A day in THIRD WORLD

Long ago i read about Rachel Corrie's death.. but recently i saw 'occupation 101' A must see documentary. I remembered Rachel again

I’m here for other children.
I’m here because I care.
I’m here because children everywhere are suffering and because forty thousand people die each day from hunger.
I’m here because those people are mostly children.We have got to understand that the poor are all around us and we are ignoring them.
We have got to understand that these deaths are preventable.
We have got to understand that people in third world countries think and care and smile and cry just like us.
We have got to understand that they dream our dreams and we dream theirs.
We have got to understand that they are us.
We are them.My dream is to stop hunger by the year 2000.
My dream is to give the poor a chance.
My dream is to save the 40,000 people who die each day.
My dream can and will come true if we all look into the future and see the light that shines there.
If we ignore hunger, that light will go out.
If we all help and work together, it will grow and burn free with the potential of tomorrow.

A Master Peace

The following speech is been taken from the last scene in ‘The Great Dictator’, one of the masterpieces by Charles Chaplin, filmed in 1940

Below is the full transcript from the scene:

“I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an Emperor - that’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible — Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another; human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there’s room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful.

But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me I say, “Do not despair.” The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass and dictators die; and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Soldiers: Don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel; who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate; only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural.

Soldiers: Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written, “the kingdom of God is within man” — not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men, in you, you the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite!! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people!! Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise!! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.
Soldiers: In the name of democracy, let us all unite!!!

Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up, Hannah. The clouds are lifting. The sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world, a kindlier world, where men will rise above their hate, their greed and brutality.

Look up, Hannah. The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow — into the light of hope, into the future, the glorious future that belongs to you, to me, and to all of us. Look up, Hannah. Look up.”

LETTER TO A TEACHER

My dear friends... a must read.

Pls download a copy of this book from the below link.

http://magazine.crimsonfeet.org/IMG/pdf/LTAT_Final.pdf

Eight young Italian boys from the mountains outside Florence wrote this passionate and eloquent book. It took them a year. Simple and clearly, with some devastating statistical analysis of the Italian education system, they set out to show the ways in which attitudes towards class, behavior, language and subject-matter militates against the poor. They describe too, the reforms they propose, and the methods they use in their own school - the School of Barbiana, started under the guidance of a parish priest and now run entirely by the children.

This remarkable book was written for the parents of the Italian poor. But it is about poor everywhere: their anger is the anger of every worker and peasant who sees middle-class children absorbed effortlessly into schools as teacher’s favorites.

Letter to a Teacher was a best seller in Italy and has been published subsequently in many languages. The School of Barbiana was awarded the prize of the Italian Physical Society, usually reserved for promising physicists, for the statistical achievement involved in the book.

Image: Don Lorenzo Milani(1923-67), founder of the school of Barbiana.

The Soul of Sabarmati Ashram – Maganlal Gandhi.

In 1915, following a plague outbreak Gandhi decided to take his group of over forty souls to a plot of land at Sabarmati, where ‘there was no building … and no tree’ and house them at canvass, he(Gandhi) admitted that ‘the whole conception about the removal was mine, the execution was as usual left to Maganlal.’ – lbid.,p.616

Under Maganlal’s leadership the prickly shrubs, rocks, sand and cacti were removed from the river bank and vegetables and neem trees were planted, and ‘in very short time the barren land became green with vegitables’ – Narayan Desai, The Fire and the Rose[Biography of Mahadevabhai], Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1995, p.85.

Maganlal designed and supervised the construction of all the buildings, he systematized the management of the ashram, introduced discipline and took control of ashram craft work.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the ashram at Sabamati was Maganlal’s creation and that to a large degree he was the ‘soul’ of the ashram.

Who's Maganlal Gandhi?

Maganlal and his elder brother Chhaganlal were the sons of M.K Gandhi's older cousin Kushalbhai.

Gandhiji’s referred to Maganlal and his elder brother Chhaganlal as nephews.

In 1904 South Africa, Maganlal decided to leave his business for good and joined Gandhiji to look after Phoenix Settlement(Ashram).

Maganlal was not just a gifted organizer and tireless worker, he was also the embodiment of Gandhi’s spiritual and moral quest, in the Mahatma's words, ‘a living example of the saying: “Practice as you preach”’ –‘Magankaka’, Navajivan, 5 August 1928

Gandhiji didn`t coin the word 'Satyagraha'

Gandhi was leading a mass moment against laws which discriminated against Indians in South Africa and he originally used the term passive-resistance for the struggle, but soon came to realize that this could lead to misunderstandings and was searching for Indian word.
On 27 December 1907, in a competition announced in Young India, Gandhi offered a £2 prize to the person who came up with a suitable name. Maganlal Gandhi sent in the best entry. He suggested ‘sadagraha’ (sad-good, agraha- firmness in). Gandhi modified it slightly to ‘ satyagraha’ (sat- truth, agraha- firmness in)

- Sushila Nayar, Mahatma Ghandhi, volume IV: Satayagraha at Work, Ahemedabad: Navajivan, 1989, p119: Gandhi, An Autobiography, p235.