Adventures

After two days off, I rejoined the march on its 15th day. Already, we've ventured into Mathura, the birthplace of Krishna.

This first day back was an incredible one. At one of the breaks, I sat with the Buddhist priests who lead the march everyday. The head priest, Junsei, told me he was in Edmonton last year to talk about what he witnessed in Chechnya while he lived in Russia. The Muslim organization that invited him to Edmonton also took him around to visit some of Edmonton's surrounding communities. One of Junsei's fond memories was of the Doukhabour community. These were Russians who rejected orthodox teachings of the Bible and fled to Canada for religious freedom.

Junsei said, "Did you know that Tolstoy helped bring the Doukabours to Canada?"

Not only did I know that. I also know of the Canadian, James Mavour, that Tolstoy worked with to bring the Doukabours to Canada. So I told him how James Mavour was Douglas' great grandfather, that there is a photograph of Mavour and Tolstoy sitting in front of a bureau, and that this bureau is now in our home.

Junsei smiled and raised his hands. He said, "Ah, karma."

That was pretty neat.

For the rest of the day, I marched with a French family, Neva, Jackie and Sunam. Neva and Jackie are artists working an installation project in Delhi of the march. Sunam is their 10-year-old son. When we stopped for the day, Neva and I went up to the women preparing lunch and asked if we could cook with them. They made room for us and we made puri with them. I mimicked the men who mixed giant pans of flour (they are cooking for 1,000), water, and oil, and kneaded the mixture into dough. They showed me how to break off pieces for rolling. The women showed me how to roll the pieces into flat pancakes and toss them to a man at the centre of the circle doing the deep frying.

These marchers are India's poorest. Yet they were generous and hearty. One woman joked about exchanging clothes with me. I would have too if I had brought more than one change of clothes with me. They tried to give me more food than I could stomach. I accepted one tablespoon of potato curry, one tablespoon of a sweet rice mixture, and one puri. I am finding the food much too starchy, salty, and greasy, and can only manage a little bit.

The marchers are insulted I won't eat more. They eat twice a day. They have a small breakfast. The afternoon meal is their main meal so they eat big platefuls. Because of my sore feet and the heat, I expressed to the march organizers my concern for the marchers' single meal. They tell me the marchers have it good. They are used to much harsher conditions when they are at work. They say that on the march, the marchers eat everyday, which is more than what they get at home.

The 25,000 marchers represent over 350 million landless and displaced people in India. Jill says this is a low estimate. The landless are bonded labourors. Because they have no land, no asset, no equity of any kind, they are unable to borrow money from the bank. If they get into trouble and need money, they go to moneylenders or landowners who charge 125% interest and more. In short, if you have no land and you go into debt, you effectively become a slave for life trying to pay off your debt.

On an earlier walk, one woman told me she is a construction labouror. She chips pebbles from rocks, then carries them on her head to the construction site. She works 10 to 5 and is paid 10 rupees a day. That's 25 cents a day. If they complain to the police, the police throw them in jail for a few hours. These workers have no one on their side.

The displaced landless are forest dwellers. They have lived in the forest for generations and harvest food and medicine for home use and to sell. The government passed a forest protection act that called the forest dwellers encroachers. The forest dwellers maintain they are not encroachers, they are part of the forest and have been for centuries.

There are laws in conflict, and there in straight sell out. Once the government drives the forest dwellers out, they clear the forest and sell the land to large corporations in the name of economic advancement. There is lots of money to be made for sure, but the displaced are not benefitting from it.

The march wants the government to pass laws that give land back to the landless and set up conditions that will help these people become self-sufficient. They want access to natural resources - water, forest, and land, to be self-sustaining. The marchers don't want to move into the city. If they do, they will become beggars and live in garbage slums.

Jill's husband, Raja, and his associates are apparently the current wave of the Ghandi movement. Mahatma started the movement by demonstrating that political ends can be achieved through non-violent means and secured independence for India. The next step in this process is to give land back to the people.

There is much to learn here. I pick up bits of information from everyone I meet. On this march, I have met some of the most intelligent people anywhere. These are educated Indians who have dedicated their lives to the landless cause. They are articulate in expressing their political position, clear in outlining for me the history of the issues, and spiritual when they tell me no one can predict how the struggle will end because it is an organic process and change takes time, a long time.

At the end of the day, Neva, Jackie, Sunam, and I were so far away from our group that we were unable to get car rides back to the hotel. This is Neva and Jackie's 10th time in India so they speak some Hindi. We decided to hitch a ride back to our decrepit hotel. We manage two rides in transport trucks. In both cases, the drivers were delighted to pick us up, telling us about their relatives in North America and Europe. In both cases, they wanted us to take photographs of them as souvenirs. I obliged willingly.