Devi Prasad
War is a Crime Against Humanity : The Story of War Resisters' International
(London: War Resisters' International, 2005, 555pp.)

Devi Prasad, General Secretary of the War Resisters' International (WRI) in London from 1962 to 1972 and then chairman from 1972 to 1975, has written a useful study of the organization, highlighting the period in which he had direct responsibility. His history ends in 1975 when he passed on his chairmanship to Myrtle Solomon, chairperson from 1975 to 1985.

This is an action-filled history of the 1960s until the end of the US war in Vietnam in 1975. It was "only yesterday" for some of us, like myself who started protesting atomic-bomb testing around 1953. It is "ancient history" and unfamiliar territory for those who can not recall the heated debates over the concept of a "Third Camp" - basically between the Soviet Union and the USA but with a humanistic philosophy which made it more than just "the non-aligned " - presented by A.J. Muste at the WRI Triennial Conference in 1954.

WRI was founded shortly after the First World War as the 'international' of conscientious objectors to military service. Many of the original founders of WRI were also founders of the explicitly Christian International Fellowship of Reconciliation founded a few years earlier.

As the memory of the First World War began to fade, pacifists were confronted with what to do concerning the growingly aggressive policies in the 1930s of Italy, Germany, and Japan. There was a split in the leadership concerning support for the armed resistance of the Spanish Republicans in the civil war against Franco.

After the Second World War, there was a need to re-organize and to take stock of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union. For many members, it was the example of the non-violent struggle of Mahatma Gandhi in India that showed the way to move from a movement of individual witness against war through conscientious objection to being a more mass action movement

This tension between individual conscience and a politically-relevant policy was already highlighted in 1928 at the second conference of WRI held in Vienna. Hans Kohn, a Jew living in Palestine said "Regarded from the sociological standpoint we are today a sect; and we must become a movement. It is undoubtedly a great spiritual value that we have begun as a sect - a community of people united by one idea, who have gone out to seek to discover men who already belong inwardly to this sect. We must come out from this position as a sect and enter into the position of a movement … We and the War Resisters are merly an outpost of all other men who do not possess the power of theoretical exposition, and the sacrificial courage of the martyr; an outpost of the humble and the dumb, who cannot speak for themselves…The foundation of our Movement must be solidarity of the human race, the respect for life and the worth of human personality."

During the period when Devi Prasad was General Secretary there was a need to meet new issues through transnational action using improved methods of communication and travel. There is a vivid retelling of one of the most innovative of WRI actions - a non-violent 'commando raid' of small groups sent to Moscow, Warsaw, Budapest, and Sofia to protest the Soviet intervention to crush the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia. This was a simultaneous transnational action undertaken by no other organization. One of the four 'commando teams' was an Italian group led by Marco Panella who went on to develop the transnational action concept with his Transnational Radical Party. This transnational non-violent action was to support "the dignified resistance of the Czech people which has included sit-downs in front of Soviet tanks, strikes and non-co-operation. We express our hope, even in this dark hour that peaceful yet uncompromising resistance may eventually secure the withdrawal of invading forces and the continued progress of Czechoslovakia towards true socialism under conditions of freedom."

We know that the 'Prague Spring' was crushed but the seeds of non-violent action were planted and came to life years later with the peaceful disintegration of Communist control of Czechoslovakia.

The other innovative transnational action was Operation Omega - an effort to bring relief supplies during the 1971 fighting in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Led by Roger Moody, taking its name from the philosophy of Teihard de Chardin and having as its motto "No boundary is legitimate which attempts to separate those in pain from those who can help. Human beings do not need permission to aid those threatened with death." There were nine entries into Bangladesh with relief supplies before India invaded Bangladesh to establish it as an independent country and allowing some 10 million refugees to leave India for Bangladesh.

The work of WRI is highlighted in a text that Devi Prasad wrote in 1967 during a conference in Geneva devoted to Track II efforts to end the war in Vietnam. "Gandhi speaks for us: 'In the midst of death, life persists. In the midst of darkness, light persists.' We are today in the midst of death and darkness. We can strengthen life and light by our personal acts: by saying 'no' to violence, by saying 'yes' to life. We ask you to join us."

Rene Wadlow