Narayan Desai was born on 24 December 1924 in Valsad, Gujarat and grew up in Sabarmati Ashram. Under his father Mahadev Desai, he was influenced by Gandhi’s ideas. His father was a diarist of Mahatma Gandhi. Desai was associated with Vinoba Bhave’s “Bhoodan Movement” and Jayaprakash Narayan’s “Sampoorna Kranti”. He was famous for the anthem “Gandhi Katha” which he started in 2004. Desai was the Chancellor of Gujarat Vidyapith from 23 July 2007 to November last year. Desai was in a coma since December 10 last year and has been alive on liquid substances since then.
In the era of Bhoodan movement, Narayan Desai traveled hundreds of kilometers in Gujarat and got hundreds of acres of land and distributed it among the landless. Bhumiputra, the mouthpiece of the Bhoodan movement in Gujarati, was established and edited until 1959. The publication of Bhumiputra continued during the Emergency, regardless of censorship and battling government repression like lockout. Even today Bhoomiputra has a large readership.
Narayan Desai was associated with the Shanti Sena for activities like riot-mitigation. He was a close associate of Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan in the entire revolution movement. Bihar was also removed. His keen interest and perseverance in the training of youth is revealed. In response to the Emergency, he wrote ‘How to understand dictatorship?’ And the printing had to face repression due to printing books like ‘Nonviolent Retaliation Practices’.
For 25 years, he had recorded Mahatma Gandhi’s speech, writing and activities in his diary. Gandhiji’s autobiography has been translated into English by Mahadev Desai. Mahadev Desai’s diary is an original source in the entire Gandhi Wangmay. Mahadev Desai was the editor of Gandhiji’s English mouthpiece ‘Harijan’. It was expected that he would also write a large biography of Gandhiji, which he could not write due to his death in prison at the age of 50. Although his autobiography is in Gandhiji’s mother tongue, his biography was not in Gujarati.
In this backdrop, Narayan Desai wrote a biography of Gandhiji in four broad sections titled ‘Maru Jeevan as Mari Vani’. For this book, he was awarded the Murtidevi Award given by Jnanpith. Replying to a congratulatory sent on this award, Narayan Desai said, “I have been told by the great alphabet Maithilisharan Gupta, Rama your life itself is a poem, to become a poet is easily probable.”
He received the Sahitya Akademi Award for his father’s biography ‘Agni Kundama Ughelu Gulab’ written by Narayan Desai.