The Danish Peace Academy
GANDHI AND NORDIC COUNTRIES
E.S. Reddy bionotes
E.S. Reddy, former Assistance Secretary-General of the United Nations and Director of its Centre against Apartheid, has been interested in Gandhi since his childhood in India. After retiring from the United Nations in 1985, he has been engaged in research and writing on Gandhi and on the liberation struggle in South Africa.
He has co-edited (with Gopalkrishna Gandhi) Gandhi and South Africa, 1914-1948 (1993) and (with Mrs. Mrinalini Sarabhai) The Mahatma and the Poetess (1998), the correspondence between Gandhi and Mrs. Sarojini Naidu. Mahatma Gandhi: Letters to Americans (1948), edited by him, was published in Bombay and New York in 1998. A collection of his articles on Gandhi and South Africa was published in New Delhi in 1995 under the title, Gandhiji: Vision of a Free South Africa.
Other books edited by him include collections of speeches and writings of Chief Albert Luthuli, Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Olof Palme and Krishna Menon.
Mr. Reddy is an adviser two websites on Gandhi and to the website of the African National Congress of South Africa.
While promoting the international campaign against apartheid in South Africa for over twenty years, he developed a special interest in the Nordic countries which took the lead among Western countries in supporting the liberation movement. When he retired from the United Nations, Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, wrote to him: "Your contributions to the work of the UN against apartheid have been formidable. Your devoted work has been highly appreciated by many of us in Sweden."
He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Durban-Westville in 1995 and Padma Sri, national award of India, in 2000 in recognition of his contribution to the freedom struggle in South Africa and his scholarly work.
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