Jill Carr-Harris on Jai Jagat and a march to Geneva, Lidköping: transcript

Key points

• Jai Jagat means victory to the world, a phrase coined by Vinoba Bhave in the 1950s to include everyone.
• She went to India in 1986 as a UN consultant, left after seeing tree planting benefit rich landlords, and became a volunteer.
• Working with Rajagopal and Ekta Parishat in villages changed her view of what people aspire to.
• A march of 50,000 people to Agra led to a 10-point land reform agreement with the Indian government.
• Jai Jagat plans a 10,000-kilometre march through 17 countries from New Delhi to Geneva, with an action in Geneva in September 2020.
• She calls for development from the bottom up, a more redistributive economy, and thanks the Lidköping hosts.

Chapters

1. 0:00Jai Jagat: victory to the world
2. 1:05From the UN to volunteering in India
3. 2:57South-South Solidarity and meeting Rajagopal
4. 5:32Working with the poor and the middle class
5. 7:09The Agra march and land reform agreement
6. 9:40Planning the march from New Delhi to Geneva
7. 11:31Geneva action and recommendations
8. 12:38Thanks to Lidköping

Full transcript

0:00I'm going to start in India by saying Jai Jagat. So I'm going to say it and I want to see if you can say it. Jai Jagat! Jai Jagat! Jai jagat means victory to the world. It sounds very militaristic, doesn't it? But it really means everybody is included. It's not just Jai Hind, you know, God bless him. or god bless sweden or god bless switzerland or god bless america but it really means god bless all of us in the world and this was uh something that was given by vinabha bhave a gandhian follower in the 1950s he coined this as a way to say that we keep our feet rooted in our countries and our locality but we keep the windows open for the flow of all the different forces

1:05of the world to be benefited by those forces so Jai Jagat and Jai Jagat before I speak a few minutes about that let me just say a few things about myself so I can locate my white face and my Indian locality for you I basically went to India in 1986, thinking I was going to be there for one year, and I've stayed 32 years. So it's been a beautiful life, and my professional life has been there.

1:47and I want to also say I started with the United Nations so I went to India as a UN employee I was a kind of a consultant working on social forestry project and what I realized after about six or eight months in India is that the tree planting programs that we were supporting through the UN were actually going to rich landlords and not to the poor peasantry to whom the project was devoted and dedicated and so soon after I left the UN and I remember I wrote my family in Canada and said I'm leaving the UN and by the way I'm leaving my job and I'm becoming a volunteer in India and of course they were Naturally, as parents, deeply disturbed. But I think, you know, this was probably one of the best decisions of my life, because it meant that you sort of take on something in the unknown, because you have a deep passion for it.

2:57So I stayed on in India, and I continued to set up an organization called South-South Solidarity. So being a Canadian, not an American, I'd like to distinguish that. I was wanting from my UN five years in the United Nations to really help to see development from a South perspective not from a perspective of New York or Geneva or even Stockholm but to see it from a perspective of different South communities helping each other and so we started this and worked for about 10 years and it was through this process that I got into social justice issues in India and through the social justice issues particularly with women and villagers and some of the local issues, I began to see that what I was really doing was

3:58piecework. So, that's how I grew. But somewhere in this, I couldn't figure out how do people in poor areas, how do you keep them excited about changing their life? Because I knew with money, I could only keep them excited as long as the money was there. so i was trying to think what is the motivation to keep people involved in the capacity building and in their own development and i realized that maybe gandhi has something to say about that and when i went to gandhi peace foundation in 1993 to buy some books and to get more information I happened to meet Rajagopal.

4:48And it was through a long association with Rajagopal and Ekta Parishat I had the great privilege of not only working in an NGO but working deep in the villages of India and learning how people and what people's aspirations are not what my thought of their aspiration is. and I have to tell you As you're all related to BLLF in some manner, that I thought I was going to go and change those wonderful women in the villages, but what happened is they changed me.

5:32And so I never really desired to go back to Canada again because of those changes. so I I'm still in India having a few times gone back and forth out of desperation for a little Canadian snow but mostly I've been in India so why I wanted to tell you that story is because the work that I do sits with the deep commitment that I feel and so the Jai Jagat victory to everybody when you live in a country like India and you're working with very poor people you realize that at some level you also have to work with the middle class not to make them allies so they oppress poor people less so you're working always on two fronts you're working on the front of helping people in their capacity building to make their own decisions and lead their life in a

6:38Giving them the space to have their land and livelihood resources, but on the other hand, you're working with the middle class and elite communities to understand that they should be more sensitive to the survival of poorer people and try in their own way to be helpful and not continue a system that is so oppressive.

7:09as India does have high degrees of poverty as you know like Pakistan are very similar and I know it's also similar to some of the Afghan problems as well so back to Jai Jagat I have a few minutes left basically Jai Jagat came out of a concept we had done a number of marches in India. Marches that help to mobilize people to stand up for their rights. I'm sure you've heard about them as Raj Gopal has been in Leach Chopin before.

7:51But what is very interesting is that after our last march, when 50,000 people marched for 10 days for a land reform agenda on the national highway in India to Agra, Agra is the famous place of the Taj Mahal. We marched there and the government rushed to make an agreement with those people because the government of India really didn't want them to come to New Delhi, so many of them.

8:26So they rushed, and we had a very good 10-point land agreement, and it was wonderful to see 50,000 people sit with a senior minister in the Indian government and sign an agreement that sealed a land reform agenda, something that is very unusual in a parliamentary system. so after that agreement and things went quite well in the follow-up we had some problems when a new government was elected but in that process many countries invited some of us in Ekta Parashat particularly Rajagopo to their countries to talk about how did you do this? I mean this isn't how did you mobilize so many people to walk for so long and how did you get the government to sign an agreement in Agra and so we shared some of the experiences wherever I went we I was there too in some places we shared some of the some of the ideas and

9:40they said you know we need to do something internationally so the the thought was that maybe this non-violent social movement that Ekta Parishad had built based on Gandhian lines could be used somehow internationally so we began to share that experience and came up with an idea of marching from New Delhi that is Gandhi's grave, where Gandhi is buried in New Delhi, Rajgat, to Geneva.

10:18Imagine, 10,000 kilometers through 17 countries, some of them the most violent countries in the world, many of them Muslim countries, and through Eastern Europe where there has been a tremendous backlash against refugees. And against the influx as it has in other parts of Europe. But we thought, why is this important? It was important because we thought we needed to move from violence to non-violence.

10:53Because we needed to not go as refugees but as citizens. Because we felt we needed something different in terms of international governance. And so, with this kind of commitment, we began to plan a campaign within Ekta Parishet in India and began to involve Ekta Europe, who, as Maggie said, is a wonderful body of different organizations and people who have deep sense of alliance to the mission of the Ekta Parishet.

11:31and so we began to plan this so in conclusion we are thinking of having a massive action in Geneva in in September for about two weeks at the end of September 2020 after this long March is completed after other marches in other parts of the world will be completed and to really tell some of the UN and organizations based on some...

12:03Well crafted recommendations and thoughtful recommendations. How we need to be more bottom up and not top down. How we are not just recipients of development, but we are the architects of development. How poor people need to be included. Black and white are the same. Muslims and Christians need to be there at the table, not in polarized forms of politics.

12:38And we need a different kind of system in terms of a more redistributive economy. me so these are some of the things that we're proposing to speak about in the Jai Jagat and we hope that the people here in Litschopen will join us in this effort because what we've seen here and I would just like to conclude with this what we have seen here in the last three days amazes us a municipality like yours with so much engagement in the Iqbal day in the international issues both the issues of peace and justice and we would like so many other communities like you To be able to stand up and do what is right, which is to say, we are all one. We are all a common humanity. So I just want to express to Britt Meri, to Beng, to Kirsten and to all the team here, Cecilia and of course Lena, the wonderful time we've had and we really welcome

13:59seeing you again and wish you a good day thank you

Source and licence

Recording: File:Jill Carr-Harris' speech, part 1, Lidköping, Sweden.webm by Yann Forget (2017-04-25), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY 3.0.

The transcript is machine speech-to-text by the TidyTools Audio & video transcriber; the summary, key points and chapters were written by Claude from that transcript. Both may contain errors: check the recording before quoting it.