Secularism & Inter-Religious Harmony

A few months ago, I was in Kochi in south India, where I met a guy involved in a project of cultural mapping of Fort Kochi, which looked at how people from different parts of India, as well as persons coming from other countries had settled here over a period of centuries. It mapped their residential areas, heritage sites and worship places. It was a very interesting discussion.

Afterwards, thinking about that discussion made me ask myself – 

(1) What kind of norms and rules they had in ancient India which guided the settling-down of different outside communities, to ensure harmony with the pre-existing communities already living there?

(2) Another question in my mind was – how were those old Indian norms and rules different from the ideas of secularism today?

My questions reflected the situation in Europe, where we are seeing a kind of popular backlash against immigrants and refugees. Thus, I was asking myself, can there be something we can learn from the experiences of inter-religious harmony in India?

This post is a reflection on the theme of secularism and inter-religious harmony.

Ideas of Inter-Religious Harmony & Secularism

There are some fundamental differences between the concepts of inter-religious harmony and secularism. Inter-religious harmony is about how different groups live together while secularism is a state policy. However, the two concepts are inter-related and influence each other.

Experiences of inter-religious harmony depend upon how the different groups co-exist together in the community. The old proverb, "Live in Rome like the Romans do", indicated the ideals about inter-religious harmony in the west. We don't have similar proverbs in India, becaue it was and is guided by philosophies that accepts a diversity of beliefs.

The western ideas of secularism were defined at the time of theocratic state, when the Christian church held both the state and the religious powers. Secularism's goal was to separate the religious powers from the state powers. However, today most discussions about secularism are about how the Governments deal with and treat persons of different cultures & religions among their populations. These ideas developed in the West, are today seen as universal by a lot of persons, also in India.

I feel that these two ways of thinking, the traditional ideas in India and pagan cultures about inter-religious harmony and those of the secularism, are different though we do not have a clear understanding about those differences. For example, I think that the ideas of secularism are idealistic, they are about how progressive persons would like to see multi-religious societies and are focused more on safeguarding the rights of minorities, which are seen as weak and oppressed. On the other hand, the ideas of inter-religious harmony are more pragmatic and focus on a balance of powers between the groups, in which the majorities often dominate but are respectful of the minorities.

I also think that today most well-educated persons including academics, thinkers, writers and progressives, look at events in our societies mainly through the prism of secularism. On the other hand, most ordinary persons, continue to use the lens of inter-religious harmony. In the communities, there can be a mismatch between the two.

Understanding the Norms of Inter-Religious Harmony in India

The first Christian and Jew Communities came and settled near the coastal areas of south India about 2000 years ago. When Islam arrived in the middle-east, other migrants like Parsi, Baha'i and Armenians arrived in India. Over the centuries, different waves of immigrants from India and abroad also arrived and settled here. Most of these communities prospered and with time, their numbers increased. Till a couple of decades ago, this was a dominant narrative about India, which accepted that the Indic religions were open to people of other religions and welcomed them.

During the recent years, gradually the openess and welcoming of Indic religions has been replaced with dominent narratives about "militant and violent Hinduism", especially in relation to the relations with Muslims. I think that this change in narratives does not express a real change about the way Indic religions look at different religions but has other origins.

I believe that it will be useful to understand the different ways in which the Indic religions dealt with refugees arriving in India, who belonged to other religions.

For example - what kind of rules were made by the local kings to accept the persons belonging to different cultural and religious communities, to ensure religious harmony? What do accounts of foreign visitors to India over the centuries tell us about this theme?

How are those older norms and rules, similar to and different from the ideas of secularism dominant today? I searched online but, apart from some generic mentions of Ashoka’s edict and Akbar’s rule, I could not find any academic papers or research work that looked at and analysed the older norms and rules to foster inter-religious harmony in India.

Learning from Personal Experiences of Religious Harmony

I grew up in a multi-religious environment with the idea that our religions were an opportunity to have fun and enjoy the different customs & festivals. On Eid day, our Muslim neighbours prepared sweet sewaiyan (vermicelli) and brought to us, just like on Deewali and Holi, we shared our sweets with them. On the Christmas eve, I accompanied a friend to the mid-night mass in the cathedral, while he was equally enthusiastic about playing with the colours of Holi. On the Gurupurab day, all of us woke up early to get a glass of Kachi lassi from the processions of the Sikhs.

From those experiences what lessons I can draw regarding inter-religious harmony? I think that the first lesson would be that we can have our own religious beliefs but we must have equal respect for other people to have different beliefs - thus reciprocal or mutual respect is fundamental in ensuring harmony. One sided respect, expecting others to respect your ideas and insisting that only your ideas are correct and must be applied universally does not lead to harmony. This mutual respect should be explicit - for example, it can be expressed by participating in each other's special moments such as festivals.

There are only a few countries in the world which have long histories of multi-religious societies. India is one of them where today the religious minorities are made of more than 150 million persons. Jerusalem is another city that comes to mind, which has a significant population of persons of different religions, though it has faced much greater religious strife.

The Ideas of Secularism

I think that secularism is interpreted very differently from the ideas of religious harmony that I had learned. Often, it means special protection of minorities.

I find some ideas of secularism a little problematic. For example, many believe that secularism means recognising that we all belong to different religions and we should take care to not to offend the persons of other religions by talking about our religious customs and festivals. So, you are not supposed to say “Happy Christmas” to non-Christians or “Eid Mubarak” to non-Muslims. You are not supposed to have Christmas trees in public places and are supposed to make only generic greetings like “Seasons’ greetings” to persons of other religions. I think that this way of thinking, it says that my religious identity is fragile and can be easily offended if any ideas of other religions come near me.

I think that a part of the populist backlash is because of the way some such secularist ideas have been perceived by people. Often when someone does not agree with any of these ideas, there are no spaces for dialogue and discussion as these persons insist that the only acceptable way to live is their way.

I don’t think that the cultural and religious majorities can be silenced by impositions, especially if they perceive them as unjust. Rather, it is a recipe for building rage, which can also explode in backlashes and violence. A process of open dialogue and debates around norms for inter-religious harmony are needed.

Personally, I also feel that we need to study the explicit and implicit traditional norms and rules of communities which govern co-existence of persons of different cultures and religions. It is possible that some of these norms and rules would be discriminatory, and there needs to be a discussion about them with communities. Using secularism as an ideology for protection of minorities can be imposed by law but it will not lead to inter-religious harmony.

Conclusions

I have to confess that my ideas on this subject are not very clear. This post is my way of starting a personal reflection on this theme. They are very much influenced by my growing up surrounded by persons of different religions in India, while the secular concerns dominating many of the discussions seem to me like playing games of identity-victimhood.

The ideas of secularism are relatively new while for centuries people of different cultures and religions have inter-mingled and lived together. India has many examples of inter-religious harmony going back to hundreds of years. We should not ignore the lessons from those experiences. Secularism should not become a way to protect the fundamentalist and ortodox ideas of some.

I believe that there is a need for serious studies to understand the kind of strategies used in different epochs in India and in other parts of the world, that allowed long periods of inter-religious harmony and compare them with the modern ideas of secularism, to look at their differences, similarities, challenges and advantages. Such a critical dialogue will be critical for mixing of people in the globalised world.

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Note: The pictures used with this post are from an exhibition of globes in old Jerusalem, a place where Jews, Christians, Muslims and Baha'i have their holy land and where inter-religious harmony faces a lot of challenges.

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#interreligiousharmony #secularism #india #jerusalem #secularism 

Cities of Art & Colour

This post is about cities that have decided to use art and colours to give a specific character to their residential areas and at the same time, improve quality of lives of its residents and have more visitors.

In this post I have chosen 3 cities from Italy (Dozza, Caorle and Burano), 1 city from Greece (Mykonos), 2 cities from India (Lodhi Colony/Delhi and Fort Kochi) and 1 city from USA (Santa Fe/New Mexico) - as cities that have made an interesting use of colours and art in the city life. Let me start with Santa Fe.

Santa Fe – USA

Santa Fe in New Mexico is a beautiful city with some amazing museums. With its typical houses built with adobe, you can breathe art in its air. The reason why I have included it in this post is because of a place called Canyon street, which is less than 1 mile long and has about 100 art galleries and artists’ studios.

Here, you can see open air installations, sculptures, paintings, and all kinds of artistic expressions in all the possible styles, from modern and post-modern to abstract, figurative, conceptual, material, western and traditional Amerindian.

Apart from Canyon street, even the city centre has some wonderful art galleries. If you go out in the surroundings, you can discover other artists’ studios and art galleries. We had an amazing time in a small village called Truchas, where the owner of the Hand Arts gallery, William A. Franke, accompanied us in a discovery of the works of some local artists like William Maxon.

Yet, every time I think of Santa Fe, I remember the afternoon spent walking from one art gallery to another on the Canyon Street, feeling drunk with the beauty of all the different art works.

Fort Kochi – India

Fort Kochi is a small island connected to Kochi-Ernakulam towns on the mainland in Kerala in south of India. Centre of the spice trade with communities from different parts of India settling here since ancient times, from 17th to 20th century, this place was under Dutch, Portuguese and British rules. Thus, the tiny and densely populated island is dotted with streets and buildings that show a mixing of traditional with the different colonial influences. With the decline in its importance as a trading centre, many of the old colonial buildings are abandoned, leading to a characteristic ambience where memories, nostalgia and decay intermingle with lush tropical greens and blue of the sea.

For past couple of decades, Fort Kochi was one of the haunts of the European tourists, who came to stay here in the old houses converted into simple bed-n-breakfast places. In 2012, the first art biennale was held here. In the past 6-7 years, the Biennale has transformed the sleepy island, as every two years, for 3 months, many of its old buildings and abandoned warehouses are taken over as sites of art installations.

I have visited the art biennale in Kochi twice and every time I come back with amazing memories of some great art works that have an extra dimension to them because they are scattered among the decaying and abandoned old buildings and warehouses.

In Fort Kochi, the sea, the lush vegetation, the memories, the history and the nostalgia, are all one with the art. However, its success may lead to its undoing. As Fort Kochi attracts more visitors, the old colonial houses are being replaced by multi-story concrete buildings.

Earlier this year, I was sad to see many changes - the old vegetarian restaurant near the bus stand replaced by a swanky juice and burger joint, the quaint place where I had stayed a few years ago now had a new multi-story building and the bus service which connected Fort Kochi to Munnar had been cancelled. I am keeping my fingers crossed but to be honest, I am worried that soon much of the central part of old Fort Kochi will be gone forever.

Mykonos, Greece

Mykonos in the Aegean Sea off the Greek coast is the second island in my list. It is also the only one where the dominant colour is white, which gives its characteristic ambience.

This island was already a holiday destination in the pre-second World war period. However, it became famous as a tourist hotspot of the rich and famous in 1960-70s. Traditionally, the houses here were always painted white to protect them from the harsh sunlight.

The white houses of Mykonos with their blue window shutters and church domes make for a striking effect.

Burano, Italy

Burano is the third and last island on my list – actually it is a group of 4 interconnected islands, part of Venice town in the north-east of Italy. It was famous for its delicate crocheted lace.

Burano is also famous for its houses painted in all the colours of the rainbow. Its narrow venetian streets, reflected in the waters of the canals, make for incredibly picturesque views.

While looking for the history of Burano, I found that its houses have been painted like this in different colours since old times. The place is magical and if you are visiting Venice, do not miss visiting Burano.

Caorle – Italy

From the islands, now we move to the seaside. The tiny town of Caorle, north of Venice, also has brightly painted colourful houses just like Burano, but that is not why I have included it in my list.

Its link to the art is in boulders that line part of its seaside. Every year, the city invites some sculptors to carve a sculpture on a boulder (image below).

In this way, a walk on the path close to the boulders, becomes an opportunity to admire open-air sculptures of artists from around the world.

The last two cities in this list are examples of urban street art projects.

Lodhi Colony, Delhi, India

Lodhi Colony is a residential area in central Delhi, close to some urban land marks that are well known to the tourists including the Lodhi Gardens, India Habitat Centre and Safdarjung tomb. Using the walls of this residential colony to make street art by well known artists from around the world started in 2014.

The third edition of Lodhi Street Art festival, during which artists from India and other countries were invited to make new street art was completed recently in 2019.

I feel that the beautiful colours and the different artistic styles have transformed this drab and monotonous looking area into something more vibrant and joyful. Walking around the streets of Lodhi Colony, you can see an open-air art exhibition.

Let me share a local secret - if you are visiting the Lodhi Street Art project, keep your eyes open for the street vendor next to a park in Block 10. It is usually crowded with visitors – this is Chidambaram’s Dosa place, one of the best places in Delhi to get south Indian food. There is no place to sit and it may not look very impressive, but the food will have you licking your fingers and it costs little.

Dozza – Italy

The tiny medieval town of Dozza located on a hill, not very far from Bologna in northern Italy, was one of the first towns to use street art to bring visitors. After the second world war, young persons from small towns had started migrating to the nearby bigger cities and medieval towns were often left with elderly persons. In the 1970s, the town decided to invite every year a few artists from Italy and other countries to come and paint on the houses of the old walled city.

Dozza has a little medieval castle and is surrounded by gently rolling hills covered with vineyards. This is the area of San Giovese wines. Visitors coming to the see the painted town can also visit the castle, buy local wines and perhaps eat at one of the characteristic restaurants.

While Dozza is beautiful, its limitation is that the old walled city is small and almost all its houses are already covered with paintings. Unless the paintings keep on renovating, I guess local persons from surrounding areas may not come here frequently. Fortunately, the smaller towns located around big cities have had a renaissance – young people who had migrated to bigger cities, are coming back because of higher quality of life in smaller towns.

Conclusions

I hope that you have had as much fun reading about the cities of colour and art as I had in writing this post. It gave me an opportunity to think back to some travels, go through old pictures and relive the joys of those journeys.

I believe that as countries around the world reduce poverty and develop, and the coming 4th industrial revolution based on artificial intelligence, nanotechnologies and biotechnologies takes off, increasingly we are going to look at places which offer better quality of life – less pollution, historical roots, natural beauty and cultural opportunities. Cities which choose colours and art, add an extra dimension of joy to our lives.

As the cities I have chosen for this post show, it is not enough to have one innovative idea, but you need to nurture it and keep on innovating. At the same time, when tourists do come, we need to make sure that the essential characteristics and heritage of our cities are not destroyed because of commercial greed.

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#urbanrenewal #citiesofcolour #citiesofart #usa #italy #greece #india #kochibiennale #dozzaitaly #santafeusa #mykonosgreece #lodhicolonystreetart

When One Religion is Not Enough

Duane R. Bidwell’s book “When one religion isn’t enough: The lives of spiritually fluid people” (Beacon Press, Boston, US, 2018) is about persons who feel an affinity with more than one religious tradition. In this post I look at some of the ideas of this book. 

Growing up in India means growing up together with persons of different religions – India is the original multi-religious country. Often persons growing up in India can have different religions in their family histories and thus accepting different religious traditions is quite common. Duane is from a Protestant Christian background and his approach to looking at multi-religious identities seems more analytical, compared to the emotional approach I had while growing up in India.

About Duane R. Bidwell

In the book, Duane defines himself as: “I am Buddhist and Christian. Jesus is my savior, and the Buddha is my teacher … I am a minister of the Presbyterian Church (USA), part of the Reformed tradition of Christianity … I am more apt to feel tearful or joyful when chanting at the temple than when I am worshipping in church. Buddhism changes the way I know and experience God. It broadens and deepens my understanding and experience of Christianity … I identify as Buddhist/Christian because that’s what I understand God to be asking of me. I’m not worried about salvation, and I don’t mind incompatible doctrines.”

Different Approaches to Multi-Religious Identities

Persons like Duane, come from traditions that believe in one prophet or a “true God”, and when they find themselves attracted to different religious ideas, they need to find a logical explanation for their ideas. It is very different from the way I look at it, I don't need any explanations for it, it seems like a self'evident truth.

Thus, in the initial part of the book Duane raises some questions and his understanding about God:

How and why does someone become spiritually fluid? Are spiritually fluid people simply confused, syncretistic, unable to commit? Are they idolaters? How should we make sense of spiritually fluid people? Do they belong in our religious and spiritual communities? What might they teach us? And what do complex religious bonds imply about our own religious and spiritual identities, practices, and commitments?… I do not believe that God is one or that all paths reach the same mountain. Religions are not different descriptions of a single reality; they describe different (and sometimes related) realities.  
I was a little shocked when I read what Duane says here - "I do not believe that God is one or that all paths reach the same mountain." I think that a person who believes in there being different Gods for persons of different religions would look at persons having multiple-religious beliefs very differently from a person who believes that roads lead to the same God - these would be two very different ways of looking and understanding religious beliefs.

Different religions originated in India including Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism – together these religions are called the Indic religions. In the Indic religions, we often say that God is one and all the different paths (religions) lead to that same ultimate truth.

Duane’s analysis of spiritual fluidity

Duane uses the term “spiritual fluidity” for persons having an affinity for more than one religion. He explains that people can come to this state of fluidity due to different events in their lives:

Normal spirituality believes in religious monogamy; people must leave one religion to cleave to another, taking on a new name, a new identity, a new set of beliefs and social mores. The old life is gone; a new one begins. But some people claim two (or more) religions at the same time. Maybe they belong to a Christian church and practice Buddhist meditation, or they grow up with a Jewish mother, a Hindu father, and an extended family that doesn’t expect them to choose one tradition or the other. Or they might publicly identify as Muslim while secretly praying to Hindu gods … it can confuse and perhaps threaten people who have only encountered singular religious and spiritual identities … More often it leads to conflict in families, communities, institutions, and individuals.

The problems in families and communities caused by belonging to multiple religious identities can lead to hiding of the true feelings – thus persons may outwardly show their beliefs only in their family or community religion, while hiding their feelings about their other spiritual beliefs:

Spiritually fluid people seem exceptional because cultural conversations in North America, Europe, and parts of the Asia-Pacific region position them that way. Public conversations tend to frame spiritually fluid people as privileged, subversive, or both—an attitude that keeps religious multiplicity out of the public eye … First, academic discourse tends to frame religious multiplicity as exotic, elite, and rare and therefore distant from what most think of as ordinary. Second, because it can be dangerous to violate family, community, and institutional expectations of normal spirituality, some spiritually fluid people—especially those bonded voluntarily to two or more traditions—fail to identify publicly as religiously multiple.Much of this (academic) writing assumes a normal spirituality, especially the ideas that (a) religious traditions have clear boundaries, (b) religions are primarily focused on doctrine, and (c) conflicting spiritual or theological perspectives must be reconciled. … Ordinary people who live religiously multiple lives are seldom celebrated and often unseen. They hide their multiple allegiances from family members who will not tolerate someone practicing a different faith; they mask themselves in one or more of their religious communities to avoid shame, judgment, punishment, or other negative consequences; and they switch from one type of religious language to another, depending on context.

Duane acknowledges the different approaches to "spiritual fluidity" among different cultures. Thus, while persons raised up in monotheistic religions feel the contradiction between the doctrines they have learned from childhood and their attraction to other spiritual ideas, indigenous persons growing up with more open traditions in Asia, Africa and South America do not always see any contradiction. Thus, in countries where monotheistic religions dominated, in the past, spiritual fluidity often had to be hidden. This may still happen to some degree.

Jewish families in Spain and Portugal converted to Catholicism to save themselves from the Inquisition but continued Shabbat rituals in secret, and Buddhists in Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon) converted to Christianity to qualify for stable, higher-paying jobs but still participated in ceremonies at Buddhist and Hindu temples. In North and South America, governments insisted that indigenous nations “civilize” themselves by becoming Christian, a policy that made indigenous people hide their spirituality beneath a veneer of church language and practice … “The problem with Indian Presbyterians,” one denominational executive said to me more than a decade ago, “is that they want to be Indian and Presbyterian at the same time.”Outside the North Atlantic region, religious lines aren’t always so sharp. European missionaries encountered this porosity as they began to evangelize people in various regions of Asia. When Catholic priests arrived in India, for example, the emperor Akbar delighted the Jesuits who came to convert him. He assured them that he had indeed become a Christian—and then infuriated them by continuing to worship as a Muslim and, in many ways, a Hindu. This multiplicity was not what the Jesuits had in mind at all and is yet another incident that reveals how Europeans regarded the boundaries between religions as impregnable, whereas Indians saw the lines as rather porous.

Sometimes people adopt dominating religions because these allow them freedom from religious persecution or access to education, mobility and resources. Yet, at the same time, they may continue to believe in their ancestral beliefs, though they may hide these beliefs from their new religious companions.

Today’s complex religious belonging also reflects centuries of Christian expansion beyond Europe. Through encounters with local spiritualities and other religious traditions, Christian missionaries have seen spiritual fluidity as an option for centuries. Those sympathetic to local religions, like Ruben, sometimes developed spiritually fluid ideas, practices, and identities. At the same time, local residents forced or persuaded to convert to Christianity might continue to practice their original religions in secret. Other local people converted (or added Christianity to their mix of spiritualities) because of the link between Christianity, social mobility, and economic privilege. By adopting strategic multiplicity—performing Christian norms in public while practicing original traditions at home—local people gained access to otherwise unattainable economic and social goods.

Over the recent past, in India, there have been a lot of debates about religious conversions and many persons ask for strict laws to stop induced or forced conversions. However, Duane's point is that conversions can be a way of creating multiple religious identities and thus act as bridges between religions. Thus to safeguard cultural unity of persons, it may be a better strategy for Indic religions to continue to be welcoming to the converted persons, so that they can acknowledge both their religious identities instead of being forced to give up their original religious identity.

Interfaith Families and Their Children

In his book, Duane also touches on issues related to the interfaith families and children of these families who grow up surrounded by different religious traditions:

Many people who inherit complex religious bonds grow up in an interfaith family. They have a Jewish mother and a Christian father, for example, and grow up attending church and synagogue. Others might have a Christian mother and a Hindu father and refer to their family religion as Chinduism. Still others are raised by parents of two religious traditions, with aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins from several other traditions. 

Duane shares different life-stories of persons to explain the complexities in dealing with spiritual fluidity. One of these stories is of Sita, a Caribbean immigrant to Canada, which raises the issue of fitting different religious identities in public and private.

Until Sita started school, she thought every home honored Jesus and Hindu gods at the same time. “As I got older, I became more aware,” she remembers, “kind of realizing: Oh, OK, the Christian part is the part that fits in with society, the part I can mention in school. The Hindu stuff is the stuff I keep to myself ... I remember in school, if people asked, ‘What did you do on the weekend?,’ I felt comfortable saying we went to church. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable saying we went to puja, which is one of the words for prayer gatherings in the Hindu faith. So I just sort of instinctively learned to hide it, because it wasn’t—because if I had said it, they wouldn’t have known what I was talking about.

Conclusions

A few years ago, I had thought of conducting a research with interfaith couples to understand how they reconciled their religious differences, especially in terms of religions of their children. However, after some initial work I had given up that idea as I wanted to do other things. However, I think that if I had done that book, I would have approached this subject very differently from how Duane's has done it. Till some years ago, I had a t-shirt that I had bought in India, which showed symbols of different religions and carried the words, "God is too big to fit in one religion" - to me, those words are a better expression of how I look at multiple religious identities.

When I started reading this book, initially I was a little frustrated by the gap between my own emotional approach to spiritual fluidity compared to the analytical approach adopted by Duane. Before reading this book, I had looked at spiritual fluidity as exclusively a positive value, while I had ignored that for some persons, it can be a challenging path. I am glad that I persisted with the book and I think that I have gained some new insights from it.

I believe that in future with increasing international travels of persons from different countries, the encounters between persons of different religions and interfaith marriages are going to increase exponentially. At the same time, with a decrease in the controlling power of traditional religions, increasing number of persons are going to experiment with and adopt spiritual ideas from different traditions. Such mixed couples and their mixed families can help in building bridges between the people.

I think that Governments should document and valorise these multiple identities. For example, in the national censuses, instead of assuming that persons belong only to one religious traditions, countries should provide specific options for persons with multiple religious identities. Learning about different spiritual beliefs, celebrating all the different religious festivals, can be a way to promote peace and brotherhood in the 21st century. Duane's book provides important reflections and insights on this crucial subject.

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County Report: Disability in Liberia

Earlier in 2018 I was involved in the preparation of a report on disability and rehabilitation in Liberia. It was a part of the “Disability And Start-Ups” (DASU) project of AIFO/Italy with funding from AICS, the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation.

In this article, I want to share some of my reflections from this effort. You can download the full report (PDF, 1.4 MB) and the Summary Report (PDF, 0.6 MB).

Background

I was asked to carry out a diagnostic study to look at the capacities, skills and needs of the organisations of persons with disabilities (DPOs) in 3 counties of Liberia – Bong, Grand Gedeh and Nimba. The information collected from this study would have helped the project to plan the training of the DPO members.

In 2006, the United Nations (UN) had approved the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). This Convention asks the Governments to involve the DPOs in planning the different disability related activities. At the same time, the DPOs are expected to monitor if the Convention is being implemented properly in their countries and to provide their independent reports to the UN. For all these roles, DPOs need specific knowledge and skills.

DASU project focuses on capacity building and strengthening of DPOs in Liberia by working in collaboration with the national umbrella organisation called NUOD (National Union of Organisations of Disabled) that unites all the Liberian DPOs. NUOD representatives joined me for different activities of the diagnostic study.

DASU project focuses on livelihood and economic independence of disabled persons. However, a separate baseline study on livelihood-entrepreneurship was planned in the project, so in my study I did not look at these aspects and my focus was wider and more general.

Conducting the Study

Our original plans for diagnostic study had to be slightly modified – considering that some groups of persons with disabilities were greatly under-represented in the county DPOs, it was decided to also involve 2 national level DPOs from Monrovia in the process: the DPO representing persons with mental health issues called Cultivators for Users’ Hope (CFUH) and the Liberian National Association of the Deaf (LNAD).

At the beginning and the end of this article you will find the links to download the full and the summary versions of report. However, here I would like to explain a little more about the Desk Review component of the study.

Desk Review on Disability & Rehab in Liberia

The Desk Review was supposed to look at the available information about DPOs and NUOD in Liberia including any formal and informal publications and reports.

I was prepared to find little published information regarding the county level DPOs. However, a large number of foreign-aid and development projects had been implemented in the country in the decade following the end of the civil war in 2003. Thus, I was expecting that there would be plenty of information regarding the Disability and Rehabilitation (D&R) from the foreign-aid and development sectors.

However, I was surprized by an overall lack of materials and information about D&R. There were few reports prepared in a past few years and they had patchy information. For example, about the number of persons with disabilities in Liberia, these reports cited a survey carried out by a UNICEF project in 1997 while the disability data collected during the national census in 2008 was largely ignored.

Reasons for Lack of Systematic Information About D&R

A bit of digging in different archives and talking to some key persons, brought out some of the underlying causes of this lack of available information about D&R sector in Liberia. These included the following:

(1) Civil war in Liberia: The country went through a brutal civil war from 1989 to 2003. Almost 8% of the Liberia’s population died during the war while more than one-third was displaced. The war destroyed most of the country’s infrastructure, including schools and hospitals. The war created huge challenges. For example, at the end of the war, there were about 21,000 child soldiers who had to be integrated and rehabilitated. Thus, it is easy to understand why there was little information available about Disability & Rehabilitation services from the pre-2003 period.

(2) The Post-Civil War Reconstruction: The rebuilding of the country after the civil war started slowly. In the D&R sector, the Government took quick decisions but these were not followed by effective implementation. For example, an autonomous body called National Commission on Disability (NCD) was set-up in 2005, but till 2011, it did not have any staff or budget.

On the other hand, slowly but surely, Liberia had started growing and became one of the fastest growing economies in Africa. In 2013, Liberia’s GDP was growing at around 8%.

(3) Ebola Virus Crisis (EVC): In 2014 when EVC broke out in Liberia, the Government had already started to work on a national Disability Action Plan (DAP). The crisis brought everything to a standstill as businesses closed, programmes stopped and the international collaborations were blocked. All the expatriate staff of the foreign-aid and development organisations left the country in a hurry, taking with them their reports and information - few, if any of these reports were available on the internet. The GDP growth of Liberia turned negative.

The EV crisis was officially closed in 2016. After that the country is slowly growing back. For example, in 2017, the GDP growth has been a little more than 2%.

The international NGOs active in D&R sector in Liberia are still few (mainly AIFO/Italy and Sight Savers Int.) probably because the fears of Ebola virus still linger.

I can only guess that because of Ebola crisis, most of the archives of international organisations active in Liberia were lost. If they had any websites, they were also closed. Though NCD, NUOD and the national level DPOs still have persons who were there and saw the events of the past 20-30 years, there is little documented information or reports.

The Liberian disability organizations have access to very few resources and are fighting for their survival. They do not have resources to invest in documenting their histories and stories. I think that it is an area that would benefit from research and documentation by the university students from Liberia and abroad.

This is why I have enlarged the section of the Desk Review in my report, to provide a historical overview of the D&R sector in Liberia. However, I am sure that a lot of information is still missing. Persons and NGOs who had worked in the development sector in Liberia during 2003-2014, including the expatriates, probably they will have some of the missing information.

Conclusions

The Diagnostic Study on county DPOs in Liberia was published recently. However, I am planning to keep on updating it over the next couple of years. Thus, if you have any comments, suggestions or corrections regarding this report, I will appreciate hearing from you. If you have access to any specific reports or publications regarding disability and rehab issues in Liberia that are not mentioned in the bibliography of this report, do share them with me.

You can download the last version of the full report (PDF, 1.4 MB) on Disability & Rehabilitation in Liberia. The report is also available in a Summary (Easy to Read) version (PDF, 0.6 MB).

Finally, I would like to thank all the persons who made this work possible. These include a large number of persons from county DPOs, national DPOs, and NGOs in Liberia and AIFO office in both Liberia and Italy. My special thanks go to Naomi Harris, Daniel Dagbe and Heylove Marks from NUOD/Liberia and Ricardia Dennis from NCD/Liberia.

All the images used in this post come from my meetings with persons with disabilities and their organisations in Liberia.

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#liberiadisabilityreport #liberia #dposliberia #nuodliberia #personswithdisabilitiesliberia 

The wonderful world of Steam-Punk

Steam-Punk is a fashion, literature and art movement inspired from the innovations in the 18th century which led to the industrial revolution. Recently I saw some steam-punk enthusiasts dressed in their costumes.

It was my introduction to the steam-punk movement - I had never heard of them before. All the images in this post are of the persons from the Italian "Steam-Punk Nord-est" association.

Costumes and make-believe worlds

People have always loved dressing up in costumes, for example, in the Venice carnival.

The Punk style with striking costumes and colourful spiked hair styles made their appearance in the 1970s. In the 1990s, imaginary worlds of science fiction and fantasy, led to different movements like cyber-punk and diesel-punk. For example, during the 1990s, while living in Bologna (Italy), I came across groups of young persons, living as homeless urban vagabonds, with long matted hair and dogs. They were known as Punkabestia (beast-punk). The Steam-Punk movement also started in those years.

In more recent years, role-play games and fantasy worlds have become popular and are called Cosplay. I love the colourful Cosplay costumes.

Steam-Punk Philosophy

Steam-Punk ideas were influenced by writers like Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Scientific advances made in the 18th century such as the steam-ship and steam-engines play an important role in Steam-Punk.

The term "steam-punk" originated in the late 1980s as a variant of "cyber-punk". Science-fiction writers of Steam-Punk, imagined alternative worlds based on coal and steam power. For example, American writer Paul di Filippo wrote a trilogy of steam-punk novellas in 1995.

Steam Punk is a retro-futurism - a retro (old) technology imagined as a future. It can mix digital technology with handmade art. For example, look at the amazing old rusty-looking digital camera used by the Steam-Punk enthusiast in the image below.

Steam-Punk Costumes

The steam-punk brings together modern costumes and some elements from Victorian era such as corsets, gowns and petticoats for the women, and waistcoats, long coats, top hats and bowler hats for the men.

The costumes are accompanied by accessories such as old airplane goggles, parasols, stylish guns and sling bows.

Many well known fashion brands such as Prada, Versace and Dior have come up with clothes inspired by Steam-Punk. However, the real steam-punk enthusiasts invest a lot of resources and personal imagination in creating their costumes. For example, check the beautifully made complex hats worn by the two persons in the image below!

Steam-Punk Nord-Est Association

The Steam Punk association of the north-east of Italy, whose members are featured in this post, came to Schio, where I live, during a recent cultural festival called the British Day. Among the group, they even had a look-alike queen Victoria (in the image below).

The members of this association design and wear steam-punk costumes and show them off during the different cultural festivals in the region. They also organise symposiums to present their "steam-punk" inventions and creativity.

Conclusions

As our societies become more developed and as we have more free time, I think that movements like steam-punk will become even more common. They are a way of having fun. They are also a way of organising smaller communities around a common-interest, to escape from the anonymity of the modern urban life.

For me, it was an opportunity to learn about their striking and colourful world. That day, my favourite costume was a photographer with an ancient looking camera (in the image below) though I am not sure if it worked!.

Using your fantasy, if you could create an imaginary world based in your own cultural ethos and history, what kind of worlds would you like to imagine?

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The Prince of Ayodhaya & Ramayana

The stories about Rama, the prince of Ayodhaya in north India, trace their roots in the oral traditions of antiquity. From India, the stories of Rama spread to neighbouring countries. Even today, the echoes of the stories about Rama's life are part of living cultural traditions of India, Nepal, Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

This post presents some of my favourite images related to Ramayana, the story of Rama.

Rama's Story

The central theme of Rama's story is that of obedience and respect of the parents. The widespread enduring popularity of this story after so many centuries continues to surprise people.

Rama was a prince, the eldest son of king Dasharath of Ayodhaya in north India. He married princess Sita.

However when the time came for Rama to become the king of Ayodhaya, there was a problem. His step-mother Kekayi wanted her son Bharat to be the king.

King Dashrath had three wives. Kekayi was his youngest wife. She asked the king to send Rama to exile for 14 years and in his place, install Bharat as the king of Ayodhaya. The old king was bound to Kakayi by an old vow and was forced to accept her request, even if he felt that it was unjust.

Rama assured his father that he will obey and live in exile for 14 years. His wife Sita and another borther, Laxman, decided to follow him in his exile. The old king died. Bharat, who was away and did not know what had happened, came back to Ayodhaya and discovered that he was supposed to be the king. He refused and instead went to the forest to seek Rama and asked him to come back.

However, Rama said that he had promised their father to live in exile for 14 years and he can not break his promise. Thus, Bharat went back to Ayodhaya and governed it as a caretaker king, waiting for Rama to come back.

In the forest, Sita was kidnapped by the Rakshas king Ravan. With the help of the Ape king Sugriva, his Ape army and the Ape warrior Hanuman, Rama foght with Ravan and killed him. In the mean time 14 years had passed and thus, Rama returned to Ayodhaya and became the king.

Other Characters from Ramayana

While the images above are about Prince Rama, his Sita and his younger brother Laxman, below you will find some images of other characters in Ramayana.

Rakshas king Ravan: People unfamiliar with Indian way of reasoning, think of the Ravan as a kind of demon. However, in Ramayana, Ravan is also a learned Brahmin and there is a tradition to praying to him. The image of Ravana below is from Kalakshetra in Guwahati (India).

Hanuman and the Ape army: Hanuman is the chief helper and supporter of Rama. He is the son of the wind god and can fly. He is also considered as the patron saint and defender of unmarried young men, to whom he teaches celibacy. The image of Hanuman below is from a Ramlila procession in old Delhi (India).

Here is  another image of Hanuman from a Kathakkali performance in Bologna (Italy).

Jatayu Garuda: The Garuda bird named Jatayu is a friend of Rama in the forest. He tries to save Sita from the kidnapping. Below you will find images of his sculptures from Assam (India) and Bangkok (Thailand). Garuda is also the name of the Indonesian airlines.

Kevat, the boat man: Ramayana has different characters of simple tribal persons such as Kevat, the boat man, who play an important role in the story. During Rama's exile from Ayodhaya, Kevat organises their crossing of the river Sarayu. The image below has Kevat and Prince Rama from a Ramlila in a village in Gurgaon, not far from Delhi (India).

Rama's Stories in Different Languages

The oral history traditions of India credit a sage-poet called Valmiki for having written the first version of Ramayana. Valmiki's Ramayana was written in the ancient Indic language Sanskrit and has 24,000 sholokas (verses) divided into seven chapters.

Another version of Ramayana written in Avadhi, a dialect of Hindi, in the 16th century called "Ram Charit Manas" made it more accessible to common persons. This was written by Tulsidas Goswami. It is commonly read aloud in village squares and along the rivers in different parts of India. The image below is from Varanasi where Ram Charit Manas is being recited on the banks of river Ganges.

Each language of India has its own version of Ramayana. For example, Shri Ranganatha Ramayana in Telugu, Katha Ramayana in Assamese, Tulsi Krita Ramayana in Gujarati and Dandi Ramayana in Oriya.

Outside India, Indoensia has Kakawin Ramayana, Thailand has Ramakien, Cambodia has Reamker, Laos has Phra Lak Phra Lam, Myanmar has Yamayana and Sri Lanka has Janakiharan. In Nepal, the Dashain festival celebrating the win of Rama and the defeat of Ravan is the most important religious event in their calendar.

In Thailand, the kings take on the name of Rama and the ancient capital of Thailand was called Ayutthaya. Many Asian countries have living traditions of presenting the Ramayana stories through dance, theatre, puppets and other art forms. The image below has Rama, Sita and Laxman from Thailand.

In India, many Hindu homes have a copy of Ramcharit Manas. In villages there are traditions of singing parts of Ramayana during festive occasions. In autumn each year, India celebrates the ten days of Dusshera, symbolising the ten days of war between Rama and Ravan, described in Ramayana. During these ten days, towns and villages organise popular plays called Ramlila, to present the story of Ramayana. Most images of Rama in this post are from these Ramlila celebrations.

The tenth day of Dusshera, coincides with the death of Ravan, and is celebrated as Vijaya Dakshmi. Twenty days later, the return of Rama to his kingdom in Ayodhaya is celebrated as Diwali, the festival of lights.

Even the other Indic religions, including Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism include references to the stories of Rama. For example, the stories about Buddha describe him as a prince of Ishvaku dynasty, the dynasty of Rama in Ramayana.

Perhaps the first oral traditions of Ramayana had started when the urban settlements and agriculture were still new and the memories of ancient hunter-gatherer societies was still alive. Rama's exile in the forest to the hunter-gatherer way of living must have touched deep feelings of identification in the persons.

Thus, the story of Rama, a tradition going back at least a few thousand years ago, still continues to resonate with millions of persons around different countries. Rama is considered an Avatar of Vishnu and Ramayana is part of the sacred texts of India. Even today persons in rural India greet each other with a "Ram-Ram" and say goodbye with a "Jai Ramji ki". The name of Rama was also there in the last words of Mahatma Gandhi when he was shot and killed, he died saying "Hey Ram".

Conclusions

As a child, I grew up in the narrow streets of Old Delhi. Reading the stories of Ramayana in a children's magazine called "Chandamama" and listening to the chowpais (verses) of Ram Charit Manas in community readings in the neighbourhood.

Why did Rama's story had such a deep impact on the communities in India and other Asian countries? One of the reasons could be that its values - love and respect for the parents, obedience, respect for brothers, were all values necessary for the survival of agricultural societies based on extended family systems. Thus, the story found acceptance in different countries of Asia. (Another image of Thailand Ramayana below).

Another aspect of Ramayana is the understanding about the spiritual dimension of life along with renunciation of material comforts and living in isolation, which is also seen in Prince Gautama's abandonment of his palace and his wanderings in the forest to become Buddha. Material comforts versus renunciation is a common and enduring theme of different Indic religions, sacred stories and mythologies.

Ramayana and the story of the prince of Ayodhaya has survived for centuries, growing like a tree with a common root but branches going in different directions.


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Rock Art of Bhimbethka

Bhimbethka is a place of great natural beauty. It has giant sandstone rocks, sculpted into hollows, crests, platforms and curls by the wind, rain and water. These are story-telling rocks, whispering their tales through the art of early humans. It is one of the most fascinating places that I have visited.

I had read about the rock-art of Bhimbethka about fifteen years ago and had immediately decided that one day I was going to visit this place. However, as often happens, life has its own compulsions and thus, I had almost forgotten about it.

A visit to the rock-art site in south-west Mozambique at Chinhampere a few years ago, had touched me deeply and had reminded me about my desire to visit Bhimbethka. Finally, a few months ago I visited it. If you are interested in human evolution and rock art of ancient humans, you will love Bhimbethka. It is located in Madhya Pradesh in the central part of India.

Rock-shelters of Bhimbetka are a World Heritage Monument of UNESCO.

DISCOVERY OF BHIMBETHKA

The rock shelters of Bhimbethka were discovered by V. S. Wakankar in 1957. Wakankar, while passing near Bhimbethka in train was struck by the curiously shaped rocks at the top of the hill and decided to stop and visit them.

This area is 600 metres above sea level and about 100 metres above the surrounding plains of Betwa river. Here the rock shelters used by prehistoric humans are scattered over a large area spread over five different hills – Bhineka, Bhonravli, Lakhajwar est, Lakhajwar west and Bhimbethka. All together there are 243 rock shelters, out of which 133 rock-shelters have rock-art. The whole area is part of Ratapani wildlife protected area.

Only 15 rock-shelters of Bhimbethka hill are open to public.

Bhimbethka is at one hour drive from Bhopal. You can hire a taxi to visit it. If you prefer public transport, state buses can drop you at about two and half kilometres from the caves.

EARLY HUMANS IN INDIA

In his wonderful book “Indica: A Deep Natural History of The Indian Subcontinent”, Pranay Lal writes that the progenitor of Anthropoids (monkeys, apes and hominins) developed in Asia and from there spread to Africa and other parts of the world. The first human progenitor Homo habilis evolved in Africa. The standing hominid, Homo erectus arrived about 2 million years ago and then over a short period of time spread into different parts of the world including India, China and Indonesia.

Standing posture of Homo erectus resulted in anatomical changes in pelvis which affected child-birth and children being born without fully developed brains, which created social needs for ancient humans to help each other and to live in communities. They learned to use fire, could make sounds for communication and made stone tools (Acheulean stone tools). Erectus arrived in India around 1.5 million years ago. Some of big sites of Acheulean tools of Erectus in India have been found around Siwalik hills.

The first modern man, Homo sapiens evolved in East Africa around 190,000 years ago. They left Africa around 75,000 years ago and spread in different directions including some who arrived in India. For some time, Erectus and Sapiens cohabited, then Erectus gradually faded away and only Sapiens remained. There were different sub-species of Sapiens including Neanderthals. The present day humans are Homo sapiens sapiens.

ANCIENT HUMANS IN BHIMBETHKA

The rocks of Bhimbethka are formed of sand-stone (orthoquartzite), which have been modelled by the natural forces into different shapes, which provided shelters to early humans. They are not caves and therefore called rock-shelters. Some of them are very big, more than 20 metres high.

Not very far from Bhimbethka is a tribal village, which shows the continuity of human traditions in this area.

The rock-shelters open to the tourists are located on a hill and are numbered from 1 to 15. The path between the different shelters has been paved and covers around one and half kilometres. The oldest signs of humans in these rock-shelters go back to around 100,000 years while the most recent signs belong to medieval period.

Archaeological excavations have been carried out in some areas of Bhimbetka that have shown tools, burials and other objects from lower Paleolithic, middle Paleolithic, upper Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. The lower Paleolithic tools include Acheulean stone implements.

However, for the visitors to Bhimbethka, the most important signs of prehistorical humans are their paintings on the rocks made with natural elements like lime and ochre. Over the centuries, ancient humans have painted repeatedly at the same surfaces, thus more recent rock paintings overlie older paintings. In some places fifteen layers of paintings have been identified in Bhimbethka.

The paintings show mainly human and animal figures and depict scenes from hunting, wars, social and spiritual lives of persons. Trees, plants and flowers are rare in these paintings. Persons riding horses and elephants as well as battle scenes are part of more recent paintings from historical period.

THINGS TO LOOK FOR AT BHIMBETHKA

Personally, I found all the rock-shelters of Bhimbethka fascinating. There were some places where I could have spent hours looking carefully at individual paintings. However, there are some aspects that you can look for specifically during your visit:

Rock-shelter 2: It is an imposing structure shaped like an enormous cave open at the two ends and is known as the auditorium. It is 39 metres long and around 17 metres high.

On the left at lower level it has some more recent animal and human figures. To the right and on a higher level it has different animals and birds including a peacock and the hand impression of a child. It also has some cupules from early paleolithic period.

Rock-shelter 3: It has some curious round-shaped holes called Cupules cut into the rock. These are the oldest signs of human occupation in Bhimbethka and go back to 100,000 years. I think that these could have been used as storage spaces.

Rock-shelter 4: This shelter is called “the zoo” because its big wall is completely covered with different layers of animals painted during different epochs. There are 252 figures of animals showing 16 species of animals. In addition there are 90 human figures, 1 bird and 6 decorative designs.

Rock-shelter 5: More recent paintings in this shelter depict battles and a royal procession. These are located on the right side of the wall. The procession includes people carrying swords, riding horses and wearing a head-dress. The figures include two drummers.

Why did the ancient humans paint animal figures? One of the reasons proposed for these images found in different parts of the world, is related to hunting. Painting the animals (and conducting ceremonies in front of these figures) was a way to capture the spirits of the animals so that the hunters had success in hunting them.

Rock-shelter 15: This is a very big rock and on one side near the top, it presents a fascinating fantasy scene – a giant boar like animal is chasing a small human figure and a crab. It seems to be the depiction of a mythological story. Because of this painting, it is known as Boar rock.

Apart from the Boar scene, there are other human and animal paintings in this rock shelter.

View Point: Around half-way into the shelters, there is a raised area with a tortoise shaped rock. From here it is possible to see the alluvial plains around Betwa river going towards Narmada river.

In addition, there are three springs in this area known as Ban Ganga, Gupt Ganga and Pandapur. Water from these springs is used by the adivasi (tribal) groups living in this area. Finally at the top of Bhimbethka hill is an old Shiva temple nestled in the rocks.

CONCLUSIONS

Bhimbethka is an incredible place. Its natural beauty is coupled with a rich cultural, historical and archaeological testimony of the human evolution in central India.

At the rock-paintings of Chinhampere in Mozambique, I had met a woman guardian of the ancient site who lived in the village below. It was not possible to visit those rock-paintings without her permission. She had also explained to me about how the village community continued to venerate those rock paintings during their annual festivals.

This continuity of the sacred relationship between the ancient rock art and traditions of local tribal people seems to missing from the areas open for visits in Bhimbethka. Nor does the site provide any information about the religious/spiritual significance of these rock-shelters to the tribal communities today.

Still it is impossible not to be moved by the art of ancient humans at Bhimbethka. The name of Bhimbethka remembers the muscular Pandav brother Bhim from Mahabharat. Local legends say that Pandavas had lived here during the 12 years of exile.

Diane Ecke in her book “India – A sacred geography” has shown how different parts of India take the sacred stories of Hinduism, add to them their local heroes, gods and legends, and make them their own. The legends of Bhima and the names of the three springs, Ban Ganga, Gupt Ganga and Pandapur, seem to follow this norm.

My interest in ancient humans and their lives was stimulated by the series of books called Earth’s Children by Jean M. Auel in the 1980s and 1990s. If you have not read them, do read them. They will give you a glimpse of the lives of early humans.

I also recommend Pranay Lal’s new book – “Indica: A Deep Natural History of The Indian Subcontinent”. It is an enjoyable read, full of information about geological, archaeological and biological finds in India.

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