The Right Livelihood Award Ceremony

While it is not difficult to describe the Awards Ceremony itself, it is hard to put into words the emotions felt by all those in attendance. It was held in the “old” Swedish Parliament chamber. Every seat was taken, with rows specifically assigned to the close associates of the four recipients, combined with a large number of the members of Parliament itself.

And four extraordinary winners - all women (it was remarked repeatedly), though Jagannathan was also among the winners, but could not attend. There was Dr. Monika Hauser of Medica Mondiale, honored for her work against the sexual abuse and rape of women during conflicts and war throughout the world, and her efforts to have wartime rape declared a war crime. Asha Hagi, a great souled one, who in trying to help end the ceaseless and dangerous conflict among the five traditional clans of Somalia, had women declared and recognized as a “sixth clan” regardless of origin and across clan boundaries, and a party to all peace negotiations, as well as founder of Save Somali Women and Children ( www.sswcscom.org, www.ashahagimission.com ). Amy Goodman, independent journalist, blacked out by most major media in the United States, but whose show “Democracy Now” is now broadcast on 750 radio and television stations across the world, and is a beacon of truth-telling for many of us. Both the ceremonies, and interviews with each of the other winners (including Krishnammal) can be heard on her website - www.democracynow.org/2008/12/8/ And then of course Krishnammal herself, both older and shorter than the rest, as she was quick to note at the beginning of her address. She was the last to speak.

There were trumpets, and folk violins, and children doing traditional Swedish folk dances, and an a capella group singing, among other things, songs by Abba. (This is, after all, Sweden.) And there was Krishnammal, beaming for the cameras, (I have a great picture of her with Amy Goodman, and myself, of course). Her address covered true ground, the call for people’s power as the only force that can array itself against military, political, and financial interests, and a call to create a worldwide Army of Compassion. Her son Bhoomi helped prepare a speech for her in advance (as they needed one for the press), and a good one it is (I will post it in another entry); at the event itself, she used not a word of it, but spoke simply and truly from the heart.

Krishnammal’s grandnephew and wife were there from Denmark; Sathya of course; doctor friends from Norway and northern Sweden. Kamran Saedi and Andrew Rigby, long-time friends and supporters, came from England. The buffet dinner following was fabulous (I hardly ate anything). A school choir came in to sing the traditional Santa Lucia (which will actually occur December 13th), with one girl wearing a circle of candles around her head. It was also Eid Ul-Adha, the Muslim holiday celebrating the Abraham’s sacrifice of Ishmael (in the Muslim tradition, it is Ishmael, not Isaac, who is taken up to the mountain.) It is a holiday marking the command of charity and compassion, and we wished all the Muslims, members of Asha Hagi’s party, “Eid Mubarak.” Everyone wanted photos with everyone else! I hope we will have some of them up on the Friends of LAFTI website soon.

Back in the hotel, we all stayed up until 2 A.M. Krishnammal’s normal bedtime is about 9 (she still gets up at 4 A.M. every morning, regardless of where she is), but between Skype on my computer, and cellphones blazing, there were many people to call around the world. And the entire Right Livelihood Foundation team returned to the hotel, and conversations, business card swapping, storytelling about the recipients, and just good fellowship to celebrate, if for but a fleeting moment, the possibilities of peace and justice in the world, went on late into the night.

Eldsjäl

So much happening! Flash forward - we are now in Sweden! Where the sun is setting at 2:45 p.m., and I am so busy, I barely notice!

Some of the Swedes who have accompanied Krishnammal to the engagements we have had in Stockholm surrounding the Right Livelihood Award ceremony have taken to calling her “Eldsjäl”, which means “Fire-Soul”. I have not been able to find the origin of the term, though it seems to have come from the Vikings, meaning one who has been possessed with the fire of the gods.

It is true she has been burning these days, and we have been seared by her heat. Men in suits (myself included, the suit being a rare event), have been reduced to tears or close to it, as she speaks simply of her life growing up in one of those wretched mudhuts with 12 brothers and sisters (six of whom died), and her simple message of the Divine Light within, the need for self-inquiry, and the possibilities of human development. “You cannot purchase human development in any shop,” she quips, and while the desire to eliminate the mud huts of the poor consumes her thinking, she emphasizes that the real revolution is the one that must come from within. “We are more than flesh and bone,” she says, “and we are placed on earth to do more than simply feed the body.” “You are not likely to find it in school either,” she pointedly instructs a group of university students, “but it is a daily struggle to allow yourself to be set free, which often comes with renunciation and suffering,” “I have passed my exam on this earth,” she states in her usual matter-of-fact manner, implying of course that is it now our turn.

Apparently, many of those associated with the Right Livelihood Award have been followed her work (and that of Jagannathan) for a long time. One went so far as to suggest (I have no idea whether this is apocryphal) they were closely considered for the Award in the 1980s, but at the time had been considered “too old”. Now, a member of Parliament, in introducing her, said it was one of the high points of his life (and one he didn’t expect) to meet someone associated with Mahatma Gandhi, and one who had truly carried on his legacy.

I was rather surprised by the number of people who actually seemed to know who I was. Some of it, I think, were the long letters and nomination documents I had been sending them over the years. Others knew the work of New Society Publishers (which I founded), and were pleased to hear it is still going strong.

Wherever we went, we were instantly surrounded, not so much by people asking questions, as by men and women simply coming up and either explicitly or implicitly asking for her blessing.

Eldsjäl indeed.

(You can hear an interview of Krishnammal with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! (www.democracynow.org/12/8 )

Some photos from the Opus Events

Friends

The following is written by Somik Raha, a Ph.D. student in Decision Analysis and Stanford University, and posted with permission:

In Chapter 6 of the Bhagvad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna, "O Arjuna, that yogi is considered the best who judges what is happiness and sorrow in all beings by the same standard as he would apply to himself. (32)" Further, in Chapter 14, Krishna expounds the qualities of those who are not deluded by their own nature. Among the many listed, here are a few, "one who is the same under honor and dishonor, who is equally disposed towards the friend and the foe; who has renounced all (selfish) enterprise - this one is said to have gone beyond nature. (25)"

While it is one thing to philosophically parse these words and ponder on its meaning, it is exhilarating to find a living example, without which such ideals would be relegated to the ivory towers of impractical high philosophy.

In this series, I will share stories of living examples, who can still be met by the interested reader with a little effort. But first, let us set up a contrast. We are all too familiar with the jholaawaala brigade that is ready for "andolan" any given time of the day. Such people take up worthy causes and often dedicate their lives to it. When they speak, they usually train their guns on an "enemy" and spew venom. No matter how noble the cause, readers are burned by the vitriol that comes out and are unable to move beyond the venom. The powers that be ridicule such activists and if they ever give in, it is usually out of frustration and irritation, without any sense of compassion or restitution.

The activists themselves have a career that looks like a bell curve. Their ego rises with their career, and after a certain point, they are so consumed by their self-importance that they cannot see beyond themselves and are blind to the good in those they oppose. And so begins their descent, as they get deluded by their own nature. Their co-workers end up parting ways, frustrated and dejected by the ego-centric leadership that manifests itself in many ways in their movement. At the end, we have a lot of angry people - angry at the "enemy," angry with each other, angry with themselves.

And then, right under our noses, we find the exact opposite - people who are terribly active for a cause, but are not consumed by it. Their intellect and intuition are synchronized, each guiding the other. They find divinity in those who others might call the "enemy." The laws of human nature as we know it collapse and we start witnessing changes in attitude of their opponents, some of which might be termed "miracles." Perhaps, Swami Vivekananda's observation that "what goes around comes around" is true after all.

It is time to meet Krishnammal Jagannathan, fondly referred to as Amma. Amma was born in a harijan community and was very rebellious during her childhood years. She remembers that if her brother hit her once, she would hit him back three times. As she grew older, she had the good fortune of meeting Mahatma Gandhi, and remembers being very deeply touched by that meeting. She noticed a young man who was controlling the crowds during that meeting. They met later and the young man was of Brahmin birth. Influenced by Gandhiji, he had determined that he would only marry a Harijan, and as she puts it, "In his eyes, I was that girl." She was not interested in marriage but finally, they both agreed to only get married in free India, which they did.

She completed her university education but did not wait to get her degree, she felt that the certificate was a useless piece of paper, and she would rather prefer service through Sarvodaya (which means "Welfare of All"), a movement started by Gandhiji. She and her husband walked with Vinoba Bhave in the Bhoodaan movement, a walk that should be in history textbooks all over the world. In 1968, 44 Dalit Christians were burned alive by the landlord over a land dispute. Heartbroken, she rushed to the spot and remembers that she couldn't stop crying for three days. She resolved to bring justice to these families. But not in the usual sense of litigation and punishment. Instead, she started a non-violent movement where she would plead with landlords to share their land with the less fortunate landless tillers, in the same style as the Bhoodan movement, under the banner of LAFTI (Land For Tiller's Freedom).

What is unique in her approach is that she believes there is a great light within her and in all beings. She considers the landlords who commit injustice as sick people, those who cannot see their own divine light. The language she uses to describe her encounters with the landlords is comic and tragic at the same time. She recalls, "I went to meet my friend, and he attacked me." A perplexed listener asked her, "Amma, why would a friend attack you?" And she replied, "Oh, the friend was a landlord." Another time, the moment she walked in, the landlord got so enraged that he went inside to find a stick to beat her with. Her response: instead of being angry or upset, she goes to the local temple and decides to pray for her sick friend without food and water. After three days, her friend is unable to take it anymore and comes to the temple to tell her, "Amma, please stop the fast. Let us eat together and we'll discuss this land issue." And invariably, she would get land to redistribute to the landless.

Another time, when she was on her regular morning walk, goons from her landlord friends surrounded her and poured kerosene all around. Her reaction: she sat down calmly and started singing her favorite bhajans, ready to die. This enraged the goons and they started abusing her loudly. The villagers woke up and came to her rescue. On seeing them, her attacker friends ran away.

While she walks through dangerous situations all the time, what makes the retelling so funny is the complete absence of any anger or hatred. Amma believes she lives in a world of friends and her experience confirms her belief. She also is in no hurry - she does not manage by objectives and annual performance. She says that this July (2008), a landlord involved in the massacre of 1968 told her that he was wrong and he wanted to give away his land to Amma for whatever purpose she had in mind. The indefatigable Amma is already making plans - she will start a school for Dalit children to help them come out of their condition.

Her focus has been on the empowerment of Dalit women. She claims to have an "army of women," whom she trains in non-violence. She finds that less people have, the more they have to give. She is often invited home by the women, and she will sleep on their bed, where a pillow is made for her comfort by tying the household clothes together. Lying down in that condition, she cries for these women - how hard they work, how much they sacrifice and how much they are willing to give. And yet, our society engages in exploiting them. She identifies so much with their suffering that their pain is her own. Her material needs are so few and she will be considered penniless for tax purposes, and yet she lives, walks and talks like a queen.

I met her two weeks back at Stanford and then in the Bay Area, before proceeding on to Seattle to receive the Opus Prize (as a finalist). She has also been awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternate Nobel Prize) in Stockholm. In her funny style, she told us that she tried to find Seattle on the map but was unsuccessful. When she went to the airport, they wouldn't let her board because she didn't know where she would stay in the US. She called up her daughter and finally got an address. Even after arriving, she was unsuccessful in locating Seattle on the map, but believed that she would be taken care of wherever she went, which is true for such human beings."

(Glad she found us!)

Oh, my, where to start?

Krishnammal and Vengopu arrived from San Jose, and I brought them home! For weeks, we had been borrowing cots and blankets and towels from friend, and drew up plans where everyone was to sleep. Not quite Indian railway station, and we knew enough to know that folks might self-organize when they got here.

Krishnammal has always been taken with idea that we have cornsnakes as pets. Just two, birthday presents for Aliyah when she turned six, so the snakes are now 15 years old. Not friendly creatures anymore (for lack of being handled), but they spend all day slithering about the bottom of their terrarium, eat (a defrosted mouse) every couple of weeks, and basically keep to themselves (when they aren’t singing?) So while she had some fear of snakes (I don’t think I’ve ever met an Indian who didn’t), Krishnammal was strongly attached to the idea that we’ve always had lots of animals at our home – dogs, birds, rabbits, snakes, iguanas, rats.

I delighted in cooking for all the guests – sambar (south Indian curry) and rice, ladysfingers (okra!) with mustard seed, rasam (spicy thin peppery soup – everyone agrees my sambar is better than my rasam, though most of it has to do with which package I managed to find at my local Indian foods store. But we did go out and buy an idli (steamed rice and lentil cakes) maker, and they came out good!

Prior to our three days with the Seattle University/Opus Award activities and awards, we had four days of virtually non-stop events for Krishnammal. I’d like to take credit for them – in reality, once I put out the word she was coming, the outpouring of support was extraordinary, and I didn’t have to actually organize even a single event.

Highlights included a talk with folks interested in Indian development issues at Microsoft, an event jointly sponsored by ASHA for Education and the Seattle University Department of Theology and Religious Studies, a reception at the Vedic Cultural Center, in Sammamish, a potluck at my local Friends (Quaker) Meeting (the food was great!), and topped off with 200-person fundraising dinner in Redmond that featured some magnificent bhajans, and a 45-minute bharatnatyam performance based on Krishnammal’s life that moved us all greatly. Amma gave a different speech at every event, with different stories, different details. She told me, “I am like a bird. I don’t prepare for any of them, and sometimes it is surprising even to me what comes out.” To me, they are always too short – I can listen to her stories for hours! (and do)

A special note must be made of Krishnammal’s appearance at a joint fundraiser with Habitat for Humanity. Only two blocks from my home, Habitat is building a “colony”, with some 20 homes for folks, most of whom are working, but who could not otherwise own their own house. My work place, the Health and Rehabilitative Services Administration of the state’s Department of Social and Health Services has adopted a family, a mother (who works as a nursing assistant in the hospice program in which my wife is employed), and her two young children. Krishnammal made mental notes of the houses under construction (she was of course surprised they were so large, until she remembered that for most of the year, people live totally indoors), and spoke movingly of the links between the project here in Olympia, Washingtonand her dream of building decent, weatherproof housing with the poor people of Nagai and Tiruvarur Districts.