Gandhian Activist Sunderlal Bahuguna at Navdanya. ~ Carrie Stiles
Create a New World: The Creative Head, Compassionate Heart & Constructive Hand.
“Today our heart is very small, especially the young people… The heart of one is enclosed. You know the formula of love (is) whomsoever you love you will get love in return. So why don’t you inspire for more love from many people. Love not only from human beings, but other beings. Love from nature, love from trees, love from rivers and mountains. Develop your compassionate heart.” ~ Bahuguna
Control Your Tongue.
“The tongue creates many problems. When you are talking it will say bad things to others… it requires many things like taste. The first thing we have to do is to control this tongue.” ~ Bahuguna
Displacement vs The Spirit of Freedom in the Hills.
How blessed we were to study with the great Gandhian activist Sunderlal Bahuguna at Navdanya Earth University in North India. Sunderlal Bahuguna was awarded India’s second highest civilian honor and the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (The Right Livelihood Award) for his tremendous work leading the Chipko Movement and the Anti-Tehri Dam movement against large dams, mining and deforestation, across the country. Bahuguna Ji fasted for 70 days after which Prime Minister Indira Gandhi granted his request to stop the felling of the trees in the High Himalaya.
“We in Himalaya are facing a crisis of survival due to the suicidal activities being carried out in the name of development… The monstrous Tehri dam is a symbol of this… There is need for a new and long-term policy to protect the dying Himalaya. I do not want to see the death of the most sacred river of the world — the Ganga — for short-term economic gains.”
~ Sunderlal Bahuguna
“I treasure Awards of Ridicule, Neglect, Isolation and Insult, which Every social activist is proud of” ~ S. B.
Breaking Free: Dr. Madhu on Gandhi & The British Salt Tax at Navdanya. ~ Carrie Stiles
Dr. Madhusuri Prakash’s reflects on how to break free of oppressive economic power by removing the monetary gestures, or icons, of subservience. Dr. Prakash’s work explores indigenous cultures, grassroots movements, cultural diversity and Environmental Education. Her books include Grassroots Postmodernism–Remaking the Soil of Cultures and Escaping Education–Living as Learning within Grassroots Cultures.
This video was shot during Navdanya‘s remarkable Gandhi and Globalization course, which explored the economic crisis, the ecological crisis and the political crisis in the context of Gandhian philosophy and politics embodied in Swaraj, Swadeshi, Sarvodaya and Satyagraha.
Earth Pilgrim Satish Kumar at Navdanya. ~ Carrie Stiles
One of the greatest blessings of my life was studying with the visionary peace pilgrim Satish Kumar at Navdanya for the Earth University’s (Bija Vidyapeeth’s) remarkable Gandhi and Globalization Course. Satish Ji founded Schumacker College in Devon England. He became a walking Jain monk at the age of nine in Rajasthan. Satish Ji escaped to join the Gandhian movement and Vinoba Bhave, the leader of Gandhi’s Satyagraha truth force movement. In 1962 Kumar and his friend E P Menon undertook a peace pilgrimage walking from India to the four capitals of the nuclear world: Moscow, Paris, London and the U.S. and took no money on their walking voyage at the advice of their guru Vinoba Bhave.
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“This was Mahatma Gandhi’s idea, moving from ownership to relationship — seeing that land does not belong to us. We belong to the land. We are not the owners of the land. We are the friends of the land, like friends of the earth. The fundamental shift is in this consciousness that land does not belong to us, we belong to the land.” ~ Satish Kumar
Satish Kumar on Vinoba Bhave Talks on the Gita.
Earth Pilgrim Satish Kumar on Civil Disobedience.
Earth Pilgrim Satish Kumar on Nonviolence at Navdanya.
Earth Pilgrim Satish Kumar on the trial of Mahatma Gandhi Ji.
Satish Kumar & Madhu on Nonviolent Thought at Navdanya
Satish Kumar No Such Thing as Utopia.
Earth Pilgrim Satish Kumar on Binary Dualism at Navdanya.
“We live under the power of Modern Consciousness, which means that we are obsessed with progress. Wherever you are is not good enough. We always want to achieve something, rather than experience something. The opposite of this is Spiritual Consciousness. By that I mean you find enchantment in every action you do, rather in just the results of your action. Spiritual Consciousness is not a particular religion but a way of being.”
~ Satish Kumar
My Interview with the former Prime Minister of Tibet in Exile Venerable Samdhong Rinpoche. ~ Carrie Stiles
“We know that social structures kill and maim as surely as the bullet and the knife” ~ Hoivik
Norwegian peace researcher Johan Galtung first proposed the theory of Structural Violence (Barash & Webel, 2009).
Galtung defines violence as the avoidable disparity between the potential ability to fulfill basic needs and their actual fulfillment. Poverty and unjust socio-political and economic institutions, systems and structures harm, or kill people. Structural Violence is indirect, avoidable violence built into structures where there is unequal power and consequently unequal life chances. Structural Violence is an oppressive framework that operates through powerful associations, organizations and institutions that guarantees privilege amongst its leaders, prioritization of their political agenda, and an enforcement of their methods and ideologies.
“The identification of redressable injustice is not only what animates us to think about justice and injustice, it’s also central … to the theory of justice (p. VII) … The impossibility of remaining silent on a subject is an observation that can be made about many cases of injustice that move us to rage in a way that is hard for our language to capture. And yet any analysis of injustice would also demand clear articulation and reasoned scrutiny (p. 1)” ~ Amartya Sen
“As the twentieth century draws to a close, the world’s poor are the chief victims of Structural Violence – a violence which has thus far defied the analysis of many seeking to understand the nature and distribution of extreme suffering. Why might this be so? One answer is that the poor are not only more likely to suffer, they are also more likely to have their suffering silenced.” ~ Dr. Paul Farmer
Creating a system of accountability requires tracing experiences of suffering back to specific sources in a global context.
The basis of many social movements hinges on tracing Structural Violence back to a source and holding those sources accountable through creative, innovative methods. It is not that Structural Violence exists when things are not clear, but rather where there is complexity of social forces. The complexity of social forces must be rendered comprehensible for constructive Conflict Resolution to mitigate Structural Violence. It is the role of Conflict Resolution Practitioners and Scholars to better understand the subject-action-object relations to create the space necessary for constructive dialogue.
Elaborating a theory of Structural Violence demands that we design a system of accountability by mounting evidence rather than accepting the illusive character of suffering. The example of the Life Patent and Intellectual Property Rights Regimes over Plant Genetic Resources illuminates an example of the complex forces that converge to generate Structural Violence.
~ Carrie Stiles
Raw, Pure, Handmade Permaculture with Panya Founder Christian Shearer. ~ Carrie Stiles
Panya is giving back to the earth and building a global permaculture community.
Please listen to Panya founder Christian Shearer’s inspiring vision of how to live sustainably with the earth. His message of green self-reliance teaches us to find our purpose, get inspired and do it ourselves.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. ” ~ Margaret Mead
