Building a Bridge
Mahamati, former director of Aid For India (now know as the Karuna Trust), tells the story of a valuable-and effective-link between Indian and Western Buddhists.
Towards the end of 1980, several Order members, Mitras, and Friends could be found pacing the streets of London knocking on hundreds of doors. They were representing a charity called Aid For India and to those who were sympathetic they gave an explanatory booklet and arranged to call back in a day or two.
There are still millions of Indians
, the booklet began, who suffer the stigma of being branded as Untouchables. They have the worst jobs, the worst living conditions, and the worst education of all the castes. This is their status by birth and until recently they had no chance of escape from this position. Aid For India is the charity which helps these people to overcome their caste background and find new and better lives for themselves
. When you give to a charity it is always difficult to know how your money will be spent, and especially so when it is going to a destination thousands of miles away. The element of trust and faith in the organization to which you are giving is important. Although the fund-raisers, in most cases, had never been to India, they were nevertheless able to communicate their belief that the project initiators in Poona (Indian members of our own Buddhist Order) could be relied on to make the most of whatever help they were given. Eight years later, many of those earliest supporters are still giving money regularly to Aid For India, having watched AFI's initial plans turn into reality.
It was clear to the first Order members in India that the new Buddhist movement inaugurated by the establishment of TBMSG would need to include an active social dimension. When a Buddhist family offered TBMSG some land adjacent to slums in an area of Poona called Dapodi, the opportunity was quickly taken. This gave rise to Aid For India's first appeal: the ‘Poona Project’, There was also a sewing class and a balwadi (kindergarten) run by local women. There were plans to extend the Poona Project, and also for a new project-called ‘Action In Education’ — which would set up a series of hostels for secondary school children. To be honest, I was a little disappointed that more had not been achieved. By that time we had a healthy surplus in our bank account; there was no shortage of funds. Was this the dynamic social movement that was going to change the lives of thousands? This, after all, was what we had been promising the public in London.
I returned to England still deeply committed to the vision of the Poona Project, and now to Action In Education, but more realistic as to how long it would take to achieve these goals. I knew that Virabhadra’s and Padmashuri’s early work in Dapodi went far beyond the immediate facilities being provided (even though they were saving lives). They had taken the essential first step in developing contact and trust as the basis for true co-operation.
But what we now needed was to find people in India who would be able to initiate projects, and communicate with and work sensitively with local communities. They would have to be able to inspire individuals and communities with a vision of the great changes that would take place if they could only feel confident in themselves and acquire some education and training. Thus they would be not so much doing things for the poor, as working with them, which set out to find ways of bringing health and education to some of the poorest slum dwellers.
I first went to India in 1983 to write reports for Aid For India’s third annual Newsletter. At that time, two English Order members, Virabhadra and Padmashuri, a doctor and nurse respectively, were offering clinics in borrowed huts around the Dapodi slums. so that they might help themselves. Vimalakirti had been the first Indian Order member to devote himself full-time to TBMSG’s work in Poona. Along with Lokamitra, he had been the main instigator of the Poona Project Other. Indian Order members and mitras, despite commitments to families and jobs, had given all the time they could to TBMSG’s activities. Now, many more workers were needed, particularly people steeped in the practice of the Dharma. This, of course, depended on the expansion of the directly Buddhist side of the movement And one of the things which was holding back this aspect of the project was, paradoxically, money.
Aid For India had gone out to the general public for help with the social projects, and had been well received. But the funding of exclusively Buddhist activities was still wholly dependent on contributions from FWBO centres. In 1984, Aid For India’s trustees realized that it was time to go out to Buddhists around the world, and ask them to help fund this nascent cultural and spiritual revolution.
As a consequence, Aid For India has added a ‘Dharma Fundraising’ wing to its initiative, and has organized tours which have reached out to Buddhists in the UK, USA, Malaysia, Singapore, and later this year to Germany and Taiwan. Wherever it has been possible to meet with Buddhists face to face, the response to our appeal has been one of unreserved enthusiasm and generosity.
When I made a second visit to India, earlier this year, Bahujan Hitay (meaning ‘For the Welfare of the Many’, the name given to the social wing of TBMSG) was working with so many people in so many places that it was impossible for me to witness all its activities. In Dapodi there were now balwadis, study classes, literacy courses, and health check-up and vaccination programmes in all four principal localities, as well as daily clinics in an impressive central building, sewing classes, and cultural and sports activities. Moreover, the Poona Project had extended beyond Dapodi to five other districts, most now with the same range of activities as in Dapodi.
Bahujan Hitay had a large team of teachers, health-workers, and social workers, all of whom were Indian, most of whom were Buddhists, under the direction of several full-time Indian Order members. Those affected by the Poona Project came from many different castes and religions, and could be counted in thousands.
There were hostels for high school students in Poona, Ulhasnagar, Aurangabad, and Wardha, with more opening shortly in Ahmedabad and in Poona (this one for girls). Each hostel was under the direction of a local committee of Order members, Mitras, and Friends. All told, there were now facilities for 220 students from poor home backgrounds. As construction programmes are completed, there will be facilities for many more.
On the directly Buddhist front, the retreat centre at Bhaja had expanded, and more buildings had been constructed. A large vihara was soon to be built in Dapodi.
Help has come in many ways from within India itself. People have given land and buildings, gifts of money, labour, and gifts in kind. On my recent visit I heard of the progress being made in attracting grants from the Government of India, of new fundraising ventures within India, and ideas for profit-making businesses. This is all of the highest importance. Bahujan Hitay wants to move towards economic self-sufficiency, to lessen and finally transcend its dependence on funds from abroad.
Aid For India has helped to get projects started in India, but the benefits accruing to those involved in its work in the West seem to be no less. Most, if not all fund-raisers have found themselves drawing on ever deeper resources of confidence in themselves, in the Buddhist movement both in the West and in India, and in the Dharma. Few have emerged from a two-month full-time Aid For India appeal without being substantially transformed. In a wider sense, Aid For India has served as a bridge, linking our movement with other Buddhists, and the world beyond.
From the impetus of the early stirrings of the Poona Project, Aid For India has grown into an organism with a life of its own. To underline this, last year it burst into a new dimension by giving birth to a sister charity, The Karuna Trust. Even in its early years, Aid For India has been able to offer help to projects other than those of Bahujan Hitay. It has been funding the running expenses and expansion costs of Dhardo Rimpoche’s ITBCI school in Kalimpong, some new facilities for the People’s Education Society, and a drought relief project for Tibetan refugees. Now ‘Karuna’ is looking with compassionate eyes towards those countries and causes which could offer more scope for a truly Buddhist form of social action.
Reprinted from Golden Drum 10