Narayan Desai on Japan's Nuclear Energy Utilization

Mr.Narayan Desai, 87, is a leading Gandhian thinker and activist in the world today. Through his father, Mr.Mahadev Desai, Gandhi's famous secretary, he was closely acquainted with Gandhi himself during his childhood.
He has recently given a reply in writing to a young lady from Japan, Kurihara Kaori, who is studying Gandhian thought at the Gujarat Vidyapith, Ahmedabad, India, where Narayan is the Chancellor. It is a reply to the question, 'If Gandhi were alive today, what message would he give to the Japanese in view of the recent triple tragedies - earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear, in Japan?'. The reply was given in Gujarati. It has been translated by Kurihara into Japanese, and has just been published in the October issue of "Sarvodaya", a monthly journal of the Tokyo-based Japan-Bharat Sarvodaya Mitrata Sangha(Japan-India Sarvodaya Friendship Association).
Here let me give a summary of that portion of Narayan's reply which has impressed me most, i.e. the portion concerning Japan's nuclear policy.
He begins this portion by saying that it would be discourteous in view of such a disaster to claim that he has been pointing out to the danger of nucler energy in the past. We should instead straight and in all humility admit that this is the second warning. The first one was Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was not only to the people of Japan but to the whole of mankind. But the big powers of the world have not taken heed of the warning. We also have failed to notice the inseparable relationship between the nuclear weapons and the nuclear energy. The people of Japan who have been the victims of the nuclear weapons have unfortunately chosen the path toward the use of the nuclear energy.
Narayan then proceeds to analyze the specific conditions in Japan. The nuclear energy generates radioactivity. It is not economical. Also it has been proved to be not perfectly safe. It may be because of the following reasons that Japan has made use of it in spite of those factors. First, there were scarce energy resources. Second, the government has defined the meaning of development as the pursuit of the material affluence, and tried to achieve economic growth by competition, thereby forgetting that it is a wrong growth that victimizes others. Moreover, they have idealized Western values, Western way of life, Western culture, thereby forgetting their own identity. In so doing they have internalized the belief that science and technology are infallible. They have forgotton that man is fallible.
And he askes if those tragedies are not the opportunity to change such a way of thingking.
I will not go into the more general and philosophical portion of the reply. Let me, however, call your attention to the fact that, at the beginning of his reply, Narayan says that it is a difficult task to say what Gandhi would have said, because he wonders if he qualifies, and, more interestingly to this writer, Gandhi was always evolving, and therefore he could not be sure how Gandhi's ideas might have changed in the 64 years after his death. Very much like him!