Miles Paine was an English engineer who lived for a total of 20 years in India, where he helped to supply equipment to the country’s railways. While there he came into contact with the interfaith Moral Re-Armament (MRA) movement, led by Rajmohan Gandhi, a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, and became a devoted MRA volunteer even after he had returned home.
Miles was born in Paddington, London. At the age of 17 he joined the Royal Engineers and, following basic training, was sent to Jesus College Cambridge for a crash course in engineering.
Towards the end of the second world war he transferred to the Indian army as a captain, fighting on the Burmese front before returning home in 1947. On his release from the army he was for several years a production engineer at the Westinghouse Brake and Signal Company in Chippenham, Wiltshire, before accepting an opportunity to return to India to manage a Westinghouse factory in Calcutta (Kolkata). After a move to another engineering company, Struthers Wells, took him to Bombay (Mumbai) in 1966, Miles met Janet Hutchison, who was working there for MRA, and in 1968 left his job to work as a volunteer for the movement.
He and Janet married in 1969 and had the first of their two sons in Bombay before coming back to live in Britain in 1975. For several years they jointly managed Tirley Garth, an MRA conference centre in Cheshire, before moving to Manchester to host regular MRA events attended by international students.
In the 1990s, Miles and Janet travelled widely with the programme Foundations for Freedom, running courses throughout eastern Europe on the moral and spiritual values that underpin democracy. Over the years, they welcomed around 550 international guests to their home.
When Miles turned 80, he and Janet moved to her native Glasgow to continue their MRA work, but a year later she died. He remained in Glasgow and spent his final years living with family.
Extracted from this obituary by his great nephew.
