Bayard Rustin was an American civil rights, gay rights, and nonviolence activist and icon, perhaps best known as the lead organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

In 1945, while in prison for being a pacifist, Rustin organized the Fellowship of Reconciliation’s Free India Committee, which stood on the side of India against the British empire.

In 1949, according to Daniel Levine’s Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement, Rustin visited India to attend a planned conference on pacifism at Santiniketan near Calcutta organized by Gandhi. Gandhi was assassinated, and conference fundraising fell through, but Rustin spent seven weeks in India and Pakistan, learning Gandhian nonviolent civil resistance techniques which he could call on over the course of his activism.

John D’Emilio’s Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin describes Rustin’s engagement with South Asia, starting with his 1949 visit, where he met everyone from Prime Minister Nehru to Dalit community members, visiting Bombay, Mysore, Delhi, Jaipur, and Lahore. He helped plan Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1959 visit to India, and returned to India again in 1960, attending the War Resisters International conference, and traveling with Vinoba Bhave. He returned to Pakistan in 1982, visiting Afghan refugees.

Photo credit: Warren K. Leffler, 1963