The son of Gandhi's chief secretary recalls: "The time was during World War II, when Japan was advancing on India. I was lying in my room one night, pretending to sleep so I could listen to my parents. The topic was this: That afternoon, Gandhi had said that if he had an army of nonviolent soldiers, he would like to defend the country nonviolently by standing before the advancing Japanese troops." Gandhi had called a meeting of a few hundred colleagues for building a "shanti sena", a nonviolent army, but he was assasinated just a few days before. Although that conference was never held, Narayan Desai has kept the vision alive.
