Devi Prasad, who has died aged 89, was a studio potter, educationist, political activist, painter, photographer and author. As a young man in India, he worked with Gandhi, the leader of the independence movement, joining his ashram, Sevagram, in 1944 as the art teacher. Until 1962 he was editor of Nai Talim, a journal supporting Gandhi's educational programme. His book Art: The Basis of Education was published in Hindi in 1959 and in English in 1998.
With a growing interest in political affairs, in 1960 Devi attended the triennial conference at Gandhigram of War Resisters' International (WRI), which brought together pacifists from around the world who were keen to learn from the Indian experience of Gandhian nonviolence. That meeting changed Devi's life. In 1962, he was persuaded to take his wife, Janaki, and their three children with him to Britain, where for 10 years he was general-secretary of WRI, sharing the post for the first two years with Tony Smythe, who subsequently became director of the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty).
As WRI's first non-white general-secretary, and then its chairman from 1972 until 1975, Devi helped to extend its outreach, to widen the range of its activities beyond the core focus on anti-conscription and conscientious objection, and to explore common ground with other peace and radical organisations. In 1963 Devi and Smythe jointly published Conscription: A World Survey: Compulsory Military Service and Resistance to It.
WRI distributed leaflets to US soldiers in Europe urging them to consider refusing to go to Vietnam and assisting those who chose to desert or register as conscientious objectors. When the Soviet Union and its allies invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, WRI sent small international teams to stage protests in Moscow, Budapest, Sofia and Warsaw. It also maintained links with the official peace organisations in the Soviet bloc.
Despite the demands of the WRI work, and the sudden death of his wife in 1969, Devi continued his artistic work, building his own kiln in the garden of his small house in Enfield, north London. In 1983, he returned to India with his second wife, Bindu. Last year, a major retrospective of his paintings and drawings, photographs and pottery, The Making of a Modern Indian Artist-Craftsman, was held in Delhi.
Devi is survived by Bindu, two sons, Sunand and Udayan, and a daughter, Amani.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/aug/09/devi-prasad-obituary
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