal Dugnad in Norway states their origin already in 1939 and IAL in Finland 1947 (in Finnish Kansanvälinen Vapaeeitonen Työleirijärjistö, KVT), in all countries with quakers as central in supporting the initiatives. The Norwegians having the most sharp experiences on resistence in different forms, the Danes most well-equipped, the Swedes most idealistic and wide in their concern and the Finns utterly aware of balance position between East and West. 

1947 saw the final goal of the Indian liberation movement ending British colonial rule but partioning Pakistan and India in the polarised way Britain many times left their colonies. Soon after Gandhi was killed 1948 by a hindu extremist during the many conflicts between hindus and muslims killing millions. The allied anti-fascist forces of the Soviet Union and the US brought hopes to many around the world with the liberation of India and the declaration of both political and social rights as indivisible in the United Nations Human Rights Charter as positive signs. But it became the end of a period and the course of events took a new direction. This also meant a new period for Nordic-Indian movement relations. The cold war now set new hinderances in the way for South-North cooperation.

Peace and Solidarity against any imperialism 1948 - 1969

The global divide between the North and the South became evident 1948 when president Truman declared the American development doctrine stated to be universal dividing the world into developed and undeveloped nations. The same year the cold war became the dominant political agenda when US backed economic programs were seen as a threat by communist countries in Eastern Europe and the communists took power in Chechoslovakia. 

Some small groups all with strong Gandhian inspiration started to confront the global development politics of the cold war states both built on centralised industrialisation, state power and division of the world in two blocs. In the year of 1949 two activists in the Swedish World Citizen Movement started a journey in an attempt to reach India. It was Margareta who saw herself as a disciple of Gandhi and Inge Oscarsson that started to hitch-hike with 250 crowns in their pockets, a small sum that could not bring two people the whole way to India. They succesfully arranged 100 public meetings on the streets and squares all over Sweden provocing the police with their anti-militaristic propaganda and their demands for ending misery in the world. Their attempt to reach India ended up in Northern Africa instead bringing back to the movement a stronger interest in liberation struggles. 

Gandhian influence still maintained its stronghold in the pacifist movement during the 1950s but another movement became more important in Indian-Nordic contacts. 

En av de mest levande skildringarna av tiden när världsungdomsfestivalerna växer fram görs av Stig Claesson i boken Det lyckliga Europa. Slas tar sin utgångspunkt i Gandhis ord i kampen mot brittiska imperiet - Det finns ingen väg till fred, freden är vägen. Han föreställer sig hur han och andra ungdomar inte längre litade på någon regering. Det som nu behövdes var att göra något själva. Det fanns ingen väg till freden, det gällde att bygga den – gärna bokstavligt i sitt anletes svett. I London hade unga socialdemokrater, kommunister och andra radikala ungdomar slagit sig samman och hoppades att det fanns likasinnade i andra länder som var beredda att samarbeta för att bygga freden. Redan 1945 bildades i London World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) med en stor politisk bredd innefattande också liberaler men med avgörande stöd från Sovjetunionen för att kunna bedriva verksamheten. Vid bildandet deltog 437 delegater från 63 länder.

1947 när Europa låg i ruiner och miljontals människor fortfarande var på flykt utan pass och någonstans att ta vägen eller inspärrade i krigsfångeläger startade man två stora projekt. Den första var att samla tiotusentals radikala ungdomar för att gemensamt bygga upp Europa efter kriget. Man ville starta en internationell ungdomsbrigad som frivilligt skulle bygga en 28 mil lång järnväg till Sarajevo i Jugoslavien. För alla som deltog från väst innebar det risk att bli stämplad som kommunist och landsförrädare även om man inte var det. Visserligen hade Titos partisaner i hög grad befriat Jugoslavien på egen hand utan Röda arméns hjälp men landet var kommunistiskt och därför farligt i västs ögon. 

Från Sverige reste mer än 100 Brunnsvikssocialister och unga kommunister som våren 1947 hade bildat Jugoslavienbrigaden. Brunnsvikssocialisterna kallades arbetarbarn som gått på socialdemokratiska folkhögskolor och kunde vara både marxistiska socialdemokrater, anarkister, syndikalister och trotskister. Med hjälp av ett förhyrt SJ-ånglok och tre personvagnar tog man sig ner genom ett förött Östeuropa. Redan i hamnstaden Gdynia stötte man på förödelsen efter kriget med ruiner och misär. I Warszawa fanns bokstavligt talat inga hus kvar. Mot slutet av kriget hade polackerna gjort uppror mot tyskarna i hopp om hjälp från de allierade. Men Sovjetunionen avvaktade med sin armé och de västallierade beslutade att inte skicka några flygplan. Tyskarna bombade sönder staden inte bara från luften utan sprängde också med dynamit alla husen på marken så att en polsk huvudstad aldrig skulle återuppstå i Warszawa. 165 Warszawabor överlevde upproret, en kvarts miljon dog. Två år senare var Warszawa fortfarande en stenöken när Jugoslavienbrigaden passerade. Väl framme i Bosnien samlades den svenska Jugoslavienbrigaden tillsammans med en kvarts miljon andra ungdomar sommaren 1947. Främst kom de från Jugoslavien men också i brigader från många andra delar av världen. Amerikaner smugglade sig in och ut i den brittiska delegationen, de var annars förbjudna av USA att komma dit. Den bredspåriga järnvägen byggdes med liv och lust, Fredens järnväg som den kallades. Flera dog av ansträngningen och brister i utrustning och arbetsmiljö i det av kriget utarmade Jugoslavien. Men järnvägen går där än genom Nemiladalen. 

It was the anti-colonial movement were the World Youth Festival became the most important meeting point were activists from India, the Nordic countries and the rest of the world could find each other. Festivals were held i Prague 1947, Budapest 1949, Berlin 1951, Bucarest 1953. Warzaw 1955, Moscow 1957, Vienna 1959 and Helsinki 1962 and they are still arranged today. The festivals was an initiative from the World Federation of Democratic Youth just before the cold war started and was basically controlled by communist parties but had a lot broader participation and effects beyond the interest of ruling parties in the Eastern bloc. Each time more than ten thousand and sometime more than 30 thousand international delegates participated and a million or more people from the host country. Jan Myrdal, a Swedish author and veteran in the solidarity movement, claims that the festivals were a unique opportunity to make contacts that became crucial in the anti-colonial struggle and the solidarity mass mobilisations of the 1960s. 

Myrdal quote.” Efteråt betonar Jan Myrdal som var en av de svenska arrangörerna dock att det snarare var annat än de stora uppvisningarna som betydde något:  

”det var egentligen inte massuppmarscher och demonstrationer som blev betydelsefull. Det var den direkta kontakten mellan ungdomar från alla länder. Samtalen. Träffarna. Det var det de dåtida krigsherrarna i NATO sökte förhindra med våld och propaganda. Ty i dem bröts rasfördomar i personliga möten. Här i Berlins gator och parker lärde också svenska ungdomar känna verkligheten i de koloniala och avhängiga länderna och här grundlades det världsomspännande antikoloniala och antiimperialistiska solidaritetsarbete som kom att prägla den internationella ungdomsrörelsen under kommande decennier.”
----

. Resultatet blev att ett samordningssekretariat bildades, COSEC, med Palme som ordförande i det verkställande utskottet. I sin nya roll måste Palme resa mycket särskilt i Asien som höll på att frigöra sig från kolonialismen. Det präglade honom:

”Det var i Asien som jag konkret fick uppleva vad kolonialismen innebar. Det är speciellt studenterna jag har att tacka för den upptäckten. De förstod att ställa mig öga mot öga med verkligheten.  // I Singapore tillbringade jag år 1950 tio dagar i en universitetsstad, där kineser, malajer och indier bodde. Det tysta förakt de alla visade för den berömda ’vita överlägsenheten’ gjorde ett starkt intryck. Självsäkra, övertygade om att segern förr eller senare var deras, väntade de tåligt på att rasismen skulle försvinna, att förtryckarna skulle ge sig av, och de visade t.o.m. ett visst överseende med kolonialklassen excesser.  … - vi besökte studenternas familjer ur de mest skilda miljöer, vi pratade om fattigdom, om den asiatiska nationalismen, om hur morgondagens samhälle borde utformas. Det var lätt att samtala: vi hade inte bara samma värderingar, utan vi delade också viljan att vidtaga praktiska åtgärder. Vi ville omskapa världen, visst, men vi ville också veta hur. // I grund och botten utmynnade alla dessa diskussioner i samma tanke: imperialismens dårskap måste besegras, och de fattiga folken måste själva få forma sitt öde.”

Det skulle dock dröja till stödet för kampen mot imperialismen skulle utsträcka sig längre än till universitetsstipendier och studentutbyte även om det långt senare blev mycket stort humanitärt och politiskt.  

From each Nordic countries many hundred young people participated in the festivals fiercly condemned by the press. After going to World Youth festivals Myrdal went to India, China and other third world countries writing books on India and other similar matters making the Swedish people aware of the need for global solidarity and national liberation. Erik Stinus, a Danish sailor and poet also participated in the World Youth festivals were he in 1955 met Sara, the leader of the Bombay festival Committee. They married and started a life together in Copenhagen in the solidarity, antiapartheid. peace, women and other movements struggling for global justice. Stinus also edited a book on Indian –Danish relations. But the Indian influence through the World Youth festivals was primarily resulting in a joint struggle with all popular movements globally against colonialism and for peace, not contributing to the development critical aspects of Gandhian thought that during the 1950s also was marginalised in India.

Instead Gandhian thoughts survived in smaller circles also decisive for the establishment of a solidarity movement wiht the third world. A key was the international work camps bringing all kind of people together with an interest in volunteer action which hade recieved much inspiration from Ceresole´s contacts with Gandhi and the first secular volunteer work in India in the 1930s. This international solidarity volunteer movement organising work camps became a key factor and still is in a broader alternative movement starting to send volunteers to the third world in the early 1950s and organising own development projects from Sweden and Denmark 1957.

Den främsta kraften i förnyelsen av det praktiska engagemanget med länder i Afrika, Asien och Latinamerika var internationella arbetslägerrörelsen. I praktiken genomfördes redan frivilligt arbete för att stödja utveckling i fattiga länder genom olika projekt i Syd- och Östeuropa. Särskilt stora hade internationella kommunistiska ungdomsbrigader varit i öststater. 

Det var viktigt för den långsiktiga internationella ungdomsorganiseringen med frivilliga internationella arbetslag eller brigader. Denna frivilliga arbetslägerrörelse lyckades övervinna splittringen med hjälp av pacifisternas och solidaritetsaktivisternas Gandhiinspirerade globala rörelse för frivilligt konstruktivt arbete, ofta samordnat av organisationen Service Civil International (SCI). Här kunde en icke-kommunistisk basorganisering utan statligt stöd från varken väst eller öst överbrygga klyftorna och växa fram som ett reellt alternativ att i handling visa solidaritet globalt. 

Motivet för SCI att engagera sig i socialistiska stater för att ordna internationella arbetsläger där var desamma som när organisationen växte fram efter andra världskriget, att arbeta för försoning utifrån en självständig pacifistisk hållning fri från statliga band i både väst och öst men med vilja att överbrygga klyftor mellan länder och folk genom praktiskt frivilligt solidaritetsarbete. 1946 började schweizare och britter att bygga upp förstörda delar i schlesiska delar av Tjeckoslovakien tillsammans med tjeckoslovaker i ett mindre projekt. Typiskt för denna tid var att först anklagades SCI volontärerna för att vara kommunister vilket sågs som illa när den tjeckoslovakiska regeringen fortfarande var vänsterliberal 1946, året därpå under ny regering utfärdades en häktningsorder för den schweiziske lägerledaren som anklagades för att eventuellt vara en kapitalistspion. Han hade dock redan åkt hem. 

Annars var svenskarna pionjärer i uppbygget av blocköverskridande internationell arbetslägerverksamhet vilket skedde redan 1946 med stödet till projekt i Polen. 1947 och 1948 skickade IAL volontärer till vattenkraftsprojekt i Vinodol i Jugoslavien. De följande åren lyckades inga SCI kontakter få tillstånd att deltagare från både väst och öst kunde delta i gemensamma arbetsläger när kalla kriget på allvar fick genomslag. Men 1952 kunde IAL bryta isen med ett arbetsläger vid ett dammbygge i Jugoslavien med Wolfgang Sonntag som ständigt pådrivande för att överbrygga klyftorna mellan blocken. Det fanns tveksamheter kring vilka villkor inhemska volontärer arbetade under och syftet med projektet. De inhemska volontärernas villkor beskrevs som närmast träning inför militärtjänstövningar vilket oroade pacifisterna. Syftet med dammprojektet i Jugoslavien såg pacifisterna som möjligt kopplat till militära intressen. Men IAL ansåg att jugoslaverna var öppna i sina samtal och att det var värdefullt att fortsätta försöka överbrygga klyftorna och valde därför att satsa ändå. 

Snart fick man med sig både hela SCI och ungdomsorganisationer i kommunistiskt styrda stater i sin hållning även om det skulle dröja några år innan först öst-väst arbetsläger och sedan nord-syd arbetsläger fick stort genomslag. Som få andra krafter lyckades den internationella arbetslägerrörelsen i handling och ideologisk övertygelse överbrygga klyftorna och rasera de murar som stater satte upp mellan folk. Det kan tilläggas att Jugoslavien tjänade som den plats där utvecklingen först tog ett avgörande steg till försämring när Sovjetkommunismen vägrade all avvikelse från den sovjetiska politikens intressen men därefter blev den plats där förbrödringen och systerskapet kunde ta en avgörande vändning till det bättre.

I Västeuropa fanns också stora behov. I Italien fick byar bara statligt stöd till lärartjänster om det fanns en skollokal vilket flera inte hade råd med. IAL samlade in pengar och bidrog med volontärer till ett skolbygge i Donisi i Kalabrien i södra Italien. och flera andra projekt i Grekland och på andra håll i Europa. 

Metoderna för att lösa konflikter på lägren utvecklades med inspiration från kväkarrörelsen. Morgonsamlingar med en stilla stund före frukost var obligatoriskt på IAL-läger och besluts togs i enighet på familjeråd eller husmöten. Arbetsläger blev ett sätt att leva. Många kunde vara ute i över ett år engagerade i olika läger överallt från Jugoslavien, Frankrike och Mexiko. Där hade amerikanska kväkarna startat byutvecklingsprojekt som svenska IAL-are deltog i i början av 1950-talet. Den pådrivanda Sonntag reste redan i mitten av 1950-talet till Sudan för att förbereda ett läger där. 1957 kunde IAL sända en hel grupp volontärer till tredje världen som byggde en skola för flickor. 

Samma år som IAL började engagera sig i utomeuropeiska länder startade också långvariga engagemang till stöd för samer och antroposofisk verksamhet i Sverige. I Påståvare byggdes en spångväg till en väglös sameby som början på 20 års internationella arbetsläger till stöd för samer och i Dormsjö i Dalarna började 13 års insats för den antroposofiska pedagogiska verksamheten där. 

Även i andra länder började den internationella volontärverksamheten att bredda sig även om det inte skedde lika brett som i Sverige. Mellomfolkelig Samvirke i Danmark utvecklade från 1950 ett internationellt arbetslägerprogram med Magleås Folkehøjskole som centrum. Verksamheten utökades. 1952 publicerades den första artikeln i Kontakt som diskuterade ”dansk hjælp til underudviklede lande”. 1956 tog man hand om ungerska flyktingar och var med om att starta Dansk Flygtningehjælp. Samma år kunde samarbete med bl.a. UNESCO och lärarföreningar leda till en mer långsiktig biståndsinsats även utanför Europa. 1956 skickades de första danska volontärerna till Ghana. 1959 sändes en första grupp med 7 danska volontärer till Indien. MS blev känd som den danska u-landsfrivilligorganisationen. 

The World Citizen movement in Sweden was very small, some years in the early 1950s mainly centered around Oskarsson. But in 1957 the activists from this movement made an action that became the first in Nordic countries of a new kind linking global issues and using expressive means that later would be described as typical for so called new social movements. With a spade in their hand the activist went up to the royal guard in Stockholm proposing a total disarmament turning the military resources into development aid for poor countries instead. It was a direct action that Gandhi would have been proud of. The action spurred interest and was helped by the strong advocacy in 1957 and onwards among pacifists for the same goal. 

In some years a Swedish peace and solidarity movement had sprung up linking the antiweapon issues with the call for alternative uses of military resources and development aid, a movement that in different ways was inspired by Gandhi and India. In the pacifist movement Gandhi always had a strong impact but also through other connections India started to have influence in Sweden. This movement built on Indian inspiration soon established a model for mass based solidarity work. It had its results spread all over the Nordic countries and is still maintaining the largest solidarity actions in the Nordic countries and a high level of support among the population and governments for the third world. The Indian inspiration to this Nordic mass solidarity model has never been made public and is unknown outside oral tradition among some few people. Nation state oriented history both academic and other tend to systematically make unvisible the kind of democratic connections that exists between the third world and industrial countries as such connections do not fit into the ideal that democratic progress at every stage starts in the West. 

Operation Gandhi

Den starka antikommunismen i väst skapade allvarliga problem för motståndet mot atombomben. Varje koppling till kommunister stämplade protester och organiseringsförsök som led i Sovjetunionens propaganda. Metoden för att komma ut ur detta blev att organisera små slutna sällskap för fred där ett urval av personer med bred förankring i samhället men utan att vara kommunister förenade sig i krav mot atombomben. En metod var organisering av kritiska vetenskapsmän som mynnade ut i starten av den internationella Pugwash-rörelsen 1955 med ett upprop som Bertrand Russell och Albert Einstein stod som huvudförfattare till. Initiativtagarna såg FN som otillräckligt och såg ett behov av och att det skapades en bro mellan öst och väst kring kritisk vetenskap om atombomben och andra fredsfrämjande kunskap. De sökte och fick stöd hos vetenskapsakademin och statsminister Erlander i Sverige. Ordförande under hela 1960-talet blev professor Hannes Alfvén.  

Intellektuellt och i den allmänna opinionen banade de små slutna grupperna av kulturpersonligheter tillsammans med fredskommittérnas massmobiliseringar och den lilla men aktivistiska Världsmedborgarrörelsen vägen för radikalare krafter. I Storbritannien fick civil olydnad stort genomslag med början i Operation Gandhi 1952. Denna kampanj samlade in 136 000 underskrifter för en fredsdeklaration och blockerade gatan framför brittiska krigsministeriet. Utlösande faktor för en ny massrörelse mot atomvapen blev atmosfäriska explosionerna av vätebomben. 1954 spreds radioaktiv aska efter USA:s provsprängningar över 23 besättningsmedlemmar på japanska fiskebåten Lyckliga draken. 32 miljoner namn samlades in i Japan i protest som krävde totalförbud för atomvapen. 

Atommarscherna

En folkrörelse började växa fram som hade sina rötter i två traditioner. Den ena var den lilla subkulturen av radikala pacifister som påverkats starkt av Gandhi. Via det kristna Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), som knutit samman bland annat sit-ins mot rassegregation och protester mot tvångsarbete för fängelsedömda pacifister under kriget spreds en aktivistkultur efter kriget från USA till England. Det var denna aktivistkultur som startade ett nytt uppsving genom påskmarscher till atombombsanläggningen i Aldermaston utanför London. Det började med att en person ensam vandrade dit med plakat i protest 1957. Året därpå marscherade 800 ungdomar 87 km samma väg under flera dagar påsken 1958 mobiliserade av fredsorganisationer. 1957 startade också kväkaren Lawrence Scott, call to Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons som höll en protestvaka vid testområdet för atombombssprängningar i Las Vegas. 1958 permanentades aktionsgruppen med stöd av kristna pacifister, Internationella Kvinnoförbundet för fred och frihet, War Resisters League och kväkarnas fredskommitté i Philadelphia genom bildandet av the Committee for Nonviolent Action. Kommittén började genomföra aktioner till lands och sjöss mot atombombsprov i hela världen och förenade sina ansträngningar med indiska gandhianer, afrikaner och européer i gemensam kamp mot upprustningen av atombomber. 1959-1960 samlades fredsaktivister i Ghana varifrån tre grupper skickades genom öknen för att protestera mot atombombstestningarna på franskt kolonialområde i Sahara. Alla greps av fransk militär. Protestaktionen hade stöd av flera afrikanska stater och fredsorganisationer i väst    

Den andra traditionen bestod av grupperingar närstående till Labour-partiet inom kvinnorörelse, kooperationen och kyrkorna. Det var inom denna tradition Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, CND, bildades 1958. Organisationsformen var elitistisk med en nationell kommitté med självutnämnda och självsupplerande celebriteter med syftet att påverka Labourpartiet för att få det att avskaffa de brittiska atombomberna. Man förutsatte att det sen bildades självständiga men underordnade kommittéer lokalt. 

Påskmarscherna blev stora framgångar som CND snart blev med och organiserade. 1959 vände man marschvägen och tågade från Aldermaston till London. Nu anslöt 40.000 vid målet efter fyra dagars marsch. Dessa atommarscher fick alltmer uppmärksamhet genom att pågå i flera dagar vilket fick stort genomslag i det samtidigt framväxande TV-mediet. Höjdpunkten nåddes 1960 med 100.000 deltagare vid avslutningen i London. 

Många ansåg att det inte räckte med demonstrationer. Bertrand Russell som då var 85 år startade de hundras kommitté för att med direkt aktion och civil olydnad stoppa atombomben. Rörelsen fick snabbt massivt gensvar. 20.000 samlades för att göras en sit-down aktion på atombombflygets startbanor vid Weathersfield. De bröt sig igenom kedjor av poliser, hundra och taggtråd och lyckades inta startbanorna. Sex av aktionens organisatörer fälldes i domstol och fick 18 månaders fängelse och de direkta aktionerna mattades av. Men rörelsen hade fått genomslag. I Västtyskland hade Kampf dem Atomtod med en appell om atomvapenfri zon i centraleuropa fått massiv uppslutning i samband med beslut om att godkänna västtysk atombeväpning under amerikansk kontroll 1958. 83% av befolkningen gick emot beslutet enligt opinionsundersökningar och strejker genomfördes för att protestera mot beslutet. Inget hjälpte men en ny aktivism växte fram som inspirerade hela Norden. En aktivistkultur spreds över hela centrumvärlden, vars för- och nackdelar vi ser ännu idag menar folkrörelseforskaren Jan Wiklund. En ”medelklassradikalism” ger fokus på individuell moral, okänslighet för ekonomiska realiteter och inte minst oförmåga att knyta an till andra redan existerande oppositionella grupper. Men kallakrigsideologin föll i vanrykte vilket var ett stort framsteg.

The more known mass movement of the early 1960s is the peace movement that limited itself to only oppose atomic bombs or defence issues which was the case in the other nordic countries than Sweden and the rest of Europe at the time. This more limited anti atomic bomb movement was also much inspired by Gandhi. In the Nordic countries the influence came primarily through Britain. Already 1952 Operation Gandhi took place in front of the war ministry in London with a street sit-in blocade and collecting 136.000 signitures for a peace declaration. 1957 a single person marched from London to a nuclear site at Aldermaston followed by thousands the next year and 100.000 when the march went the other way and ended in London 1960. Bertrand Russell was a key figure both in initiating broader initiatives and himself participating in civil disobedience tha Gandhian way. 20.000 activists participated in a occupation of the runways at Weathersfield air base, among them Oscarsson from the World Citizen Movement in Sweden. Hundreds of other Nordic people participated in the activities in Britain soon bringing the ideas back home. 1960 the first Nordic atomic march took place in Iceland and later the same year in Denmark, 1961 in Sweden and 1963 in Norway, in Iceland, Denmark and Norway with demands against atomic bombs on their own soil, in Sweden against the plans for a Swedish atomic bomb and to propose alternativ uses for military resources. 

The movement was succesful and in some years the plans for atomic bombs on Nordic soil was for the time being dropped. In Finland The Committee of the Hundred started in 1963 played a similar role as the atomic march campaigns in the other Nordic countries. Discussions on non-violence and Gandhian methods rather than his whole ideology were crucial in this era that by its own activists and academicians has been described as the break-through of a new social movements. The Danish activist Toni Liversage writes in her memoires ”The movement against atomic armament in the beginning of the 60s thus was the first broad popular movement in the post-war period, were people decided to take an issue in their own hand and act, and the movement in this way became a predecessor of the grassroots movements of the 70s and 80s”. Operation Gandhi started to have mass influence in many countries. 

But it was another Indian influence, not primarily Gandhian, that is the origin of the largest mass solidarity action in the Nordic countries. All organisations of relevance to popular movements and politics with international linkages in the Nordic countries at this time to my knowledge had their global leadership in industrial countries either in the West or the East. The exception was the Theosophic society in Sweden which had a youth group, TUG, started 1955 by Gudrun Fjellander. Its first involvement with social action was in 1959 when the group ”adopted” a tibetanese refugee child. Soon the members of the group became involved in the peace movement visiting the Aldermaston marches and active in the first atomic marches in Sweden and other more radical activities of the pacifist and world citizen movement. 1961 five young theosophs, Jan Fjellander, Roland von Malmborg, Christer von Malmborg, Margareta Homstedt, and Jan Rosenblom, decided to support 100.000 refugee children in the liberated areas of Algeria during the ongoing war with France when 1 million people were killed. They send out with the help of all TUG an information kit to all schools in Sweden containing information on how to do a collect action and why the money are needed to enable the Lutheran Aid organisation to help the refugee children. 110 schools got involved and the result is more than the aid organisation could handle, 600.000 swedish crowns were collected which was 20 percent more than planned and a lot more than the grown ups in the Aid organisation ever thought was possible. The next year the established organisation for pupils takes over the campaign collecting double as much money to the same goal, 1964 the campaign becomes Scandinavian in a joint Danish, Norwegian effort supporting Peru, 1967 it becomes Nordic and Finnish schools also participate. Operation one days work is born when pupils offers their service to the community and the payment goes to solidarity with the thrid world. Money soon was raised also to violent liberation movements like ANC, SWAPO and other in Southern Africa apart from common third wolrd development projects often directed to education. 1974 the trade unions in Finland joined giving one hour salary, and in 1978 the Finnish church. In 1985 alone 40 million crowns was collected in a joint Nordic project to support ANC, in 1990 28 million crowns was collected in Norway aloen to support Amnesty human rights education project in the third world. No total estimate has been made of the sum collected but it is probably above half a billion ECU or US dollars since the beginning in 1961. It has gained full support from all of society both from authorites and the civil soiety with one exception, in Denmark right wing politcal groups attached the work for supporting violent ANC and since the middle of the 1990s also the Danish government has tried in different ways to make it harder to have the solidarity action as a schol activity demanding that it should be organised voluntarily outside the school. The action has continued in large scale in spite of these efforts also i Denmark. Operation One-Days Work (Operation dagsverke, Operasjon Dugnad, Operation Dagsværk, Taksvärkki) can be seen as a corner stone in a Nordic solidarity model. This model mobilises all the people in the work for global justice where the One-Day voluntary work campaign together with the many solidarity movements for liberation movements and other support for the third world enabled the governments at the height of radical politics to fully support liberation movements in the third world and the position of third world countries in the UN. More than half of ANC support was funded by the Swedish government during many years of sometimes violent struggle.

Freedom of speach, Daechsler, SVEP, 

The young theosophs continued to play an important role in the emerging alternative movement in more than a decade. TUG activist got involved in printing and smuggling election material into Zambia when the printers in the hands of whites refused material from the party representing the black majority in the country. They were involved in boycotting South African goods and had the ANC secretary as a guest at a TUG meeting in 1963. They were active conscription and consciousness objectors and the first be allowed to have alternative civil service in voluntary organisations which was done at the UN Association. They became environmentally aware in the early 1960s and carried out the first large environmental actions in Sweden 1966 together with anarchists and others in the ProVie movement, for life. 10.000 no return bottles were disposed at the steps of the parliamentary building blocading the entrance in protest against pollution and wasteful use of resources. Two young theosophs started a mass-scale civil disobedience campaign in Stockholm filling every outdoor advertisment for tobacco with the word CANCER, a struggle that finally after trials used as a political plattform ended with a ban on tobacco advertisments. 

The close connection to India was the main inspiration changing the world view among the activists in TUG. The Fjellander siblings were children to Ingrid Nyborg-Fjellander, world secretary 1957-1975 to Rukmini Devi Arundale, a leader in the theosophic Round Table, Indian parliamentarian and founder of the Kalekshtra cultural center outside Madras. Arundale also held a leading position in the Vegetarian World Congress which in 1964 invited young Europeans to counteract the Western influence on young Indians. It had become a habit among many aspiring students in India to start to eat meat and wear nylon shirts inspired by the rumours on what lifestyle to choose to be modern spred by the fortunate few that had gone to universities in Europe. Thus a group of Europeans among them five from TUG made a tour through India, at one occassion talking together with a jainist munk to a crowd of half a million people, at other occassions to thousands of students as European vegetarians and critical to the claims of all young Europeans being uninterested in a less wasteful way of life. The journey tilted the minds of the Swedish participants and further spurred their interest in changing the world and challenging the society they lived in.

In 1966 three Swedish young theosophs splittered away from the Theosophic Society at the international meeting in Salzburg in Austria. The tension had grown to large between the growing social action interest among the young and the more narrow religious and philosophical interest of the elderly. The TUG activists grew even more ambitious, not only by starting the ProVie movement together with anarchists linking way of life issues with global politics and a refusal to take part in the cold war. They protested against the Vietnam war in 1965 and Jan Fjellander had the American Deserters committee office in his apartment 1967 when Sweden started to accept hundred of soldiers that refused to take part in the war. Together with other theosophs contacts were built globally to criticise the role of science leading to a LASITOC conference in London 1970 were one of the results was to initiate alternative activities at the UN environmental conference in Stockholm 1972. This became the first time that independent popular activites with demonstrations and conferences had an inter-change with the official summit resulting in a model for democratising global politics.

When the anti-vietnam war movement grew stronger anti-imperialism and the left became the dominant system-critical thinking. The initiating organisation hade been Clarté, a student organisation started as a socialist peace movement in 1920 which in 1965 ideologically and in practice confronted the pacifist neutrality politics towards the war in Vietnam. Local groups were built in an anti-imperialist antiwar movement that radicalised all of Sweden and soon also turned the government against the US politics in Vietnam. Also here there were links to India, to mass movements, naxalites and other communist groups that has continued through the years by articles in Clarté and other magazines. This Indian influence did not have as central role as the Gandhian and theosophic connections had to the peace and alternative movement were the Indian inspiration in some aspects can be seen as a key factor to the radicalism and capability to renew the form and content of political activism. 

But att the most crucial point in the antiipmerialistic movment Satyagraha became the explicit tacti used in the battle for freedom of speach and change Swedish politics away from imperistism. …

Quote Myrdal

Nordic solidarity model… 

By the end of the 1960s a new crisis shaked the two bloc development model of centralisation of industrialism and state power. Criticism from below in trade unions and among farmers globally as well as among young people all over the world challenged the legitimacy of both Western style capitalism and Societ style planned economy. Both the economy, ecology and on the battlefields in Vietnam and other countries in the third world there was a crisis. Once more the situation for popular movements and relations between Indian and Nordic people´s movements changed and once more Indian influence became essential to new strategies, this time confronting not only peace and global solidarity issues but also bringing new topics to the top of the political agenda.

Global Environmental Movement Period 1970-1990. 

In 1969 three men went to India in a Renault on a trip that might be seen as the most important Nordic-Indian encounter so far. They were Sigmund Kvaløy, Johan Galtung and Arne Næss. Their goal was to participate in the celebrations of Gandhis 100 year anniversary. Næss was for many years the only university professor of philosophy in Norway and had an influential position in his country as a consistent advocat of a broad scientific approach to social questions and an interpreter of Gandhian thought to the Western societies. Galtung also interpreted Gandhi, started the first Peace Research Institution in the West in Oslo 1959 and later became central in building future research. Galtung and Næss had written a book together on Gandhi’s political ethic in the nuclear age together. Kvaløy was a philosopher and activist. 

In 1970 civil disobedience explodes in Norway, otherwise a calm society that had little signs of dissatifaction. The state planned to construct a dam out of the second largest water fall on earth at Mardøla in the West of Norway. The water should be led to the Romsdal valley were the power station should be constructed while leaving the original Eikesdal valley with no waterfall accept a small shower for tourists in the summer. To stop the construction environmental activists nailed themselves to the mountain with chains. Among them were Kvaløy and Næss. The police evacuated the occupation but during the night local inhabitants from the Eikesdal valley reoccupied the construction site. Now inhabitants from Romsdal valley took the matters in their own hand and threatened the new occupants. Finally the action had to be given up. The Mardøla action started a new era in Norwegian politics that also inspired similar actions in neighbouring countries. The same year all local women, children and men jointly blew up the dam at the biggest lake on Iceland in a protest against the effects on the fishing and environment. The next year some thousand activist stopped in a violent battle with the police the felling of the elm trees some hundred meters from the Swedish parliament and governmental buildings in Stockholm. The decision to fell the trees had been controversial and finally the city administration got backed by the Swedish government. But politicians had to give up after the direct action and the long occupation of the elms that started after the victory against the police in the Battle of the Elms.

The Mardøla action was initiated by a course on Gandhian philosophy at the Oslo university. Gandhian thinking soon became essential to the environmental, peace and alternative movement, not only as a philosophy of method but also in deeper development critical sense. This was due to an alliance between the most advanced university philosophy of the country were both professor Næss and small farmers in the rural areas like Arne Vinje played a central role. Small farmers maintained a philosophical interest and important role in the political culture of the country. Sigmund Kvaløy, Mardøla activist and eco-philosopher played a central role in establishing a globally conscious environmental movement. The environmental issues were linked to social questions challenging industrial growth society and urbanisation while at the same time contributing to the struggle against the European Union (at the time abbriviated EEC, European Economic Community). While all established organisations from labour, business and both right and left parliamentary forces as well as the mass media was strongly advocating Norwegian membership a popular movement alliance was opposed. The conflict resulted in a victory for the popular movment alliance against all the etsbalished forces inthe referendum 1972, the only time accept for Greenland 1983 and Norway again in 1994 when the opposition to the establishment has won in a referendum on membership in the EU. 

The same year a global event… Young teoso  Fjellander.  India.. 

But it was in Norway that….

This resulted in strong self confidence among the popular movements in Norway and made them have a leading role in Nordic cooperation through the 1970s which was organised at Nordic environmental camps. In Norway Gandhian philosophy maintained a strong position both at academic and environmental movement level and as inspirator of civil disobedience. In 1981 it came to a climax. Sigmund Kvaløy had contacts with the samic indigenous people in the North of Norway. There were plans to build a dam at Alta right across the biggest canyon in Europe in the heartland of the reindeering samic land. Mobilisation started against this project already early in the 1970s but from 1979 and onwards there was strong opposition. But the authorities continued to start the construction work. In January 1981 Samic activists together with environmental activists from all of Norway occupied the site chaining themselves again but this time to each other and the ice they were sitting on. The occupation continued for a week in minus 30 degrees Celsius. To brake it the government brought every seventh policeman in Norway to Alta carrying the activists away and keeping them from coming back. The battle was lost but the Samic people soon got their own Samic parliament with more political influence then they had earlier.

Simultanously Nordic women made a joint initiative linking the environmental and peace movement building on the broader vision from the 1950s to not only oppose weapons but also demand better uses of military resources. In some months half a million signitures were collected demanding disarmament and that the arm billions should go to food. Soon the Nordic women were marching for peace, first time to Paris 1.100 km with a core of 40 Nordic women, 10 from each Nordic country except for Iceland and thousands supporting them, than next year to Moscow, after that Washington and later through Central America. Inspiring for this womens’ peace movement was civil disobedience initiated by women that was carried out at the Greenham Common air base by at most 30.000 people continuing the struggle against the NATO missiles and armament. In the book Fra Gandhi til Greenham (From Gandhi to Greenham) the Danish Women for Peace activist Toni Liversage wrote in 1987 on how the movements have emerged with the ideas of Gandhi, civil rights movement in the US, anti atomic bomb movement of the 1960s, environmental movement of the 1970s and the new peace movement of the 1980s.

The next country after Norway to get a decisive strong Indian impact on its political culture and conflicts was Sweden. In 1983 Gyllenhammar, Chief Executive Officer of Volvo car company initiated European Round table of industrialists, ERT. Their plan was to diminish social welfare, built motorways and strengthen business through a single European market with freedom for goods, services, finance and hire labour withg an effect on both EU and states having economic cooperation with the EU like Sweden. 

In Sweden the environmental movement reacted to the ERT plan by building an international alliance and trying to continue a broader opposition against the corporate social and environmental strategy. In the Nordic countries there existed a broad alternative movement alliance against the development model including the liberation of financial controlacroos borders involving 90 peace, women, environmental and solidarity organisations. But the leftwing organisations as well as the Green party saw this as a threat challenging their own hegemonic position as system-critical leaders and thus ignored and at occasions attached the alternative movement alliance for being to radical and broad in its scope not understanding the role of popular movments being to have a single issue mind. When the Environmental federation, later merging with Freinds of the Eart Sweden thus tried to initiate joint social and ecological struggle against the ERT neoliberal program the left and the trade unions did not respond. They were also involved in a struggle for social justice but at the domestic level and were not interested in a joint popular movement battle against European corporate neoliberal plans. The environmental movement had to take up the task themselves. When the Swedish government decided to support the ERT plans by building a motorway at the West coast through one of the most severly effected forests by acidification of the country opposition soon grew into mass civil disobedience. 

The solidarity movement in Sweden had since long good contacts with India. The Bangla Desh-India division of the Swallows in Lund, a group within the Emmaus movement started in 1963, was the first to make the tree hugging Chipko movement in the Himalayas known abroad. Inspiration now came from India when the activist climbed the trees and hugged them to protect them. Soon the protest movement was nick-named tree huggers by the press. Somewhat reluctantly in the beginning the activist accepted the label which since than has become a general concept in Sweden applied to anyone protecting what she or he helds dear, welfare huggers for those who wants to protect social welfare and less common but used asfalt huggers for those wanting to build motorways etc. The protests against the building of the motorway had a strong global aspect to it, Bahaguna from the Chipko movement in India visiting Sweden marched side by side with the Swedish local activists in demonstrations and global environmental impact was debated. The Swedish environmental movemental soon started to coordinate motor way actions days throughout all of Europe in the European Youth Forest Action, a network initiated by Swedish organisations in 1986. The battle against motor way at the West coast was lost. 400 people were sentenced for obstructing the contruction at court in the biggest political trial in modern Swedish history. The left lost their parallell battle as well ending it with endless internal splits on the issue ion the necessity of building a new workers party. Sweden became one of the most aggressive neoliberal countries that in few years dismantled the former agriculture policy turning into one of the most market oriented on earth and dismantled control of speculation resulting in a deep financial crisis for the whole national economy.

The alternative movement maintained the links with India. The Swallows sent Maud Johansson and Göran Eklöf to build contacts with the Indian environmental movement resulting in solidarity work with the Narmada movement, many other environmental protests and projects and the book Påfågeln flyger on the Indian environmental movement in Swedish. Göran Eklöf finally was refused reentry into India due to his contacts with the anti-nuclear movement. Through the Indian contacts the Swedish environmental grew more sceptical towards development. Links were established with Lokayan in India resulting in an article in the Indian magazine but no deeper involvement.

The country after Sweden to be strongly influenced by India was Finland. Here a solidarity and environmental movement was later developed than in the other Nordic countries but when it started all happened at once. 1979 a dam site was occupied at Koijärvi, houses was occupied in Helsinki by young people, a new peace movement emerged, workers striked and a mass movement to support the third world grew out of the idea to give a one percent volunteer tax on your income to development projects. 1979 is also a year when Finnish interest in Gandhi was expresed through the book The Core of Gandhis Philosophy by Unto Tähtinen published in New Delhi. When the activists came to occupy Koijärvi they were met by Ville Komsi who explained how the 
direct action was based on Gandhian thought. 

By 1989 this alternative movement had expanded their scope and organising capacity. At a seminar this year with participation from almost all solidarity organisations in Finland.  Indian participants made it clear that they did not want more development aid, they were critical towards devlopment as such. Instead of helping the third world it was the whole way developmentt worked that had to be changed. Indian activists also participated in the struggle against a motorway project to be built between Hesinki and Turku. A long march inspired by the Indian Padyatra tradition was organised knocking on people’s doors along the way were the motor way was supposed to be constructed. Global issues was addressed in terms of the climate effects, emphasized by the Indian participation. The struggle was succesful when an economic crisis started and the plans were given up. 

A Finnish criticism emerged against the official ideology of sustainable development promoted by the UN, business, goverments and environemtnal organisations all over the world strategy. Finland became the only country were this ideology did not get a hegemonic position, in the rest of the world the interested popular movement accepted or tried pragmatically to use the new sustainable development process as a tool to put their own issues at the focus. Fundamental criticism was abonded, or as in Sweden somewhat marginalised. The Finnish sustainable development critique became important to the Nordic cooperation among environmental movements in the Rio process resulting in a more action oriented approach and global climate action days in 70 countries coordinated by the Finnish solidarity organisation KePa and the Swedish Environmental Federation. Among Nordic environmental movements, or at least the Finnish and Swedish it became a saying the the most important solidarity work was to change the development model of your own country as it was built on exploiting the third world. But in general business, NGOs and governments were succesful in establishing sustainable development as the solution to the global environmental and social crisis including at the Rio conference free trade as a main solution to the problem. Neoliberalism had recieved its human face with the legitimation of the global NGOs. 

With the professionalisation of the environmental, peace and solidarity movement making them adminstrators of sustainable development while at the same time as former planned economies under communist party rule fragmented a new period started. The global development model divided in two blocs collapsed with the falling of the Berlin wall. This time again Indian influence became crucial for Nordic peoples’ movements in maintaining and further develop radical positions, in the beginning with strong Gandhian influence but later more and more through radical modern Indian people´s movements and their global alliance building through People´s Global Action. 

The Global Democracy Period 1990 – 2004

The fourth period is not marked by any massive action inspired by India but Gandhian and Indian influence has contiued to grow or has been maintained, especially in Finland but much less so in Denmark. In 1990 a seminar on democracy and development critique was organised by the Finnish Ympäristö ja Kehitys (Coalition for Environment and Development) and the Estonian Green movement in Estonia in connection to the European Nuclear Disarmanent convention in Helsinki and Tallin. Here more in depth discussions were carried out in the Sauna, in the lake and other indispensable place for philosophical interchange on what is development, what alternatives are there, Gandhian socialism and practical mobilisation. Unfortunatly (or good?) a report never came out of the seminar but linkages were built on an international scale opposing the sustainable development model and proposing mass mobilising padyatra marches and local action days. Climate action days was succesfully carried out through the Swedish Finnish cooperation as well as strengthening broader intiatives like Alliance of Northern People on Environment and Development, ANPED ahead of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. 

But in general the sustainable development ideology also demobilised participation in the movement making it harder and harder to combine local activities with massaction at hot spots. NGOs were able to split the movement into a local level separated from an international lobby level were the professionals were advocating issues on behalf of local people that they had no democratic relation to. In Finland the Indian connections continued to develop but for the rest of the Nordic countries Gandhian ideology became more and more forgotten as well as other Indian influence. In Norway some actions still continues as when the Indian embassy was symbolically flooded by FIVAS activists in the early 1990s as a protest against the Narmada dam project. 

Gandhian inspiration strongly reemerged when the Karnataka farmers and their chairman Swamy took the leadership in forming People´s Global Action, PGA, centered around the principles of non-violence and refusal to cooperate as the main tools in the struggle against the neoliberal world order. The use of violence was not explicitly excluded but the the emphasis was only made on non-violence with the inspiration from the Gandhian style mass movements in India and the impressive demonstration with half a million participants against WTO in Bangalore in 1993. Also many other movements were present when PGA Geneva 1998, mainly mass movements from the third world like the Landless movement from Brasil, the black movement from Colombia, Ogonis from Nigeria, Maoris from New Zealand, the Indians from Ecuador, trade unions from Argentina, Nicaragua and Canada, farmer movements from everywhere and the Zapatistas from mexico as well as Friends of the Earth from Finland, Sweden and Uruguay. 

The kind of mass mobilising long marches dreamt of at the Estonia seminar in 1990 had meanwhile emerged all over Europe. It was the movement of the unemployed that staged star demonstration from the corners of France and Spain ending with manifestation in the capitals, Paris in 1994 and Madrid in 1995 at the EU summit. In 1997 The Euromarch against unemployment and exclusion started in Ivalo in Northern Finland, Tanger in Morocco and Tusla in Bosnia and other places walking two months along 14 routes making one thousand meetings on its way ending with a mass demonstration at the EU Summit in Amsterdam 1997. PGA came in the right time to radicalise and broaden the scope of the movement. Soon international action days against finance capital and WTO was carried out all over the world and the multilateral investment agreement, MAI, defeated. The third world mass movements and some NGOs like Third World Network managed to leave the era of struggling for a lobby place at the sustainable development negotiation table behind making it impossible for mainstream NGOs to maintain a reformistic marginal change attitude to MAI and later WTO. The anti-globalisation movement emerged with summit protesters and PGA as key actors. 

PGA also influenced Nordic movements. Some PGA activists were brought to Finland at a development meeting with governmental representatives, at the Nordic counter power summer camp in Falun 1999 initiated by Friends of the Earth Sweden a representative from the Karnatka farmers came, at the EU Summit in Gothenburg 2001 PGA organisations from Bangla Desh and Indonesia participated as speakers at demonstrations and seminars. PGA included anti capitalism in its plattform at its meeting in Bangalore 1999 making Friends of the Earth in Sweden and Finland to stop being active in the network as this goes beyond an antineoliberal alliance. The direct action oriented movements was especially inspired by PGA and has established a Nordic Anti-Capitalist Network including Globalisering underifrån (Globalisation from below), in Sweden, Globale Rødder (Global Roots) from Denmark and a social center from Helsinki. This Nordic PGA network is today the most influential cooperation among radical movements in Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden also having an impact on Social Forums. 

In general today Gandhi and Indian influence in the Nordic countries is maintained through publication of articles, spreading of civil disobedience ideology, of PGA confrontational and non-violent tactics, NGO style environmentalism of the Vandana Shiva kind and radical trade union and marxist analyses of Indian and global matters. 

In Sweden there is even av magasine Gandhi Today with Jan Viklund as an editor and in the peace movements articles on Gandhi are continously published. Norway is still the country were Gandhian philosophy is mostly red and established at the university and in popular movements as an inspiration to civil disobedience in a non-violent way. Recently a seminar was held on Gandhi with popular movements and the Indian embassy involved. In September 2004 the main solidarity and peace organisations issued a magazine, The Gandhian View with articles by prominent writers as Arundhati Roy, Kenneth Kaunda and others on non.violenvce and global justice movment. In Denmark, once the leading Nordic country in a South-North dialogue with India and Gandhian thought there is very little traces left. But there is a Gandhi statue in Copenhagen, given by Indira Gandhi on her visit to Denmark in 1984. It is placed in Nørrebro, the most radical part of Copenhagen which has seen many battles between police and activists the last 60 years. 
 
In Denmark the work to systematically study Gandhis’ Nordic connections is carried out by Holger Terp, an activist in the radical pacifist organisation No more war but in isolation. No More War that once initiated both the main solidarity and peace movements of Denmark has more or less no more activity than through the very ambitious Peace Academy home page were Terp continously updates a thousand year time line on peace movements and peace actions globally month by month. 

The Danish influential peace researcher Jan Øberg was not able to establish a center in Denmark and started Transnational Foundation for Peace, TFF in Lund in Sweden instead. This center is actively involved in conflict resolution in former Yugoslavia, was opposing the Iraq war and has contributors from all over the world. Øberg recently made a pilgrimage in the foot steps of the Salt march in India meeting old participants from the 1930 mobilisation and reflecting on the Gandhian philosophy in a report publicised in the homepage of the peace center. TFF also published late 2004 a bibliography on books, articles, videos and links in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish on Gandhi or written by him dating almost 80 years back. 

In Sweden one can also find other traces in the peace movement. The local chapter in Tyresö of the Swedish Peace and Arbritation Society started solidarity work with India in the late 1960s which is still carried on and in a café on the west coast one can find Gandhi’s Dreams which are cookies made by the owners, two long time pacifists and friends of India, Ola and Erni Friholt. A café at which in the summer of 2004 a jubilee seminar was held with Johan Galtung and others that wrote books on alternatives and the movements in the 1980s. 

Folkrörelsestudiegruppen, Popular Movement Study Group in Sweden have carried out a study on global popular movements the last two and half thousand years by Jan Wiklund and a study on the global NGO system by the author of this article. In these two studies Gandhian popular movement strategy is given av key place in developing lay person movements opposed to specialist and generalist professionalisation in American style NGO civil society model or Russian one-party state model. Of intellectual importance is also a coming dissertation made by Stellan Vinthagen stressing nonviolence as practical knowledge. Vinthagen is a long time plowbill movement activist and sceptical towards making Gandhi into an ideal outside history and social cicrumstances interested in linking normative nonviolence ideas to social movement theory. 

In Finland the strongest connections with India and Gandhian thoughts are developed todaybut mainly on the practical and political level. The cooperation starting in 1989 has developed by exchange of activists beteween India and Finland through the 1990s. This contributed to further cooperation among popular movements in Finland and wider perspectives on issues as privatisation, unemployment and democracy. One of the results of the wider perspectives was the creation of the Pro Demokratia movement that has contributed to the struggle against privatisation and forming Social Forum in Finland. Finland has had good connections to the Wolrd Social Forum and its international committee which enabled building connections between Brasilian and Indian actors bringing the WSF to Mumbai in 2004. The South-North exchange programme also included politicians after a while, among them ministers from Finland and former prime ministers from India. The result has been the establishment of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam – Democracy Forum including both activists in popular movments and politicians. At WSF in Mumbai Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam in Finland and India organised a seminar with Finnish and Indian speakers on Gandhi, the only at Mumbai and WSF so far. 

In Norway Gandhi is still best established, recently confirmed by a new version of Næss book on Gandhi, quickly interpreted also into Swedish. In the peace magazine Transformator articles on Gandhi are published. Norway is also the only Nordic country were a systematic study on civil disobedience from 1799 until today has been carried out published by the organisation No more War. Instutionalisation of Gandhian thought is stronger in Norway than any other Nordic country. Here many popular movements ideologically also states that civil disobedience in the Gandhian way is central to a strategy for changing society. But in spite of this Norwegian movements are more blatantly than any others in the Nordic countries failing the system-critical Indian popular movement tradition. The civil disobedience originally inspired by Gandhian thought has become a political method and not part of cultural and social opposition to the development model. Here the Nordic PGA network is weaker than in any of the other countries. More important is that in Norway the global neoliberal civil society built on replacing development critique and lay movements with sustainable development management of projects and advocacy could gain hegemony. Thousands of people became professional advisors to the government or NGOs funded by the state forgetting about connecting global issues to local and national popular mobilisation and instead developing a succesful niche as global lobbyists. 

Gandhi Today

At present what can be seen is a separation of the influence from India and Gandhi in the Nordic countries. On the one hand Gandhi is used as a repressive tool against civil disobedience activists if they in the face of growing repression and precarious work conditions use violence to defend themselves. At the same time as parliamentary forces especially in Sweden have given up to confront the repressive measures against demonstrators they adopt themselves to media trends and use their resources to declare violent demonstrators as the main problem. At  the same time as Gandhi is used as a tool against those twho refuse to be passive in the present situation the same forces avoids more and more the radical civilisation and development critique of Gandhi. He is used to a high degree in a stymied way. 

At the same time are the radical global movements inspired by the Karnataka farmers attacks on corporate rule and othe mass movements in the third world at the fore front of influencing young activists of the kind that is under heavy criticism from self claimed Gandhians. In an economic and political situation were a neoliberal agenda is carried out by both Green, Left, Social Democratic, Center and Right parties in all Nordic countries there is much less room for building lay person movements based on horisontal solidarity. The so called new social movement proclaimed to be horisontal and democratic are in fact to a high degree very hierarchic structures due to easy funding for donordriven professionally administrated projects. This is the preferred model for fragmented mobilisation in the neoliberal political culture. Especially the Danish but also other Nordic NGOs have specialised in developing also on an international scale. In such a culture there is little room for sustaining and growing a broader movement able of addressing issues in people’s daily life linked to global development issues. It is hard already when issues are limited to distribution of wealth and even more so if linked to the question of the content of development the way Gandhi always did. 

The present neoliberal political agenda across the party spectrum creates severe daily problems for people. In Sweden the population at large feels twice as stressed as in the 1980s according to a recent study and young people three times as stressed. More and more of the security net and public service are privatised while at the same time many people are permanently unemployed. Especially are immigrants and young people forced into precarious work or social exclusion as groups in society useful for keeping outside the more privileged positions held by the majority of people. The conflicts in society have thus developed special tensions along class lines declared as ethnic or generational problems. Racism has resulted in violence including killing immigrants, bruning mosques and restricting the rights of refugees. Segregation continous to grow for every integration programme that is launched. Youth figthing against marginalisation and the privatisation of the public sphere is seen as a provocation and often ends in confrontations with the police. 

The movement with young activists addressing privatisation of the public sphere, racism, refugee and the worsening job conditions for marginalised labour as well as global justice has stepped into growing confrontations with the state. These confrontations reached a peak at the EU and Bush summit in Gothenburg 2001 when some 200 activists clashed with the police violently in the streets and destroying shopping windows refusing to be non-violent when the police decided to attack demonstrators. This caused a political party and media panic as well as a strong reaction among the public. 90 percent in gallups made immediatly after the riots strongly condemned the demonstrators. In trials demonstrators often accused on vague evidence for even more vague crimes were sentenced in total almost 50 years in prison compared to in total maximum two months after similar riots in Seattle, Prague and Nice. 

The response was among Green-Left movement and parliamentary parties to attack the activists that supported or declared their understanding of those making riots. Often Gandhi or non-violence fundamentalism was used which was especially questionable for the Green and the Left party who both belong to the parliamentary support for the government that is responsible for the growing repression of the system-critical movement. The same forces also did what they could to destroy all networks were different strands of the movement cooperated claiming that no cooperation whatsoever should be allowed with groups who claimed understanding of the use of violence in domestic conflicts. Especially important was to split the antiracist network which succesfully had united radical anti fascist action groups with all kinds of less radical and often much better financed but lacking commited activist organisations. This anti-racist network had succesfully avoided being coopted by state attempts to divide and rule by only giving resources to wellfunded professional antiracist campaigns that only addressed issues of daily life social racism and completly avoided state racism in the form of political decisions on refugees and the like. The actions of this network never had resulted in any violence. Anyway Green and Left parties as well as nonviolence ideologists claimed it should be splitted apart and excluded as a cooperation partner and many established organisations left it. 

The result of the use of Gandhi against young radical activists in a anti-violence propaganda devoid of Gandhian systemcritical confrontation with the injustice of the present development model is that Gandhi today probably is more hated than ever in Swedish history among young activists struggling for global justice. Greens, ”hippies” and nonviolence propaganda makers are denounced as provocatuers in the hands of the police, politicians and media. While Gandhi and Gandhians in earlier radicalisation periods have been admired or seen as mildly irrelevant and idealistic lacking the necessary firmness against oppressors today Gandhi and Gandhians are seen as part of the violent repression used against those refusing to be passive during the corporate neoliberals attacks on people. If Gandhians are known at all and not totally ignored. 

Now racism continued to flourish with the biggest nazi demonstration since the second world war held in Salem in Sweden late 2003. The organisations attacking the radical antiracist groups have not been able to mobilise any significant countercampaigns against the growing racism. On the contrary have the political parties started to propose sharper demands on immigants adopting to the polices proposed by xenofobian political movements. The anti-racist network has shown to be the most important mobilisers of continued action against the nazis and state racism. The attempts to split it apart did not succeed and even less so attempts to build wellfunded NGO alternatives as these projects lacks capability of mobilising on the streets against racism and the daily threat that nazism represents in Sweden.

At the same time as the Nordic Gandhians have failed to bring radical Indian influence into the present situation in the Nordic countries other Indian forces have done so more succesfully through People’s Global Action Network. Here the PGA principles to a large extent formulated by late Karnataka farmers leader Swamy is the basis for nordic cooperation amongst the radical groups fighting racism and capitalism. On the one hand Gandhian propaganda lacking mass participation and devoid of systemcritical confrontation with the established system, on the other hand Gandhian confrontational principles from present days Indian people´s movement devoid of fundamentalistic antiviolence. 

What is lacking in both the antiviolence propaganda approved by the established system and the anticapitalistic PGA network is a more profound criticism of the present development model. There is an understanding that globalisation is not the problem, questioned is instead the way globalisation is organised. Thus terms like globalisation from below is popular putting the main emphasis on the social side ignoring the material biological side of globalisation.

In other Nordic countries the situation is similar although less polarised. Gandhi is used against the few young activists who openly address the injustice of todays society and global world order by confrontations that sometimes can become violent rather than as as a tool against the present system. Gandhi is the concern of those unable to mobilise systemcritical actions in the daily life and streets sitting on offices making professional campaigns on global issues or of some few elderly idealists. 

In a time were the old modernist state with its attempts at least in rich countries to include everybody in a corporative society is replaced by postmodernist or woith the word of Zygmunt Baumann floating modernity states built on excluding people. Social control built on supervising people at the workplace, at school and other places inside institutions is replaced by a constant threat of being excluded from porivileged institutions into unsecurity. There is a constant demand to be personally responsible for being flexible. Individually you are responsible for being valuable to the company or organisation that for the time being is interested in the human capital you can offer. It is no longer the company that supervises its employees but the employee that has to show his or hers usefulness. Such a society is becoming less and less a society but more of a postsociety were individuals learn to live under constant insecurity threats whether they are inside or outside established institutions. 

In such a system using Gandhi as an argument for utmost self control becomes compatible with the modern repressive neoliberal state. The demands are directed against the individual who regardless of resources for succesfully training and participate in nonviolent struggles or the situation are asked to live up to moral standards that well established middle class more easily can mobilse than todays working class and exluded people. In a situation were the society as such where moral authority can be used against an opressor is undermined are demands against individuals for not living up to perfect ideals instead of contructive work to colletively rebuilt commons where society can be reborn contraproductive. It is no coincidence that neither Green or Left parties have made any organised effort to jointly campaign against the state repression after the EU-Summit in Gothenburg and in such a way collectivley rebuilt a society where it is valuable to restrain oneself from violently confront an opponent. This in spite of that the repression after Gothenburg has been more severe than during the whole previous century in terms of total sentences to the prison after political violent confrontations. This also in spite of that many has been sent to prison without having participated in any violent action at all and all cases succesfully have been shown by writer Erik Wijk to be built on questionable evidence as well as arbritrary manyfolded sentences between 10 and 17 times higher then during the 1990s for the same crime. 

Both left parties and greens have a tendency to live in the old days of the corporative state where disciplined efforts were rewarded by society both at work and in political life. Todays new flexible job market and politics through mass media puts hard restrains on people feeling the need to protest in their daily life against unsecurity or for global justice. Movements are harder to built when organisations ith the political parties and NGOs as prominent examples makes themeselves less and less democratically dependent on their members and more and more get access to a donordriven financial state and private market. The left can handle this situation easier in the short term than the alternative movment built on more civilisation critical and Gandhian traditions. The left have their different parliamentary and revolutionary traditions polarised against each other to fall back upon offering the radical activists the choice they prefer. For Gandhian inspired movements the situation has been mor difficult at least in short terms. Gandhi is splitted in two. Only one half is used as a repressive argument against those that do not live up to individual perfection in the face of police repression and lack of colletive solidarity. The other half demanding constructive work and unity among oppressed as well as a stronger criticism against those passive than against those using violence is forgotten.

PGA shows that this is not the only way to bring Indian people´s movement influence to the Nordic countries today. There might be a possibility to blend some of the systemcritical Gandhian tradition with the PGA tradition and address some of the profound problems the Nordic societies have in the transition from corporative welfare states to more neoliberal oriented models. Such a blend might also have international importance like it had in the 1970s- and 1980s. During this period Nordic countries with Gandhian inspiration in the most radical popular mobilisations also contributed to globally important strategies like ecosophy and the struggle against the EU neoliberal project spearheaded by mass civil disobedience. 

But this requires an openness from both those inspired by Gandhi and the radical young activists as well as a willingness to formulate a deeper systemcritical philosophy that goes beyond both antineoliberalism, antiviolence instead of nonviolence and anticapitalism addressing also global ecology and the fundamental social order of professionalising issues through the combined NGO and state system. Such an openness will necessarily confront vested interest not only among state, parliamentary and business circles but also many NGOs were some are stating their belief in Gandhi.

Mumbai x 3

In such a search for new steps ahead Indian inteventions in global popular movement politics might be useful. Three kind of events took place at Mumbai in January 2004, all three having their impact in the Nordic countries. Besides the official World Social forum IV there was on the one side Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam that among others organised separate meetings with dialogues between center-green-left political parties and movements on environmental and social issues as participation of party representatives is not allowed at WSF. On the other side was Mumbai Resistance 2004 organised by farmers, fishermen, indigenous people and revolutionary parties as an alternative to WSF for radical movements and excluded organisation as they were parties or groups that could use arms in their liberation struggle. 

Those three strands in the global justice movement have been existing before. But it was first at Mumbai they were more well-organised and had their positions more clearly expressed. PGA, Via Campesina and Gandhian networks had friends both at Mumbai Resistance and WSF, one can guess also at Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. Green parties could fully participate in the Green Corner organised by Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam as an alternative to WSF together with social democrats and others. 

In the Nordic countries the new articulation of the three strands had a prominent place in the public debate on World Social Forum and the global justice movement. Vandana Shivas criticism against Mumbai Resistance was published in Aftonbladet, the biggest daily in Sweden. She claimed that WSF represented the global justice movement and that Mumbai Resistance were late-coming splinters. A false description of the history as the zapatistas in PGA widely is known as pioneers in the struggle against neoliberalism and initiators of uniting the global justice movement. The Karnataka farmers in PGA that with their anti-WTO demonstration in Bangalore 1993 sparked much environmental interest in the struggle against neoliberalism were among the organisers of Mumbai Resistance. Shivas position has not recieved much attention in spite of a growing debate in some newspapers on WSF after Mumbai. All six social forums organised in Sweden so far has been regional and the most succesful in Lund twice with more than 2.000 participants involves all three strands from Mumbai, PGA groups, NGOs like Amnesty, environmental and solidarity movments, social democrats and marxist-leninist revolutionary parties. At other places political parties have been excluded but their affiliated youth federations included. PGA aligned groups in Sweden (and Denmark) have chosen to influence the social forums succesfully. The exclusion of zapatistas from social forums has been discussed. A decision at the annual general meeting of Friends of the Earth in Sweden to propose their participation caused fairly wide support. Social democrats like the minister of development aid and the social democratic journalist Petter Larsson has participated in the WSF debate, by stating the need for social forums to be open to debate with political parties and by proclaiming the need to focus on a programme of political alternative demands similar to the ideas of French Attac founder Bernard Cassen. Also Arundati Roy recieved attention by getting her inaugration speech at WSF reprinted in Aftonbladet, the biggest daily in the Nordic countries. 

A more hotly debated Indian intervention in the Swedish discussion on WSF has been the translation of Aspects of Indias Economy magazine special issue on the subject. It has been published by FiB/kulturfront (People in Pictures/Cultural Front), a membership organisation and magazine based on defending freedom of speech and antiimperialism with long-lasting relations to India. This Indian criticism focus on how WSF splits the global justice movement in the liberal shape of a civil society apart from political parties turning the movement into reformism, the role of NGOs, exclusion of revolutionary parties and foreign Western funding. This booklet was attacked by Aron Etzler, one of the founder of Attac Sweden and the editor of Flamman, the left party weekly. He denounces the booklet as ”rubbish” in a tone seldom seen in the Swedish debate. Especially he criticises what he claims to be uniformed claims that WSF not had taken a stand on the Iraq war and points at that the leader of the anti-G8 demonstrations in Genua at the same time was involved in the WSF process thus stating a split between summit protesters and WSF is false. Etzler finds only the information on Ford foundation funding of interest. Aspects of Indias economy have answered that the information on the lack of deciding against the Iraq war came from the Teivo Tärvinen Finnish member from Network Institute on Global democracy in the international WSF committeee. The accusations from being uninformed when the lack of information on who, what and when actually decides on WSF content and positions is systematically hard to know or contradictory even for insiders becomes somewhat of a boumerang. The booklet also caused another kind of discussion critising a lobby dialogue strategy from Attac that tended to take away the necessary focus on mobilising people in common in Gothenburg against privatisation of health care and dismantling of public health services. A kind of Attac strategy that also could be seen at social forums according to the revolutionary communist youth, an organisation that in practice is one of the strongest initiators of nation-wide local anti war demonstrations that by many often are used as the best example of WSF political success. 

Clear is that by moving WSF to India the process has been firmly democratised due to extraordinary efforts from all three kinds of meetings in Mumbai. Aspects of Indias Economy have comprehensively summarized some of the criticism against WSF in a way that cannot be ignored, Jai Sen has contributed to openess in the official WSF process in India and globally by very open-minded reflections and co-editing the most ambitious book on WSF so far, Challenging Empires. Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam have through its newsletter and homepage made both the political party participation in Mumbai and the overall picture more visible and thus more democratically transparent. 

It is to early to estimate the result of this attempt at global democratisation in the Nordic countries. It shows anyway that Indian influence still is vibrant. Much of the globalisation critique is monopolised by the left dividing itself into polarised fractions, one focusing on the need for national sovereignity together with international solidarity and the other on establishing and strengthening transnational political institutions like the EU and a global civil society. Both can find their positions strengthened by Indian interventions like that of Shiva, Roy or Aspects of India´s Economy. 

A key organisation in the preparations for social forums in Sweden has been the democratic membership based Ordfront, the most red magazine in Sweden and a publishing company printing articles and books by Shiva, Roy and Noam Chomsky. A special Ordfront delegation went to WSF in Mumbai and visited afterwards Shiva’s ecological center. Ordfront is now in a severe internal crisis due to a conflict between the two polarised leftwing positions. An interview with Diane Johnstone critical towards Western politics during the breakdown of former Yugoslavia and the demonizing of Serbs was publicised in Ordfront magazine. It contained some false information on a prison camp erected by the Serbs and mass murder in Srebrenica which caused strong criticism in the liberal press blaming Ordfront for supporting genocide. The criticism against Ordfront resulted in the firing of the long time journalist responsible for the interview. The editor of Ordfront made the highly questionable statement that genocide had taken place in formerYugoslavia backed by the board. At the annual general meeting the members decided to critisize the way that the board had given in to the liberal attack. Roy and Chomsky has written a statement supporting freedom of speach and Johnstones contribution to the debate. The crisis in Ordfront continued with an extra AGM announced on grounds that has been questioned. This time the extra AGM reversed the decision from the ordinary AGM under strong pressure from the establsihed press. The polarised conflict is a sign on a general crisis for left wing strategy between a new NGO and global civil society orientation and an older national sovereignity and popular movement orientation stressing the need for allowing all opinions heard. What is new or at least very seldom takes place is direct interference from the third world in an internal diskussion in Sweden like that of Roy. 

What is lacking in the internal left wing polarisation is both a deeper development critique and a stronger commitment to personal responsibility for taking action against social injustice. This can be contributed by a renewal of Gandhian thinking and the way Indian movements have democratised the global justice movement by strengthening simultanously alla three strands, the non-violent confrontational PGA or revolutionary way, the reformistic NGO and global civil society position and popular movement making dialogues with center-left political parties. It is to early to estimate the possibilites for such a development beyond the polarised positions of the left. But during 87 years a continous Indian-Nordic dialogue has had an important impact on Nordic political culture and popular movment, an impact that continously built on rennaisance for Gandhian thinking but also other Indian popular movement experiences. 

What can be stated after this study of Indian influence in the Nordic countries is that the established views on how world politics is influenced must be revised. The common claims in the West backed by the global university industry claims that the West is the origin of democratic movements and the rest follows suite is false. It is of democratic and global importance to systematically denounce this false ideology built on disinterest in empiric evidence and vested interest theory, a task for Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam and others interested in a South North dialogue and search for knowledge that can help us towards social justice and saving our planet.

Tord Björk

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Gandhis globala inflytande

TUG hade en central roll i att föra in idéer från Indien och vara värdar åt aktivister i den globala rörelsen inspirerad av Gandhi. Han inspirerade flera internationella folkrörelser. Norden fick tidigt kontakt och var ibland pådrivande i flera av dessa.

•	Samarbete mellan Gandhi och danska kvinnliga missionärer för att bygga upp ett nationellt program med folkbildning i Indien för kvinnor och män från 1917 och framåt.
•	Internationell solidaritet med befrielsekampen i Indien. Ellen Hørup i Danmark startar den internationella samordningen av kommittéer runtom i Europa 1932. 
•	Starten av frivilligt biståndsarbete på jämbördiga villkor med lokalbefolkningen och den internationella arbetslägerrörelsens intresse för tredje världen med början från Europa 1934 och från Norden på 1950-talet.
•	Ickevåldskamp med civil olydnad för fred som Världsmedborgarrörelsen och antiatomvapenrörelsen inspireras av under 1950-talet.

Men särskilt okänd och central vid decennieskiftet 1960 var Gandhis fredsarmé. Idén att ingripa som en ”levande mur” enligt Gandhis tankar för att hindra konflikter hade väckts på 1930-talet men inte lett till några större resultat. Efter kriget fick idén om att ickevåldsaktivister skulle ingripa förnyat intresse. 
•	En första brittisk grupp med fyra personer av ”Frivilliga för Internationell utveckling” sändes iväg till Egypten när Storbritannien och Frankrike angrep landet 1956. 
•	En mer omfattande aktion genomfördes för att hindra franska atomvapenprov i Sahara 1959-1960. En internationell grupp av afrikaner, européer och amerikaner samlades i Ghana varifrån tre grupper sändes ut i öknen in i Franska Västafrika för att få stopp på provsprängningarna. De hade stöd av omkringliggande afrikanska staters regeringar. Alla greps av fransk militär. Men stödet växte genom att grupper i Frankrike och på andra håll spred kunskap om aktionen. En All-afrikansk konferens sammankallades i Ghanas huvudstad Accra för att koordinera ickevåldsaktioner för att stoppa provsprängningarna. 
•	Denna aktion följdes av fredsmarschen San Fransisco – Moskva 1960 – 1961 som organiserades av Committee for Non-violent Action, Världsmedborgarrörelsen i Sverige och flera europeiska pacifistorganisationer. 
•	Committee for Non-Violent Action seglade med båtar in i Provsprängningsområden i Stilla havet för att stoppa atombombstesterna där. 

Dessa aktioner mynnade ut i bildandet av Världsfredsbrigaden 1961. Den startades på förslag av War Resisters International på dess möte i Indien 1960. Förslaget var att ”internationalisera Shanti Sena idén” vilket betyder fredsarmé. Gandhis efterföljare hade i Indien med hjälp av fredsarméer lyckats ingripa för att hindra våldsamma etniska konflikter och avväpnat banditer. Brigaden bildades på ett möte i Libanon 1961 och hade en sektion för Asien, en för Europa och en för Nordamerika. Ett träningscenter etablerades i Tanzania 1962 men en planerade frihetsmarsch för att med ickevåld ingripa i konflikten kring de svartas frigörelse i grannlandet Zambia behövdes inte när befrielserörelsen fick övertaget. I Indien ingrep en multinationell Världsfredsbrigad i konflikten mellan Indien och Kina och mötte fientliga reaktioner hos både den indiska och kinesiska regeringen. Den sista aktionen som en multinationell Världsfredsbrigad genomförde var en seglats med båten Everyman III vars besättning hamnade i de unga teosoferna von Malmborgs hem i Saltsjöbaden. Aktionen var en uppföljare av antiatombombsprotester som genomförts i Stilla havet mot USAs provsprängningar. Denna form för fredsarmé som genom att vara en levande mur söker ingripa i konflikter fick uppföljare redan 1966 för att hindra Vietnamkriget och har sedan fått allt vidare spridning. 

Pictures/illustrations

Cover:

Front:

Reclaim Gandhi, colour pic with young activist and Gandhi från Salt march jubilee 2005

Small map with Nordic countries and India and an arrow between both ways

Back:

Collage from different periods in the relationships, Ellen Hørup on bike, Inge Oskarsson on bike, Everyman III, Demo Chipko with Bahaguna, ..

Inside

1917 – 1947

Anne Petersen, in Denmark and India, with spinning whell, Ester Faering, Ellen Hørup portray, on bike, school drema, school reality

?? Visiting Gandhi. Ellen Picture of Gandhi, picture of Gandhi meeting persons who????

IAL – training camp 1937, work camp after war.

SLAS?

1948 – 1969

World citizen movement, Oskarsson on bike.

IAL, more pics, first in the third world.

Världsungdomsfestival, Berlin?

Citat Myrdal

Sit down action, Denmark??

Marches, Iceland, Finland, Sweden

Everyman III

Educ aid

Rukmini

Jan

Roland

Dec 1967, Satyagraha

1970 – 1989

Mardøla, Myvatn

Miljökonferensen

Koijärvi

Trädkramarna och Bahaguna

;Maud and Göran in India

1990 – 

Marsch Åbo-Hfors

A SEED

Vandana Shiva i Madrid

PGA???

Gandhi Today

WSF med Gandhi i Mumbai

Salt march jubilee, material, Copenhagen

11 sep 1906

books: 

Bent Smidt Hansen, Dependency and Identity:
Problems of cultural encounter as a consequence
of the Danish mission in South India between the
two world wars. Quebec: World Heritage Press,
1998.
Tine Elisabeth Larsen, Anne Marie Petersen, A
Danish Woman in South India – A Missionary
Story 1909-1951. Chennai: Lutheran Heritage
Archives, 2000.

Caroline Lasson, Østens smil og tårer (pages 111-18),
translated by Frede Højgaard in Frede Højgaard (ed.) Friends
of Gandhi: Inter-war Scandinavian Responses to the
Mahatma (NIAS Report No. 7), 1991.
Holger Terp "Ellen Hørup and Mohandas
Gandhi" in Frede Højgaard (ed.) Friends of
Gandhi: Inter-war Scandinavian Responses to
the Mahatma (NIAS Report No. 7, 1991).
Ellen Hørup, Gandhis Indien. Copenhagen: H.
Hagerups Forlag, 1931
Cathinca Olsen, "Om natten hos Gandhi" in
Indiens Venner, 1931, no. 12, page 3.
The Danish Peace Academy
www.fredakademiet.dk/library/nordic/
M.K. Gandhi, My Dear Child. Ahmedabad:
Navajivan, 1956.
Kaj Baagø, “Mahatma Gandhi's Dear Child” in
Frede Højgaard (ed.) Friends of Gandhi: Interwar
Scandinavian Responses to the Mahatma
(NIAS Report No. 7, 1991).
Kaj Baagø, “Mahatma Gandhis kære barn” in
Kikka Mølgaard (ed.) Indien - Danmark: Forbindelser
og Samarbejde, (Copenhagen, 1983),
pages 54-71.
Esther Menon, Gandhi: En Karakteristik og
Fremstilling af de sidste Dages Begivenheder.
Copenhagen: Forord af Jens Rosenkjær, 1930.
References

Frivilligt arbete för fred – en bok om Internationella Arbetslag, Stockholm: IAL, 2000.
Jacobsen, Marina: Fra Barbari til værdighed, RUC, 2001
Liversage, Toni, Fra Gandhi til Greenham, 1987
Liversage, Toni, Hva skal det nytte?, Gyldendal, 1998
Nyborg-Fjellander, Ingrid: Leende biskopen: en modern sökares äventyr, Stockholm: Larson, 1975
Smidt Hansen, Bent: Dependency and Identity / Afhaengighed og identitet : Problems of Cultural Encounter as a consequence of the Danish Mission in South India between World Wars I and II, Aarhus University Press, 1992.
Stinus, Erik, Jordens sange, Exlibris, 2001
Terp, Holger and Reddy, E.S.; Mahatma Gandhi and Nordic countries, 2001: http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/library/nordic/index.htm
Tähtinen, Unto: The Core of Gandhis Philosophy. Abhinar Publications, New Delhi 1979.
 
For further references: tord.bjork@mjv.se