Indian-Nordic Encounters 1917-2006 - Det danske Fredsakademi

Yugoslavia once more uniting people from the West and the East in Europe. 1953 Swedish
IAL also sent observers to the World Youth festival in Bucharest. 1955 SCI organised an
international work camps in connection to the World Youth festival in Warsaw. This became
the starting point for renewing East-West international work camp tradition in Europe
although not in the same enormous scale as before the cold war started. The International
work camp movement started also to send volunteers to the third world. From Sweden in the
early 1950s and organising own development projects from Denmark 1956 and Sweden 1957.
In ten years the movement in Sweden five-folded their participation at international work
camps that included both third world, poor regions in the South of Europe, antroposophical
schools and Samic villages in the North of Sweden. This practical solidarity became an
invisible cement keeping the alternative movement together.
Another influence was more philosophical inspiration from Gandhi and other Indian
philosophy. This was strongest in Norway. Here the fierce nonviolent resistance against the
occupation during World War II had created a wealth of experience that called upon
clarifying thoughts. In 1939 Arne Næss became the youngest full professor in Norway ever
when he entered the chair of philosophy in Oslo, the only of its kind in the country. Næss was
18 during the Salt march organised by Gandhi, a campaign that had influenced him a lot.
When the German occupation came 1940 he and others at the university and many others in
Norway had to reflect upon different ways of resistance. Næss made critical analysis of many
of these forms of resistance and their outcome to deepen the interest in argumentation, a text
that during many decades was obligatory to every university student in Norway and also have
been used in Sweden. Næss was from the beginning a positivist influenced by his stay in
Vienna in the mid 1930s but became more and more influenced in broader thinking on
development and democracy. His broad philosophical and empirical interest made him central
in shaping social sciences in Norway after the war. He was also a practical man and
introduced new climbing techniques in Norway and headed the expedition to climb the Tirich
Mir in Pakistan 1950. In 1952 he and other pacifists strongly opposed anticommunism and
cold war propaganda. He also had a central position internationally as the head of UNESCO:s
project Democracy, Ideology and Objectivity in the mid 1950s. Together with Johan Galtung,
Arne Næss wrote the book Gandhi i atomalderen (Gandhi in the Atomic Age) in 1955. They
both continued to be influenced by Gandhi and themselves influenced the discussion on peace,
development and other issues. In 1958 the Norwegian branch of the international work
movement, Internasjonal Dugnad organised an international seminar at Emma Hiort’s home
close to Oslo on non-violence. Valli Chari, a disciple of Vinoba Bahve, from India came with
the help of Service Civil international. Other speakers were Gene Sharp, an expert on nonviolence
and Håkan Holmboe, the leader of Norwegian teacher’s non-violent resistance
against the German occupation during the war. 20 In 1959 Galtung could in Oslo set up the first
peace study institution in the Western world. Nonviolent action continued to be respected in
Norway. When 200 youth activists threw black tennis balls into the tennis court and then
occupied it to stop a game between South Africa and Norway in 1964 the police met them
with respect. They were carried away. But many Norwegian policemen had the experience of
being put in concentration camps by the fascists and explained that they stopped the protest
only because they had to do their job.
In Finland the situation was different. Here the conditions for those putting nonviolence above
loyalty to the state became even harder after the war as the punishment for consciousness
objectors increased, something especially hitting the Jehova Witnesses. The conflict between
20 email from Harald Bjørke to the suthor, 20006-10-27.
32