[3] Ward described Ostergaard as "a rock-like defender of academic freedom", and noted his "moral staunchness" in his support for the student revolts of the 1960s and for David Selbourne in his conflict with Ruskin College.
[4] He was one of a number of writers who contributed to the development of anarcho-pacifist thought and action during and shortly after the Second World War; others included Read, Alex Comfort, Nicolas Walter, David Thoreau Wieck, Dorothy Day, and Paul Goodman.
[5] Drawing on Gandhism, he argued that nonviolence offered a way to reconcile political principles with tactics and to envision of a society without organized coercion.
[2] His work on Gandhism sought to reframe the thought of Mohandas Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave and Jayaprakash Narayan in terms of anarchism.
[9] Reviewing the book in the India Quarterly, Usha Mehta wrote that it evinced "the authors' deep understanding of Indian society and people and of their sympathy for the Sarvodaya movement.
[11] In a review in the Journal of Asian and African Studies, Frank F. Conlon questioned Ostergaard and Currell's methodology but identified the book as "an important first step" that would "reveal much about the condition of sarvodaya in contemporary India and ... stimulate further historical and sociological lines of enquiry.
[3] Ostergaard's account of the Sarvodaya movement here focuses on the period from 1969 to 1977 and on the figures of Bhave and Narayan and their differences, including their respective approaches to the Emergency of 1975–77 and the premiership of Indira Gandhi.