There’s a simple reason why retired URI math professor E. R. “Sury” Suryanarayan and his wife, Indu, made a gift last September of $100,000 to the University’s Making a Difference campaign dedicated specifically to the Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies: They had been planning it for quite some time.
Now they are making this contribution to URI, where Sury taught math for over 40 years until retiring in 2001 and Indu earned three advanced degrees in English and library science. When they learned about URI’s plans to raise $5 million for the Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies, they knew what to do.
“In this century there is an urgent need for nonviolence to enter the lives of people all over the world,” Sury wrote recently. Both he and Indu believe nonviolence to be the highest form of “self-reverence, self-knowledge, and self-control.”
Having grown up in Mahatma Gandhi’s India, the Suryanarayans knew well the powerful effects of nonviolence before they came to the United States 50 years ago. They also admired Martin Luther King’s commitment to nonviolence and recognized its power to create change. A 21st century renewal of that commitment, they insist, would cure many of the ills we face today, from environmental degradation to international wars.
Seeing global pollution and the exhaustion of non-renewable resources as a form of violence, Indu and Sury say a movement of nonviolence would encompass proper treatment of the planet. “With proper education, we can abolish even poverty and hunger and remove grave disparities that exist and that can easily become a source of conflict and tension,” Sury says.
Their decision to make a large gift to URI is a natural element of their cultural background. “In India, everyone gives, even the poor,” Indu says. “People give mostly to charity, but everyone believes they should give.”
As Sury explains, there is an aphorism in India that says: “You must earn to give. Collect money as if you were never going to die. When the time comes, think about how you want to give that money; once you decide, give it away as if you are going to die tomorrow.”
In India, as well, there is great emphasis on higher education, Indu says, which makes their gift to URI quite appropriate and relevant. “Education is the key,” Sury says. “This is Darwin’s idea that there is always hope for us. We can and should continuously improve. We are still climbing the ladder of evolution in civilization.”
On the same theme, Sury writes, “We are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world. When nonviolence becomes a guiding philosophy in our lives, then we may all live in a world of peace, appreciating one another for what we are.”
By John Pantalone ’71
Photo By Nora Lewis
