Читать книгу Blessed Peacemakers - Robin Jarrell - Страница 54

1926— and 1912—

Land Reformers

Judged by the caste system, they were a mismatched pair. Krishnammal was from a poor Dalit or “untouchable” family, Sankaralingam from a wealthy and prestigious one. But in the years before World War II, when Mohandas Gandhi was inspiring millions of Indians to practice self-sufficiency and nonviolent resistance to the British Raj, they both became his disciples. They eventually married, but not until India had won her independence.

Krishnammal and Sankaralingam were impressed by Gandhi’s insight that the future of India lay in the development of rural agriculture. But in the years following independence, most of the subcontinent’s arable acreage was owned by powerful landowners and farmed by landless sharecroppers. The system was feudal, concentrating huge amounts of wealth in the hands of a few while keeping the peasantry in perpetual poverty. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, initially with Vinoba Bhave and then on their own, the Jagannathans worked with the Bhoodan or land-gift program, a nationwide campaign to urge landowners to donate one-sixth of their acreage to landless peasants. The Bhoodan campaign was eventually able to redistribute some four million acres. Much of it, however, was so infertile that it required several seasons of careful tending before it was ready for planting.

Recognizing that the Bhoodan wasn’t working as they had hoped, the Jagannathans created Land for the Tillers’ Freedom (LAFTI) in 1981, an organization devoted to negotiating land sales to landless farmers, helping them learn better agronomical techniques, and making sure that they don’t default on loans and lose their land. LAFTI also teaches such marketable skills as brickmaking and mat weaving to Dalit children in order to help them rise from their impoverished backgrounds. Finally, in a program similar to Habitat for Humanity, LAFTI helps poor farmers build affordable homes for themselves. The goal of all the organization’s programs and campaigns is to find nonviolent solutions to the problems of rural poverty and landlessness.

In recent years, the Jagannathans have turned their attention to agricultural sustainability. Huge swaths of South India’s coastlines have been transformed into aqua-industrial shrimp farms. These mega-operations salinate the soil and pollute groundwater, degrading the environment and forcing small farmers off their land and into already overcrowded and poverty-stricken cities. The Jagannathans have mobilized coastal peasants to fight the aquaculture conglomerate.

Krishnammal and Sankaralingam’s labor on behalf of India’s rural poor was recognized with a 2008 Right Livelihood Award, the alternative Nobel Prize. In accepting the award, Krishnammal spoke for herself and her husband by calling for a paradigm shift of the world’s privileging those who already have more than they need at the expense of those who have too little.