G. V. Desani
Encyclopedia
Govindas Vishnoodas Desani or G. V. Desani, (1909–2000) was a Kenya
n-born, British
-educated India
n writer and Buddhist philosopher. The son of a merchant, he began his career as a journalist, and achieved fame with the cult novel All About H. Hatterr
(1948), considered one of the finest examples of literature
in English and a novel that compares favourably with Joyce
's Ulysses
. He was for a time a university professor in America
, and spent many years engaged in meditation
at various monasteries. A second volume, Hali and Collected Stories, was published in 1991.
, Kenya
, Govindas Vishnoodas Desani spent his childhood in Sindh
, now Pakistan
. Known as a child prodigy, between his 7th and 12th year, he managed to run away from home twice and was expelled from school at thirteen as unteachable. At the third attempt to escape, he reached England. Not yet 18, and a minor, at the personal recommendation of the then Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in the British House of Commons, George Lansbury
, he was admitted as a reader in the library of the British Museum
.
At 19, he was one of the foreign correspondents serving newspapers from London. At 25, he was a correspondent of The Times of India
, Reuters
and the Associated Press
. About that time, he was sponsored by the then Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway, one of the great railway systems of India, as Lecturer on the antiquities of Rajputana, Ajmer and Delhi. A special circular, issued by the Director of Education, Delhi, stresses the great value of his lectures. Somewhere along the way he became known as G. V. Desani.
During World War II, Desani was back in Britain. Waiving their strict academic requirements, the Imperial Institute, the Council for Adult Education in the British Armed Forces, the London County Council
, the Wiltshire County Council, and the Royal Empire Society
accepted him as a lecturer and teacher.
One of the few speakers who could fill to overflowing an auditorium of the size of the New Picture House, Edinburgh, or the New Savoy, Glasgow, his public meetings throughout the war, were sponsored by the British Ministry of Information.
His lectures in the Crane Theatre, Liverpool, the White Rock Pavilion, Brighton, the Geography Hall, Manchester, the Town Hall, Southampton, the Pump Room, Bath, the Great Western Docks, Plymouth, the Carnegie Library, Ayr, the Central Library, Manchester
, were widely publicized by the Ministry and his audiences varied from businessmen, teachers, munitions workers where his talks were relayed to thousands at a time to army, navy, air force and civil defence personnel, hospitals, resettlement units, prisons and American servicemen stationed in Britain.
Recalling his rise as an orator in Britain, Anthony Burgess
writes that Desani demonstrated to the British, "... in live speech the vitality of the British rhetorical tradition, brilliant in Burke
and Macaulay
, decadent in Churchill
, now dead."
During the war years, Desani wrote and broadcast regularly for the BBC
The organ of the BBC, The Listener, welcomed him as "... a broadcasting discovery ... a voice singular in its beauty." Among the centers of learning, the New College, Oxford
, the Rhodes House, Oxford, the Trinity, Cambridge, and the Psychologisch Laboratorium of the University of Amsterdam, invited him to read learned and specialized papers.
It was, however, the publication in Britain in 1948 of his experimental novel, All About H. Hatterr
, that attracted the widest attention on both sides of the Atlantic and in India. T. S. Eliot
said of it, "... In all my experience, I have not met with anything quite like it. It is amazing that anyone should be able to sustain a piece of work in this style and tempo at such length."
All About H. Hatterr broke all publicity records for a book published that year (Writer, London). The tone of the reviewers was of surprise and awe (Newsweek
, 1951). In the United States, too, it earned high critical acclaim. Orville Prescott, in his Book of the Week review, in The New York Times
, said of it, "... To describe a rainbow to a child born blind would not be much more difficult than to describe the unique character of All About H. Hatterr ... as startling as a unicorn in the hall bedroom. Reading it issues dizzy spells, spots before the eyes, consternation, and even thought."
Saul Bellow
, in The New York Times
, chose it for his Book of the Year selection (1952), (calling it) the book "I love."
Desani's Hali, an unclassifiable poetic work, which followed his All About H. Hatterr, after five years, was introduced by T. S. Eliot and E. M. Forster
. Eliot described its imagery as "... often terrifyingly effective," and Forster wrote, "... It keeps evoking heights above the 'summitcity' of normal achievement," ('summitcity' "where the highest aspirations reach"). The work was greeted by a chorus of distinguished praise regardless of its size (about 50 pp.).
After his return to India in 1952, Desani spent nearly fourteen years in seclusion. He practiced mantra yoga, and other methods of Hindu
and Buddhist mental culture, under guidance of teachers, traveling as far as Japan for specialized practice. At the invitation of the then Burmese Government (1960), he spent a year in a monastery practicing vipassana meditation, for some three months, reducing his sleep to two hours in 24. It was in Burma that he studied the Theravada
Buddhist text, the Abhidhamma, under a Burmese traditional teacher of the doctrine.
Requested by the Burmese Foreign Office, the Ministry of Religion, Government of Burma, chose Desani as an authoritative speaker on yoga
and Buddhist meditation techniques, to address a specially-invited audience of the Diplomatic Corps in Rangoon. Justice U Chan Htoon
, then Judge of the Supreme Court of Burma and the President of the World Federation of Buddhists (later held under house arrest by the government), presided over the meeting.
Desani, as an acknowledged teacher of these highly specialized techniques, has addressed a number of audiences. The Indian Consular Services have provided him with facilities to address select audiences in Karachi (Pakistan), Jakarta (Embassy of India), Tokyo (Embassy of India), as far as Sydney, Australia. The External Services of All India Radio, over the years, have provided him with a worldwide audience.
From 1962-67, as a special contributor to the Illustrated Weekly of India (The Times of India group), Desani published approximately 170,000 words of fiction, contemporary comment, criticism, book reviews and — before leaving for the United States, for a year and a half — wrote an unsigned weekly page ("Very High and Very Low"). Desani, until coming to the States, was one of the most widely read and influential journalists in India.
Some of his material was requested for publication in Britain and the States by, among others, the TransAtlantic Review
and The Noble Savage edited by Saul Bellow.
Desani's work can be divided into the purely creative and the contributions to international understanding. Dr S. Radhakrishnan
, then Ambassador of India to the U.S.S.R., and Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions in the University of Oxford
, and later President of India
and among the distinguished Westerners, Prof. Edmond Blunden, Oxford, Lord Butler, the Minister of Education in Britain, Prof. Vincent Harlow, Oxford, Sir Harry Lindsay
, Lord Reginald Sorensen, Prof. E.L. Stahl, Oxford, Mr. R.J. Cruikshank have spoken warmly of that aspect of Desani's work. The Marquess of Zetland
, then President of the Royal Asiatic Society, and formerly Secretary of State for India and Burma, as far back as 1951, referred to him as, "... a bridge between East and West."
Desani lived the last years of his life in Austin, Texas
where he settled in 1967. He shared a professorship in Oriental Philosophy at the University of Texas with professor Raja Rao
. After he retired in 1978 some of his former students looked after him; ill and reclusive, he died in relative obscurity in Ft. Worth on November 15, 2000. He was 91 years old.
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
n-born, British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
-educated India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n writer and Buddhist philosopher. The son of a merchant, he began his career as a journalist, and achieved fame with the cult novel All About H. Hatterr
All About H. Hatterr
All About H. Hatterr is a classic novel by G. V. Desani chronicling the adventures of an Anglo-Malay man in search of wisdom and enlightenment. "As far back as in 1951," Desani later wrote, "I said H...
(1948), considered one of the finest examples of literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
in English and a novel that compares favourably with Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
's Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
. He was for a time a university professor in America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and spent many years engaged in meditation
Meditation
Meditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit....
at various monasteries. A second volume, Hali and Collected Stories, was published in 1991.
Biography
Born in 1909 of Indian parents in NairobiNairobi
Nairobi is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The city and its surrounding area also forms the Nairobi County. The name "Nairobi" comes from the Maasai phrase Enkare Nyirobi, which translates to "the place of cool waters". However, it is popularly known as the "Green City in the Sun" and is...
, Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
, Govindas Vishnoodas Desani spent his childhood in Sindh
Sindh
Sindh historically referred to as Ba'ab-ul-Islam , is one of the four provinces of Pakistan and historically is home to the Sindhi people. It is also locally known as the "Mehran". Though Muslims form the largest religious group in Sindh, a good number of Christians, Zoroastrians and Hindus can...
, now Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
. Known as a child prodigy, between his 7th and 12th year, he managed to run away from home twice and was expelled from school at thirteen as unteachable. At the third attempt to escape, he reached England. Not yet 18, and a minor, at the personal recommendation of the then Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in the British House of Commons, George Lansbury
George Lansbury
George Lansbury was a British politician, socialist, Christian pacifist and newspaper editor. He was a Member of Parliament from 1910 to 1912 and from 1922 to 1940, and leader of the Labour Party from 1932 to 1935....
, he was admitted as a reader in the library of the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
.
At 19, he was one of the foreign correspondents serving newspapers from London. At 25, he was a correspondent of The Times of India
The Times of India
The Times of India is an Indian English-language daily newspaper. TOI has the largest circulation among all English-language newspaper in the world, across all formats . It is owned and managed by Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd...
, Reuters
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
and the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
. About that time, he was sponsored by the then Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway, one of the great railway systems of India, as Lecturer on the antiquities of Rajputana, Ajmer and Delhi. A special circular, issued by the Director of Education, Delhi, stresses the great value of his lectures. Somewhere along the way he became known as G. V. Desani.
During World War II, Desani was back in Britain. Waiving their strict academic requirements, the Imperial Institute, the Council for Adult Education in the British Armed Forces, the London County Council
London County Council
London County Council was the principal local government body for the County of London, throughout its 1889–1965 existence, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today known as Inner London and was replaced by the Greater London Council...
, the Wiltshire County Council, and the Royal Empire Society
Royal Commonwealth Society
The Royal Commonwealth Society is an international educational charity and a private members' club. Its mission is to support and promote the modern Commonwealth, its culture and core values...
accepted him as a lecturer and teacher.
One of the few speakers who could fill to overflowing an auditorium of the size of the New Picture House, Edinburgh, or the New Savoy, Glasgow, his public meetings throughout the war, were sponsored by the British Ministry of Information.
His lectures in the Crane Theatre, Liverpool, the White Rock Pavilion, Brighton, the Geography Hall, Manchester, the Town Hall, Southampton, the Pump Room, Bath, the Great Western Docks, Plymouth, the Carnegie Library, Ayr, the Central Library, Manchester
Manchester Central Library
Manchester Central Library is a circular library south of the extended Town Hall in Manchester, England. It acts as the headquarters of the Manchester Library & Information Service, which also consists of 22 other community libraries.Designed by E...
, were widely publicized by the Ministry and his audiences varied from businessmen, teachers, munitions workers where his talks were relayed to thousands at a time to army, navy, air force and civil defence personnel, hospitals, resettlement units, prisons and American servicemen stationed in Britain.
Recalling his rise as an orator in Britain, Anthony Burgess
Anthony Burgess
John Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
writes that Desani demonstrated to the British, "... in live speech the vitality of the British rhetorical tradition, brilliant in Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
and Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay PC was a British poet, historian and Whig politician. He wrote extensively as an essayist and reviewer, and on British history...
, decadent in Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
, now dead."
During the war years, Desani wrote and broadcast regularly for the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
The organ of the BBC, The Listener, welcomed him as "... a broadcasting discovery ... a voice singular in its beauty." Among the centers of learning, the New College, Oxford
New College, Oxford
New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.- Overview :The College's official name, College of St Mary, is the same as that of the older Oriel College; hence, it has been referred to as the "New College of St Mary", and is now almost always...
, the Rhodes House, Oxford, the Trinity, Cambridge, and the Psychologisch Laboratorium of the University of Amsterdam, invited him to read learned and specialized papers.
It was, however, the publication in Britain in 1948 of his experimental novel, All About H. Hatterr
All About H. Hatterr
All About H. Hatterr is a classic novel by G. V. Desani chronicling the adventures of an Anglo-Malay man in search of wisdom and enlightenment. "As far back as in 1951," Desani later wrote, "I said H...
, that attracted the widest attention on both sides of the Atlantic and in India. T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
said of it, "... In all my experience, I have not met with anything quite like it. It is amazing that anyone should be able to sustain a piece of work in this style and tempo at such length."
All About H. Hatterr broke all publicity records for a book published that year (Writer, London). The tone of the reviewers was of surprise and awe (Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
, 1951). In the United States, too, it earned high critical acclaim. Orville Prescott, in his Book of the Week review, in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, said of it, "... To describe a rainbow to a child born blind would not be much more difficult than to describe the unique character of All About H. Hatterr ... as startling as a unicorn in the hall bedroom. Reading it issues dizzy spells, spots before the eyes, consternation, and even thought."
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
, in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, chose it for his Book of the Year selection (1952), (calling it) the book "I love."
Desani's Hali, an unclassifiable poetic work, which followed his All About H. Hatterr, after five years, was introduced by T. S. Eliot and E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
. Eliot described its imagery as "... often terrifyingly effective," and Forster wrote, "... It keeps evoking heights above the 'summitcity' of normal achievement," ('summitcity' "where the highest aspirations reach"). The work was greeted by a chorus of distinguished praise regardless of its size (about 50 pp.).
After his return to India in 1952, Desani spent nearly fourteen years in seclusion. He practiced mantra yoga, and other methods of Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
and Buddhist mental culture, under guidance of teachers, traveling as far as Japan for specialized practice. At the invitation of the then Burmese Government (1960), he spent a year in a monastery practicing vipassana meditation, for some three months, reducing his sleep to two hours in 24. It was in Burma that he studied the Theravada
Theravada
Theravada ; literally, "the Teaching of the Elders" or "the Ancient Teaching", is the oldest surviving Buddhist school. It was founded in India...
Buddhist text, the Abhidhamma, under a Burmese traditional teacher of the doctrine.
Requested by the Burmese Foreign Office, the Ministry of Religion, Government of Burma, chose Desani as an authoritative speaker on yoga
Yoga
Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India. The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on Supersoul...
and Buddhist meditation techniques, to address a specially-invited audience of the Diplomatic Corps in Rangoon. Justice U Chan Htoon
Chan Htoon
Justice Chan Htoon was Attorney General and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Burma, and the architect of the first constitution of Burma in 1947. Chan Htoon served as the President of the World Fellowship of Buddhists from 1958 to 1963. He was imprisoned from 1963 to 1967 by the Burmese...
, then Judge of the Supreme Court of Burma and the President of the World Federation of Buddhists (later held under house arrest by the government), presided over the meeting.
Desani, as an acknowledged teacher of these highly specialized techniques, has addressed a number of audiences. The Indian Consular Services have provided him with facilities to address select audiences in Karachi (Pakistan), Jakarta (Embassy of India), Tokyo (Embassy of India), as far as Sydney, Australia. The External Services of All India Radio, over the years, have provided him with a worldwide audience.
From 1962-67, as a special contributor to the Illustrated Weekly of India (The Times of India group), Desani published approximately 170,000 words of fiction, contemporary comment, criticism, book reviews and — before leaving for the United States, for a year and a half — wrote an unsigned weekly page ("Very High and Very Low"). Desani, until coming to the States, was one of the most widely read and influential journalists in India.
Transatlantic Review
Transatlantic Review was a literary journal founded and edited by Joseph F. McCrindle in 1959, and published at first in Rome, then London and New York...
and The Noble Savage edited by Saul Bellow.
Desani's work can be divided into the purely creative and the contributions to international understanding. Dr S. Radhakrishnan
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan , OM, FBA was an Indian philosopher and statesman. He was the first Vice President of India and subsequently the second President of India ....
, then Ambassador of India to the U.S.S.R., and Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions in the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
, and later President of India
President of India
The President of India is the head of state and first citizen of India, as well as the Supreme Commander of the Indian Armed Forces. President of India is also the formal head of all the three branches of Indian Democracy - Legislature, Executive and Judiciary...
and among the distinguished Westerners, Prof. Edmond Blunden, Oxford, Lord Butler, the Minister of Education in Britain, Prof. Vincent Harlow, Oxford, Sir Harry Lindsay
Harry Lindsay
Sir Harry Alexander Fanshawe Lindsay KCIE, CBE was a civil servant and administrator.-Education:Lindsay was educated at St Paul’s School and Worcester College, Oxford-Career:...
, Lord Reginald Sorensen, Prof. E.L. Stahl, Oxford, Mr. R.J. Cruikshank have spoken warmly of that aspect of Desani's work. The Marquess of Zetland
Marquess of Zetland
Marquess of Zetland is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 22 August 1892 for the former Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lawrence Dundas, 3rd Earl of Zetland. Zetland is an archaic spelling of Shetland. The Dundas family descends from the wealthy Scottish businessman and...
, then President of the Royal Asiatic Society, and formerly Secretary of State for India and Burma, as far back as 1951, referred to him as, "... a bridge between East and West."
Desani lived the last years of his life in Austin, Texas
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
where he settled in 1967. He shared a professorship in Oriental Philosophy at the University of Texas with professor Raja Rao
Raja Rao
Raja Rao was an Indian writer of English language novels and short stories, whose works are deeply rooted in Hinduism. Raja Rao's semi-autobiographical novel, The Serpent and the Rope , is a story of a search for spiritual truth in Europe and India...
. After he retired in 1978 some of his former students looked after him; ill and reclusive, he died in relative obscurity in Ft. Worth on November 15, 2000. He was 91 years old.
External links
- www.desani.org
- Memorial resolution, University of Texas
- A photo of G. V. Desani at the McPherson & Company website - photos of G. V. Desani are rare on the Internet and in print.