An undying Gandhian

Doreswamy’s first brush with freedom movement came when he was an intermediate student in Bengaluru

Gandhian H.S. Doreswamy, till the very end, insisted that democratic protests have to adopt non-violent means. But, he also had a brush with radical politics for a few years during the Quit India Movement. The freedom fighter, who passed away on Wednesday, recalls in his memoir Nenapina Suruli Teredaga his association with the Quit India Movement, when he helped organise a strike by all major cloth mills in the city - Binny Mills, Minerva Mills and Raja Mills - especially since they were stitching parachute cloth, used by the British in the Air Force during the war. “We used to hurl time bombs into government record rooms and other British targets to hit their war effort. But no one was hurt,” he wrote. He often recounted how his brush with violence made him realise the futility of violence and he remained a Gandhian all his life.