Meeting with former International Secretaries in Bangalore, India

by Heinz Gabathuler (Jul 7, 2015)

During my private trip through India, I had the opportunity to meet with several activists and veterans of the Indian SCI branch in different places. In Bangalore, Valli Seshan invited me to her apartment for tea and sweets, and of course for a fruitful and interesting chat. Together with young SCI India activist Janak Gor we went there to reveal the “secrets” of the functioning of SCI’s International Secretariat in the late 1980s and early 1990s when, for the first and last time, it was located outside of Europe.

 

Heinz Gabathuler with Valli (left) and Chandru (right) in Bangalore

Chandru (Raghavan Ramachandran) and Valli, together with their spouses, were the four-persons team leading the IS, after Nick Warren had given up the post of International Secretary he had held in England. Chandru pointed out that the decision to move the IS to Bangalore had not so much been out of a will to shift the centre of power and activities away from Europe to South Asia but rather out of mere necessity: No one else was keen to take up the task for the little money that was available to pay for international staff.

In India, however, the four of them were able to live for just one European salary. And they had the vision to make the Secretariat a Resource Centre, running youth inductions programmes for all Asian branches. They managed to get a multi-year grant from external donors. Finances and insurance, however, continued to be administered from England, and Switzerland, respectively, mainly for legal reasons: The Indian government would not allow to let money flow out of the country again, once it had arrived on an Indian bank account.This situation drove the IEC to employ Willy Dries as a staff person responsible for finances and insurance, based at the then European Secretariat in Antwerpen, in February 1988.

Valli Seshan’s husband had passed away during the time they were running IS and Resource Centre in Bangalore; after his premature death and after some more years Chandru, his wife Krpa, and Valli felt that it was time to hand the task over to Cheeky Krubeck in Germany, and finally it was decided to merge European and International Secretariats in Antwerpen, where IS is located ever since 1998.

They mentioned that Asian branches not at all opposed the IS’ move back to Europe, whereas opposition against structural SCI reform was strong within the German branch and from GATE co-ordinator John Myers. But they also mentioned that Asian branches had profited from the fact that IS was located in India.

Bhuppy (left) and Dev (right) at Bhuppy's house in Delhi

From today’s perspective the international structures SCI had just twenty to thirty years ago with an International and, in addition, European and Asian offices, committee meetings and executive committees, and with an IS divided between India (political and education work), Belgium (finances, later also North South commission / SEED) and Germany (East West commission / GATE) appears somehow complicated, and it is hard to understand how it could work in practise, especially taking into account that it was the time before communication through email and social media, and even through fax. The International Archives are full of typed letters that were exchanged between IS staff in Bangalore, IEC members, and staff based in Europe!

Nevertheless to me it became most plausible that Valli and Chandru were the right people to run it, with their solid experience with SCI work in Asia as well as with their excellent insight into Western culture and working styles. Chandru, in addition, had served as an assistant to then International Secretary Thedy von Fellenberg in Switzerland in the 1970s.

I also met SCI veterans Bhuppy Kishore and Dev Chopra, as well as former IEC member Manoj Pande in Delhi and a lot of current SCI India activists, among them Jayaprasad Kumar (Maharashtra), MN Ganesh (Bangalore), and Bhupender Yadav (Delhi).