From Francis Laleman’s 2004 weblog

 

 

November 1, 2004 - A long journey over London, Abu Dhabi, Musqat and Delhi has brought us to Bodhgaya this morning. The last stage of the journey, on the Mahabodhi Express from Delhi to Gaya, was spent mostly sleeping - but as soon as Jerry and I touched the Uruvela soil, we were welcomed by Kailash and Janardan and presented a full program of project visits for the coming days.

It is always a thrill to walk the Bodhgaya streets and meet with the many friends and acquaintances I have here: rikshawvallahs, tea stall owners, my favourite tailor near the plaza, Mr Shahabuddin around the corner. Bodhgaya is one of the few places on our globe where I really feel at home - and the fact that the sun is shining gently over the Mahabodhi Temple complex and easy-going nuns and monks roam around under the trees only adds to this homely touch.

As from tomorrow we will be engaged in visiting the Jeevan Deep projects, on which I will report on these pages very soon.

 

 

November 2, 2004 - Today was the first day of our series of field visits to the Jeevan Deep/Anand projects in Bodhgaya district. From early in the morning we bicycled over New Taridih to the main road linking Gaya with the GT Road from Calcutta to Banaras, and from there through the paddy fields to the Dalit (outcaste) communities of Lower Arjunbigha and Upper Arjunbigha. With us were Kailash, the Jeevan Deep head of educational programs, Janardan, who runs the medical subprogram, and Kuleshvar, a teacher-supervisor and instructor. We had specifically asked not to be entertained with a laborious welcome tamasha: we merely wanted to witness the daily routine of the program's work - and this is exactly what we got.

The Dalit communities in Bodhgaya District are landless workers. They cannot claim any rights, but the right to be paid a mere handful of rice for a day's labour on the fields of the Yadav landowners. This means they have never known any kind of economic independence: they are completely devoid of currency, and cannot participate in the market economy thriving along India's highways. Without money, there simply is nothing they can buy. Together with Kailash and his co-workers, Jerry and I believe that education is the key to unlocking this stalemate situation: If the Dalit want to free themselves in the future, they will have to get the means first.

At Upper Arjunbigha, Jeevan Deep is running two school centres, giving daily courses under the roof of the brickbat community hall to a fifty-some children aged 4 to 15. The educational system is along the lines of Anaupacarit Shiksha, viz. non-formal education with ample room for experience-oriented play. The philosophy of this system was outlined by Vinoba during the days of the great Mahatma Gandhi vs Ambedkar controversy, and during the following decades a mild touch of Ambedkarism was added to get a flavour of simple and straightforward humanist drive to development, mixed with the long-term vision of emancipation of India's Dalits and so-called Backward Caste Comunities.

As always, we were simply baffled by the quality, originality and inventivity of the teachers at work. It is absolutely amazing to witness how these poor and backward villages, with the help of Kailash and his team, have developed into communities where there is again some room for looking ahead, for smiles, for play, for some basic human dignity.

After the class, we participated in a weekly meeting with the village women, mostly young mothers, presided over by Janardan, and aimed at developing a basic feeling for healthcare, childcare, and family planning. A brief discussion on the life-saving opportunities offered by doctors and hospitals, and the availability of Anand funds to pay for any eventual need to go to the same, was followed by Janardan's weekly inspection of sick mothers and children, and the distribution of basic medicine and vitamins. As we watched, I noticed how thrilled the women were with every single one of Janardan's words, and how deeply thankful they looked at him when he treated their ailing babies.

There is but one possible conclusion: Jeevan Deep is doing an amazing bit of work here, and I would like to take this opportunity to express my most sincere thanks, in the name of thousands of Dalit villagers, to all the Belgian donators who are making this possible month by month.

Having toured the dusty roads, I always treasure the experience of arriving back near the Mahabodhi Temple Complex at Bodhgaya in late afternoon, when the sun turns yellowish and the multitude of monks, nuns and pilgrims circle the main temple in endless clockwise rounds, turning their prayer wheels, fumbling the beads of their rosaries, or simply chanting their Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Samma Sambuddhassa routine. Turning around with the crowd, I allow myself to be embraced by the atmosphere of peace and inward reflection - and I realize that only this drive of Buddhist revival has made it possible for the communities around Bodhgaya to develop and to take their fate in their own hands.

Tomorrow, we will be visiting three more village centers - so you may expect to read more on this topic quite soon.

 

 

November 7, 2004 - Two more days were spent visiting more Jeevan Deep/Anand centres at Dubragaon, Barki Parariya, Bapunagar, Mahudar, Ilaha and Chotki Parariya.

 

Gradually, Jerry and I shifted our attention to the medical care project, which was initiated by the initiative of the members of my December 2003 Grand Buddhist Tour. It was at Bapunagar most of all that we witnessed how skilled Janardan has become as a freelance doctor. With ease, charisma and elegance he manages to diagnose the situation of mothers and babies - prescribing treatment were needed. Most of the children suffer from scabies and a series of other skin diseases, caused by a chronic vitamin deficiency and a prolonged unbalanced diet. Staple food in the Dalit villages of the Bodhgaya District is restricted to rice and what little vegetables the season provides - and even the famous Indian dal (lentils) remains out of reach, there not being sufficient land for the villagers to grow their own lentil plants. Iron, calcium and vitamin A deficiency further cause many cases of eye diseases, growth problems and premature menopause.

 

Also at Bapunagar we were most impressed by the educational qualities of Mabelle Maria Khalko. Herself a tribal and a Christian (hence her familiar name), she is completely integrated in the Dalit community of her village, and her amazingly persistent influence has made her a real mother figure, not only to the Dalit children, but to the entire village population. And this is quite necessary: With her only daughter Rosalind in her own school class, she shows the other mothers the way to family planning. The Indian Government may have been running the Ham Do Hamare Do ("We are two, of us be two") campaign for years now - many of the families we visited still have over 10 offspring.

At Ilaha, we witnessed one of Jeevan Deep's centres in its embryonic phase. The school has been open for only two years now, and the overall atmosphere in the village is still such that parents need ample encouragment to send their children to the educational program. The school has no fixed location yet: classes are given either in the shade of a large banyan tree near the village pond or in an empty wing of a private mud-and-dung house. Moreover, this was the first and only village where elder women stealthily approached Jerry and me on a private begging mission.

To conclude our Jeevan Deep visit, on the evening of our fourth day we visited Dr Sanjay Mishra in his Bodhgaya mansion. Dr Mishra is a young brahmin doctor who has been working with the Root Institute at Taridih for many years, and who has volunteered to be Jeevan Deep's official president. He is an exceptionally warm-hearted young man, who has a deep and honest interest in improving the fate of Bodhgaya District untouchables, and talking with him was a real pleasure.

For our last day in Bihar, I had planned to travel from Bodhgaya to Kespa and visit an old friend there, whom I had not seen for more than twelve years. On two motorcycles, Kailash, Janardan, Jerry and I took off early morning for a 60 km ride through the rough and often barren Bihari landscape, where roads are almost non-existant and village crowds so disorganised as to provide the traveller with a real-live dip into unearthly chaos. Seen from the back seat of a motorcycle, Bihar is really more hellish than one can imagine. Dust and dirt are one's constant companions, while scenes of human misery and poverty pass by at speed.

In 1992 I have travelled the same roads walking, and I must say the approach of Kespa, that far-off and hidden Bhumihari (brahmin landowners) village off Tekari, brought back flashes of unforgettable memories. My friend Arun Kumar recognised me at once, and not half an hour later we were all sitting on his verandah, eating a delicious meal cooked by Arun's mother and wife. The Kespa village is named after Kashyapa (aka Mahakashyapa), one of the foremost disciples of the historical Buddha - and although it is now the settlement of a few Hindu landowner families, the site has a long and important Buddhist history and heritage. The alleys and fields are literally littered with remarkable Buddhist statues, witnessing a glorious past as a vaste monastic settlement from the Gandharan (2nd century BC) to the Kushan (2nd century AD) periods. Most impressive are the Surya Temple (the Sun God - Kashyapa and his family were originally fire-worshippers, before they were converted to Buddhism), the live-size standing Buddha near Arun's house, the Tara Temple (The Mother Goddess Tara pretty soon was considered by the Buddhists a Bodhisattva of Compassion) and the giant Avalokiteshvar (The Bodhisattva of All-Embracing Compassion) image standing a bit forlornly in its compound. Guided by Kashyapa, the villagers of Kespa became ardent Buddhists, and they must have remained so for at least eight centuries. At the decline of Buddhism in India, they came back to the Hindu fold - but since they had been straying from the path of the gods, the brahmin community was hesitant to take them back into their caste. At the risk of being socially undesirable for eternities to come, they then regrouped and set up their own Brahmin subcaste of Bhumihari (Landowners).

A visit to the landowner community of Kespa is an interesting thing to do when one has been touring the landless untouchable communities for a few days, for here one is confronted with exactly the opposite side of Bihar's social spectre. But, of the fact that not all landowners have a feudal outlook on their subjects, my friend Arun Kumar is living proof. My arriving at his abode with two Dalit friends posed no difficulties whatsoever, and he didn't even hesitate to share food and his meal with us. Arun is a deeply religious man, but with an amazingly modern outlook - and I have always valued his friendship, whereas he leaves nothing undone to give expression to his appreciation for my involvement with the emancipation of the Dalits.

 

 

November 8, 2004 - The roads plying from Tekari to the Barabar Hills are absolutely horrible - but this didn't get in our way from cruising our bikes through the Bihari landscape, crossing bridgeless riverbeds, enduring sand and countless particles of dust, dirt and cowdung, hovering around potholes and horning endless passers-by out of the way. When we reached the hills it was nearly sunset - but there I was again, at the Barabar Hill Caves, one of Bihar's most exquisite, most famous, but nevertheless almost never visited archaeological sites. Indeed: since Edward Morgan Forster has featured the Barabar Hills (conveniently masqueraded as "Malabar Hills") in his foremost novel A Passage to India, most of the world's reading citizens have been keeping their own private visualisation of the site in their memory. Some of Forster's readers might even have seen the actual site in David Lean’s Passage to India cinema classic (the Malabar Hill scenes were shot at Barabar) - but of course, nothing beats the real thing, and it is only when one climbs the steps leading to the terrace in front of the caves that one can really feel the thrill which Aziz wanted to convey to Mrs Moore and Miss Quested.

 

The caves were carved out of the marble-and-granite rocks by secluded monks of the Ajivaka Sect (a mendicant order, nihilist in persuasion, and contemporary to the historical Buddha) during the reign of Emperor Ashok (3rd century BC), and then carefully polished and adorned with inscriptions in the Ardha-Magadhi language. Their function is uncertain - but from the outline of the inner chambers I take it that they might have served both as a rain-retreat for the mendicant community and as living quarters, maybe for a small group of Ajivaka supporters. In any case, Ashok himself was a sound ambassador not only of the Buddhist sangha but of whatever non-Vedic philosophical discipline thriving in his immense empire - and the Barabar Hill Caves are proof of his unconditional drive to help establish a new dharma throughout to then-known world.

It goes without saying that our visit brought back memories, not only of the days of my 1,500 km long paidal yatra (walk) in 1992, but also of the rather enigmatic Forster story. Whatever really happened to Miss Quested up there we will probably never know, but the psychology of an unprepared visitor to an entrancing place, hidden away in a foreign culture apparently keeping a completely different set of human, moral and ethical values - has remained an interesting feature of global travelling ever since. As a matter of fact, wherever one goes it isn't so hard to recognize modern instances of what I call "the Miss Quested Syndrome": From my travels this very year I recall at least five intriguing Miss Questedy circumstances experienced by my co-travellers in Damascus, in Palmyra, in Beirut, in Kathmandu and in Lhasa.
Which reminds one that our route to true cross-culturalism remains steep and arduous, even in today's so-called globalised world ...

 

 

November 11, 2004 - Back in Delhi... Having taken the Rajdhani Express train for a 15 hour nightride through northern India, Jerry and I were again welcomed to the capital by my good friends Bilal and Sheher Chapri, both of whom never leave anything undone to make me feel at home with them.

 

Both Bilal and Sheher keep a genuine interest in every one of my running projects, and it is always a real pleasure to exchange views with them. From the moment we meet, the topics of discussion run all over the place: Sufism, the state of the umma, the golden age of the Middle East, the Damascus monuments, current affairs, the American election results, Indian politics, social work in Bihar, Buddhism, ...  there really is no time to cover it all, and this is a good thing , because I tend to love to always leave something unfinished, if only to give me a drive to come back as soon as I possibly can.

With Sheher we visited the Sarai Kale Khan colony on the southern outskirts of Old Delhi. Different from its eloquent name, the Sarai Kale Khan is really nothing more than a typical Indian city slum, where a muslim population of a few hundred heads huddle together to find some shelter from the bustling city and its over-demanding economic dynamics. Most of the families are Bihari and Bengali immigrants, having come to Delhi with the typical hopes of getting a better life and an enhanced chance of prosperity. However - once in the city, they find themselves utterly lost and chanceless, ending up in a slum, where the main concern is day-to-day survival and nothing else.
Some of the men have taken to cycle rikshaw repairing in order to make a living, but most can't do much more than beg around in the Chandni Chowk neighbourhood around the Jama Masjid mosque.

Sheher has taken the fate of the Sarai Kale Khan dwellers at heart, and making ample use of her contacts in that part of Delhi's population which has fundraising capabilities, she has set up a training program for the Sarai women, in order to help them establish a basic form of economic independency. The plan is to set up a workshop in the middle of the slum, with a number of Singer sewing machines, and get the women to producing nicely embroidered shalwar-qamiz and kurta-pyjama sets, which then can be sold into both the domestic and foreign markets. In order to come to this, Sheher has first established contacts with the slum elderly women, the amma or "mothers" - and from this, it is hoped that the younger women will follow suit. Another aspect is to get the (albeit silent) support of the local maulvi - for as soon as the maulvi is on track, he will be a key figure to get the men of the Sarai behind the idea of their wives' emancipation.

The scheme is running smoothly. Already a (female) sewing instructor is being trained, and the funds for the sewing machines are raising by the day. It is a real thrill to witness Sheher on the field: her charisma is unheard of, and literally every woman, man and youngster in the Serai is eating her every word and gesture as if they were staple food.
All this reminds us of the evocative story told by Rohinton Mistry in his A Fine Balance classic. Let us hope that Sheher's Sarai Project may run towards a brighter future than what happened to Dina and her companions in Mumbai ... !  Insha'allah !

 

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