An Inner Journey of Ahimsa — 2 Apr 2022

This morning in an ecological leadership fellowship, we had a guest from an indigenous tribe in central India, an inspiring woman who has been striving to protect her tribe against enforced evictions from their ancestral land in order to create a tiger reserve that could bring in revenue for the government. In spite of persistent persecution by the authorities, she and her collaborators have held strong and also continue to work on women’s rights, restoration of water bodies, regeneration of their forests, etc.

Since we met her in an online meeting that she was not used to, she was uncomfortable in the beginning and was not sure of how to settle down. Our translator had to ask her to sit still in one place and not move around with her phone, and ask her to have no visual disturbance on camera. This process by itself — asking someone whose context is not built for digital interaction, to adopt protocols around it — was perhaps a form of violence we unconsciously inflicted in the interest of our learning. Of course, during the interaction, she shared very candidly and fluently of her work, in a language she was comfortable in. At the end, she left us with an apology, stating that she thought she was merely a villager, who could not sound smart like us (largely urban) listeners.

Here is a woman who is a leader in her community, courageous, doing pioneering work against all odds. In a world lost in the politics of climate change, she and her tribe are leading the way through their indigenousness, that naturally teaches them to belong in nature. Yet, the digital setting and her own experience with colonisation taught her to feel ashamed and apologetic of her own context and culture. Much as I am grateful and inspired after meeting her, I am also left reflective of what we are doing to our indigenous and rural communities by glamourising a certain kind of lifestyle. We continue colonisation in so many ways, and have even digitised the process.

· How do you define leadership? Is it inclusive?

· How do we truly be inclusive, in a non-violent way?

#AnInnerJourneyOfAhimsa #RukminiIyer #ExultSolutions #peacebuilding #nonviolence